Martyn Brown 1967-2024
Martyn 'Spadge' Brown has died aged 57. He co-founded Wakefield-based 17Bit Software in 1986 with Microbyte owner Mick Robinson, having been the manager of the Leeds shop himself. This was initially an extension of Microbyte, focusing on 16-bit home micro (Amiga and Atari ST) PD sales, with Martyn keen to see better 1MB games, rather than 512K "half-arsed ST ports". This led to Mick and Martyn forming Team17 in 1990, with Martyn taking on the role of Creative Director.
By 1994, Martyn had project managed several successful titles including Project-X, Alien Breed, Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues, Assassin and Body Blows, even helping design some of them - notably Arcade Pool, Alien Breed Special Edition and Superfrog. At that year's ECTS, he was shown a game originally written on a Casio calculator by student Andy Davidson as Artillery. This game had failed to win the Blitz Basic competition run by Amiga Format and had also been rejected by several publishers, but Martyn saw the potential of the game, which was around 75% complete. Its name was Total Wormage. Martyn agreed to help finish and publish the game, but suggested it should be renamed once more - this time to Worms.In 2003, Martyn co-founded the non-profit independent trade alliance, Game Republic, which supported games studios in the Yorkshire and Humber region. He remained at Team17 until the management buy-out in 2010, by which time he had worked on around 60 games.... including 19 Worms titles! He then founded Insight Studios, a consultancy group that supported indie developers, studios and publishers. Insight were instrumental in setting up The Blast Furnace, a mobile developer based in Leeds, earning Martyn special thanks credits on Pitfall! for Android and LittleBigPlanet PSVita. Martyn also co-founded Five Aces Publishing, working extensively with New Star Games - in particular on BAFTA-winning New Star Soccer.
Martyn was a keen gamer himself; having been bitten by the bug in arcades of the Seventies, his first games console - an Atari VCS (aka 2600) further captivated him, as did his first home micro - a Sinclair ZX81. Naturally, he moved onto a ZX Spectrum, citing classics such as Manic Miner, Football Manager and Lords of Midnight among the titles that had the biggest impact on him. It was with this Spectrum that he taught himself to code - first in BASIC, then Z80 Assembly. In 1984, Martyn sold his first game with college buddy Andy Bigos, Henry's Hoard (a Jet Set Willy clone), to Roger Hulley for £500. The following year, it became the first title published by Roger's new company, Alternative Software. Alternative are still in business and have published over 250 titles... and joined Game Republic! Martyn went on to get a Commodore 64 (and 128), though he didn't really have many great gaming memories from the system as he was mostly coding on the system. It was soon replaced by an Atari ST, on which his most influential game was Dungeon Master. This again was replaced when he could afford a Commodore Amiga.He would later go on to become quite the arcade collector, and well-known in the 'scene'. I know of at least 25 cabinets he had and a handful of pinballs - his most treasured being classic Atari games.
Anyone who knew Martyn would say he was a wonderful, friendly man with a wicked sense of humour, incredibly modest but professional and a straight shooter. Whilst I didn't know him well, I first encountered him over 20 years ago, cheekily trying to ascertain what Sega Saturn dev gear was lurking in a dusty cupboard in Team17! Considering I was contacting the boss, it was amazing that I even received a reply - he confirmed there was some equipment, but the NDA with Sega still stood (despite it not being used for years) and he was unable to even show me it. However, Martyn was gracious and happy to answer questions. He told me that
X2 (aka Project X2) had been finished for Saturn - a PAL version for Ocean and a NTSC-J version via Capcom/Osaka. He even went to the trouble of checking his backups to let me know it was missing! I then got to speak to him off and on through the arcade scene. I knew he had suffered several strokes and sadly lost the use of his right side, though he remained positive and had left-handed control panels made up to be able to continue playing the games he loved. It was sad to see him eventually have to sell most of them when he was no longer able to tinker with them and give up his love of photography - as a photographer myself, I can imagine how hard that would be. I also very fondly remember getting our first IBM-PC compatible computer - an Acer Pentium that came with a copy of Worms Reinforcements. It was always one of my favourite video game series, and the Team17 logo on a game always indicated to me that it was going to be good! Martyn has mentioned other unreleased games in interviews - like Battle Rally, King of Thieves and Witchwood.At the GaMaYo event in Wakefield on 21 November 2024, Martyn won the Games Legend award at the Game Republic 2024 Awards ceremony - one of the other nominees was Gremlin Graphics co-founder Ian Stewart. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend, but was absolutely thrilled.
During his time at Team17, Martyn started a blog in 2006 called Half Way Through - thus named because, at 40, he assumed he was approximately half way through his life. He kept it going until 2011. Having renamed it Two Thirds Through!, he started that year with a sadly prophetic post explaining the rename:
Martyn passed away on the morning of 28 December 2024 surrounded by family, listening to his favourite music - days before his 58th birthday.
Fortunately, Martyn has been frequently interviewed, so we have a potted history of Team17 straight from the horse's mouth!
https://web.archive.org/web/20000817024236/http://www.hyperactive.com.au/pc/news/wormsint/index.html
You might also enjoy the Team17's 100 games article, published back in 2018 (after Martyn had left). Sadly, they messed the formatting up a bit - including dead links, so here is the complete series [or look at the backup of the original posts]:
1991-92 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997-98 - 1999-2001 - 2002-04 - 2005-06 - 2007-08 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011-12 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018
RIP Martyn. Thanks for so many fantastic games. I am sure you were one of those heroes who died too young to many colleagues and gamers alike.