Sensible Software Biography Gets Funding

A rather lovely looking hardback book documenting Sensible Software, one of the industry’s early pioneers, has reached its Kickstarter funding goal and will now become a reality.

Sensible Software 1986-1999 will tell the story of Sensible through interviews and anecdotes from those who were there – including co-founder Jon Hare and the Sensible team. It will also feature interviews with leading figures from the industry including Peter Molyneux, Codemasters’ co-founder David Darling, Bitmap Brother’s co-founder Mike Montgomery, ex-Gamesmaster presenter Dominik Diamond and many, many others.

The book aims to combine art book production values with the very best in games journalism. The written portion will chronicle the rise of Sensible – from its C64 beginnings making games such as Parallax, Microprose Soccer and Wizball, to its million-copy-selling 16-bit heyday in the early ’90s with titles like Cannon Fodder, Mega Lo Mania and of course Sensible Soccer.

It’s not just words as you can see in some of the image mock-ups below, the book will also feature an exhaustive visual tour of all things Sensible: title screens, sprites, game maps, typefaces and box art. There’ll also be plenty of never-before-seen archival material including hand-drawn maps, characters and menus.

For those that missed out on backing the Kickstarter project, the biographical art book will be available on the publisher’s website although for now that just redirects to the project’s Kickstarter page.

Source: Kickstarter, Via Eurogamer.

13 Comments

  1. I backed this on Kickstarter but I must’ve missed the “funded” email (my inbox is a bit of a mess at the moment…)
    Great news anyway, some amazing games from these guys and the book they’re hoping to make looks like a real collector’s item :)

  2. Missed the Kickstarter, the book looks amazing quality, it will be great to see this publishing company go on to produce more

    On a side note, it’s criminal how SWoS still hasn’t been ported to PSN, I understand how it may not have been attractive to do so in 2007 when it was released on XBL, but those reasons don’t exist any more & it’ll essentially be money for old rope for whoever the rights holder is these days.

    • I keep toying with XBLA but every time I get close the massive amount of ads for Future publications puts me off.

      ;)

      • XBLA version is okay but the crappy d-pad on 360 controllers makes it a bit of a chore to play.
        I want SWoS on Vita though, that d-pad would be a pleasure. Hopefully a little bit of renewed fame will put the idea of digital releases back in the right people’s minds – even getting the PC version to run these days is probably tricky, it was DOS.

      • Holy cow, PSM ‘sells’ me Vita better than any AC/FIFA/AAA title ever could.

      • Maybe they could also release Sensible Moon of Soccer, which only got release on a demo disc on something like Amiga Format, where players fell over craters.

  3. I would buy this for sure! I probably would have donated something too, I didn’t realise this was a kickstarter thingy.

  4. …This is terrible, makes me feel too young :(

  5. This book sounds great. I’d buy it whenever it’s out?
    As for SWOS on the PSN, I used to regulary email Codemasters about releasing it but they just seem to want to knock out constant driving games!
    A port to the Vita would be amazing and hopefully it’ll happened a some point even if it is a PSM version.

    • I backed it and the book’s expected delivery is summer 2013, if I’m remembering the emails correctly. I’d expect it to be on sale at the same sort of time :)

      • Jeesh
        Sling a reminder my way when you get yours, cheers

  6. Summer 2013!!!
    Crikey that’s way off!! Oh well I’ve been waiting 20 years for another SWOS I can play. Suppose I can wait a year for a book!

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