What a great read. Thanks for posting this!

> Pirates essentially changed the studio's whole identity, something that was incredibly hard to do even in those days.

There are indeed very few examples I can recall of a game that completely changed a studio, but one that comes to mind is Worms. Team 17 mostly made top down shooters and fighting games, until they released a silly trajectory shooting game inspired by the ancient basic game, Gorilla. That was such a massive success they mostly only made Worms games after that

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Gareth321 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Worms were such great games. I just had a look at what Team 17 is up to now and [they're doing surprisingly well.](https://www.team17.com/) Some great games in their portfolio.

Epic also did really well changing with the times. From Jazz Jackrabbit to one of the largest developers in the world.

	▲	eru an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Also remember the guys who made Commander Keen.

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krige 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nitpick: not Gorilla.bas; it was the actual OG, Artillery. Prototypes, which used sprites ripped from Lemmings, were even named "Lemartillery".

And the creative bankrupcy of T17 is a whole another topic. I would rather suggest that they lucked into Worms when Davidson approached them by happenstance, and would not survive otherwise.

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somat an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Scorched Earth always comes to mind as an influential early artillery game, but it too was PC, so hard to say.

I actually remember it's stupid tagline better than the name, "The mother of all games" indeed. But that is what I was searching for to get the name.

	▲	krige an hour ago \| parent [-]
		At least some reviews for Worms mentioned Scorched Earth (in superlatives too). It was big enough that systems that didn't have it, wish they had it.

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whywhywhywhy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah Worms was coded on Amiga computers in a part of the world that was extremely Amiga heavy so it’s unlikely Gorillas.bas is the reference point.