Andrew Nicholas Oliver and Philip Edward Oliver, together known as the Oliver Twins, are British twin brothers and video game designers.
They developed computer games while they were still at school, contributing their first type-in game to a magazine in 1983. They worked with publishers Codemasters for a number of years following their first collaboration Super Robin Hood, creating the Dizzy series of games and many of Codemasters' Simulator Series games.
In 1990 they founded Interactive Studios which later became Blitz Games Studios. In October 2013 they founded Radiant Worlds,[2] based in Leamington Spa, with long time friend and colleague Richard Smithies.
History
Philip and Andrew Oliver first began programming computer games while at school (Clarendon School in Trowbridge[3]). They discovered their interest in computing when their brother bought a used ZX 81 when they were 13. They bought a faster Dragon 32 in September 1982, with a bigger memory. They tried to improve the type-in games they found in magazines and eventually created their own game, Road Runner, which was published as written code in Computer and Video Games Magazine in January 1984.[4][5] The same year they won first prize in a national TV competition (The Saturday Show) to design a computer game.
In 1990, at the age of 22, they started Interactive Studios, later called Blitz Games Studios.[6] Apart from their own games, the Oliver Twins were also responsible for porting a number of other prominent games to the Sega platforms, including Theme Park and Syndicate.
After 23 years, Blitz Games folded in 2013, with the loss of 175 staff, and owing millions to creditors.[7]
Radiant Worlds
In October 2013 they founded Radiant Worlds,[2] based in Leamington Spa, UK, with long time friend and colleague Richard Smithies to develop SkySaga: Infinite Isles for Korean-based Smilegate. SkySaga was an ambitious online voxel based game based on an original concept by members of the Blitz Games Studios team. In August 2017 Smilegate put SkySaga on hold and the Olivers and Smithies put the company up for sale. In January 2018, Rebellion, a UK games developer and publisher, purchased the company and renamed it to Rebellion (Warwick).[8] The twins remained with Rebellion until February 2019, at which point they left to form a game consultancy business.[9]
Dizzy revival
In 2015 Philip Oliver found a hand drawn map titled Wonderland Dizzy while preparing for a talk the twins were due to give at that year's Play Blackpool event, after looking around further a disk was found which contained the full uncompiled source code of a game with the same name which they had written 22 years earlier for the NES but had forgotten about. The twins came into contact with Lukasz Kur via a Dizzyfansite, who fixed a few bugs in the game's code and translated it into a few languages before compiling it. The game was released online and free to play on 24 October 2015.[5][10][11][12] In 2016, they released a second lost Dizzy game, Mystery World Dizzy, which was originally scheduled for release on the Nintendo in 1993.[13] In May 2017 the twins announced they would be working on a new Dizzy game, their first for over 20 years.[14] In a fun video for the ZX Spectrum NextKickstarter campaign they revealed the game would be inspired by the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by author L. Frank Baum, and would be called Wonderful Dizzy.[15]
Leadership
Both of the Olivers take an active role in supporting the UK games industry. Philip Oliver is one of the founders of developers' trade body TIGA and has served as an active board member (currently a director) since its inception in 2001.[16] He was also a director on the board for e-skills UK for several years.[17]
The brothers received honorary doctorates in 2008 from Coventry University (in business administration (DBA) and technology (DTech) for Philip and Andrew respectively) in recognition of their contribution to the growth of the electronic games industry both regionally and internationally,[6] and were honoured as Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts in 2010.[18]
After Philip attended the launch of the UK Government's Next Gen Report (also known as the Livingstone-Hope Report) in February 2011 about challenges faced by the UK Games industry, he established Made in Creative UK [19] which with Andrew they run as a not for profit campaign to raise awareness of the world class game developers and digital creatives developers based in the UK. The campaign has over 350 supporting companies and many high-profile supporters, including Sajid Javid MP (Culture Secretary & Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills).[20]
The Oliver Twins' early games and story inspired many people to develop video games as a career, and this was captured in Chris Wilkins and Roger Kean's book Let's Go Dizzy: The Story of the Oliver Twins,[21] published December 2016 through Fusion Retro Books.
A video shot at the launch of the book entitled Videogame Legends – Computerphile[22] prompted Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft, to tweet that he was one of those inspired by the Oliver Twins games: "I grew up loving and being inspired by their work."[23]
In December 2017 Guinness World Records awarded the Oliver Twins the record for "Most Prolific 8-bit videogame developers". They developed 26 different commercially released games for 8-bit computers and consoles from 1984-1992 and wrote a total of 49 games overall, taking into account titles released for multiple platforms.[24]
