Team17 confirms Alien Breed resurrection

by James Ransom-Wiley { Sep 15th 2008 at 5:00PM }

No longer slave to its garden variety artillery game, Team17 has pledged to revisit its classic Amiga series, Alien Breed, based on ~~the popular Alien film franchise~~ a totally original idea. The upcoming sequel (or perhaps remake) was confirmed with a new logo, above, first posted on videogaming247. Late last month, Spong published an exchange with studio head Martyn Brown, which indicates that Alien Breed will be a self-published, downloadable title. We're speculating that Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and PC are the likely targets, with WiiWare a distant possibility. "We're doing it with a budget far in excess of anything that has been spent anywhere on a digital title to date," Brown reportedly said. Alien (the New) Breed is expected for release within the next 12 months.

Tags: alien-breed, amiga, team17

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Fardo @ Sep 15th 2008 5:19PM

Wow! I would love to play this game again :).. there allready was a sequel (3 alien breed games in total) 1 for the CDTV .. and 2 for the Amiga 500

Shagittarius @ Sep 15th 2008 5:37PM

Don't forget Alien Breed AGA for the Amiga 1200. Did the CDTV have AGA and the same version? I can't remember.

Mark @ Sep 16th 2008 8:34AM

Yeah all those Amiga memories :)

Now if only they did an update of their Chaos Engine game! That would be even better. That was their best game series ever.

Team 17 were quite a creative bunch back then, but I always considered Alien Breed to be a Gauntlet rip off.

unfriendly_cat @ Sep 16th 2008 9:50AM

Chaos Engine was Bitmap Brothers, not Team 17. But yes, it was awesome, one of my favorites along with Alien Breed.

Shagittarius @ Sep 15th 2008 5:35PM

Please forgive this unrelated post.

I think joystiq is run off 2 servers, one is a modern machine the other is a Pentium ][ 400. Why do articles and posts appear and disappear?

Is the load balancer sometimes passing me on to the P400 when my post, or your articles haven't yet updated on that server?

Im assuming a lot here of course, but I've been wondering fore a while why posts and articles appear and disappear.

hunter @ Sep 15th 2008 5:56PM

i never thought of team 17 as a great software studio, yes they released a lot of amiga titles back in the days but to be honest those games where not THAT good, some of those games were more or less average and then when they got their biggest hit (worms) team 17 transformed itself in worms-maker, they didn`t make anything original for the last 10 years. And now they want to make a game based on an "original" idea like alien breed... well, guess it`s time for team 17 to start doing REAL games and by real i mean ORIGINAL ones, not just bringing back their old glory again and again and again, i just hope they don`t change now into an ALIEN-makers company. It`s time that they start doing some original work, not more worms...after living all these years with that title only i wonder if there is a picture with candles of andy davidson (the creator of worms) at the entrance of team 17, or even better how much money they gave him for creating the title that feeded them for so many years??? i`m sure they don`t even know if he is still alive.....

grex9101 @ Sep 15th 2008 6:20PM

That's a lot of hate you have there for t17. Only reason I hate them is cos they never supported the ST. Atari FTW!!!!

grex9101 @ Sep 15th 2008 6:32PM

why do my comments keepp getting deleted? do joyslag have something against atari?

unfriendly_cat @ Sep 15th 2008 8:40PM

Nice. Team 17 games were pretty consistently high quality (although nobody came close to the mighty Bitmap Brothers).

Hopefully Superfrog is next :)

Zak Canard @ Sep 16th 2008 2:23AM

Oh god yes, and if so they'd better get Eric Schwartz to redo the intro and cut scenes.

Thief @ Sep 15th 2008 10:52PM

Amiga Power!!!

Pip @ Sep 15th 2008 11:16PM

Hell YES. The Alien Breed games were AWESOME.

It's too bad no one actually BOUGHT them back on the Amiga. Now that I've got facial hair and a salary, I'll gladly put some cash in their pockets to play this again.

Pip @ Sep 15th 2008 11:19PM

Oh yeah, and guys? I'll have some cash left over to play some X2 as well. Seriously, these games are what is needed on the PSN and Live. We get a lot of half assed wannabe sidescrollers and shooters, but not the real deal.

Bring it!

hunter @ Sep 16th 2008 12:20AM

i don`t think you are right saying that nobody bought those games on the amiga, remember that team 17 was 100% amiga for more than 4 years, and i don`t think they were eating peanuts to survive during those years. What happened was exactly the same thing that happened back in those times, team 17 milked as much money from the amiga as possible and then they moved to greener pastures (p.c.) of course they blamed piracy and bla bla bla... but the true is that amiga fans feeded them for many years, and without the amiga they`ll be selling cheap pd software just as they used to do before they milked the amiga, and i`m not attacking them after all everybody did the same back in those times, everybody used the amiga as a "jump" platform before moving to the p.c. and consoles market, including EA DMA (now rockstar) the bitmap brothers, peter molyneux with bullfrog, etc.......it`s a shame that the amiga is not recognized as the platform that gave life to those companies......

Martyn Brown @ Sep 16th 2008 3:15AM

Actually our last Amiga titles were released in 1996, long after most had fled the scene - and probably one of the best T17 Amiga releases, Andy's own 'Worms Directors Cut' sold just 5,000 copies. You have a lot of bile there and I'm not quite sure why you're so bitter. If you're going to spout a lot of detail, at least make sure it's correct eh. We stayed on the Amiga until it was clearly not feasible - unless you believe making a loss is a good business strategy - once the stores stopped selling Amiga titles, it was over. Without the Spectrum, C64 and Amiga we wouldn't have nearly as many decent developers and indie studios as we have today, these 'home-brew' systems offered a level playing field and an ideal entry level that simply doesn't exist anymore. That's a great shame.

Loudfiero @ Sep 16th 2008 7:32AM

Have you looked into Amiga OS 4.0/4.1?

Zak Canard @ Sep 16th 2008 2:43AM

If true, please be in the same mould as Breed and/or Tower Assault.

hamildan @ Sep 16th 2008 6:36AM

There was a time when everything Team 17 did was gold.

Solid Gold.

craig @ Sep 16th 2008 1:59PM

it still is.....a good ideas studio..always was....always will be..

MadMatty @ Sep 16th 2008 7:16AM

When anyone remembers amiga, Team17, psygnosis, gremlin (maybe core) will always be remembered for releasing some of the best games on the platform.

I enjoyed all the previous alien breed games (even the 3d ones - good reasons to upgrade the amiga back then :) )and looking forward to this on PSN.

Worms DC being the last released game, was possible the last great amiga game. It has to be said that the original amiga port was a poor effort (to allow to work on 512k amigas ??) but DC version fixed it and braught us a very good port.

I think superfrog is another team17 game that would guarantee a good sell.

Matt @ Sep 16th 2008 10:03AM

Atari ST v Amiga comments made me giggle. Before that it was Commodore v Spectrum. Brings a nostalgic tear to my eye and proves that the current fanboy flame wars are nothing new:)

Amiga 500 man myself. Lost may hours to Alien Breed so it should be good. Hope its not a case of rose tinted glasses though.

Next stop Dino Dini.......

hunter @ Sep 16th 2008 2:15PM

Martyn Brown:

that is if you really ARE martyn brown, i`m happy to hear your side of the story, and as you just said you stayed in the amiga market for a lot of time, exactly my point, some guys said that you didn`t make any money on it well, if team 17 didn`t made any money on the amiga then why it was there for so much time??? i do understand that the amiga died and there was no where else to go but to greaner pastures, i can`t said that is not true because it is. But at the end of the day i REALLy think that team 17 has done NOTHING to create original games for the last 10 years... nothing else but worms, worm, worms..... so do you really think that`s what a company should do??? stay with their old glory and nothing else???? oh BTW i don`t have any bile and I'm not bitter.... not more of what YOU WERE with amiga power just because they dare to said that team 17 games where good but they were not the second coming of god, and what happened?? oh yeah!!!! you didn`t send any review copies of your games just because they tried to give a equal point of view and not saying that you were gods, guess the old story of eidos and gamespot was not the first one in history right??? BTW i still want to know where is andy davidson...

serotoninzero @ Sep 16th 2008 3:58PM

They should make a new worms game that doesn't suck too.

Like take World Party and expand. 3d was a horrible idea. I haven't played any console versions minus the XBLA one, but that was a waste of money. It was a downgrade in a new package.

hunter @ Sep 16th 2008 4:23PM

as you said, only stupid copies of what it was a good idea, and now instead of milking the amiga team 17 is milking an old idea for how much time???? 10 years??? and what is next??? just as joystiq said in a very funny way a "original" idea alien breed, which btw was a clone of gauntlet, well that`s team 17 maybe they should change their name to worm 17 or worm4life.

serotoninzero @ Sep 16th 2008 4:28PM

They should. Worms was a great franchise with zero competition. There aren't any games out there like worms to compete with worms, so they should still keep working on them. Just with less suck. A new 2D PC version of worms would be great. I don't think it's milking it really. Worms is a type of game that continually could be updated with new things to make it better and better.

Loudfiero @ Sep 17th 2008 6:23AM

I don't know... I had countless hours of fun with Scorched Tanks/Scorched Earth on the Amiga...Worms was a clone of that imho...but games like that existed on the Apple II back in the 80's...heck there was also that QuickBasic game with King Kong on buildings...

In the end, nothing is really original and it's all derivative work or enchancements so who gives a rat's behind?