Tag Archives: Sheffield

Train2Game News National Videogame Museum Receive First Donation

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Evercade, Codemasters, and The Oliver Twins are delighted to share the news of the first donation to the National Videogame Museum.

Following the launch of The Oliver Twins Collection cartridge, exclusively for the Evercade Retro Gaming console, it was announced that all profits from this would be donated to the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield.

Today Evercade and Blaze Entertainment are happy to announce that the first payment of donations for over £11,000 has been made to the National Videogame Museum. The funds raised from all sales of The Oliver Twins Collection Cartridge from Evercade will continue to be donated until 31st December 2021, meaning that more donations will be made in the future.

Rick Gibson, CEO of the charity the BGI which runs the National Videogame Museum, said: “We have been preserving and displaying the Oliver Twins’ important work for the nation for many years and their support has been pivotal. We’re delighted and grateful for such generosity from Philip and Andrew, Codemasters, and Evercade. Thank you!”

“We’re absolutely delighted that the Evercade fans have responded so well to The Oliver Twins Collection,” said Andrew Byatt, Managing Director of Blaze Entertainment. “One of the key things about Evercade and its community is the desire for preservation of gaming history and the industry that forms an incredibly formative part of gamer’s lives. It’s our pleasure to donate these funds to the museum to help further their efforts and we hope that we can have just as healthy a donation in the future.”

“We loved seeing The Oliver Twins Collection added to the already impressive Evercade library and it’s been great to see fans old and new enjoying the games we created almost 30 years ago,” said Philip Oliver. “As patrons of the National Videogame Museum, it’s great to see our collection has raised these funds and we hope it will continue into the future. We also want to also thank Codemasters and Blaze Retro for supporting this great charity,” added Andrew Oliver.

“It’s incredible to see how much love there is for both the Oliver Twins and their early Codemasters titles,” said Jonathan Bunney, SVP Publishing at Codemasters. “The Collection, which wouldn’t be complete without Dizzy, is a time capsule for the die-hard Codemasters fans, and we’re proud to contribute towards such a worthwhile charity as the National Videogame Museum.”

The National Videogame Museum was originally opened in 2016 in Nottingham, before moving to Sheffield in 2018 and then taken over by the BGI in 2020, which is now a registered charity. The Coronavirus crisis has affected the NVM, as it has multiple places over the last year, although the NVM managed to briefly reopen.

The Evercade is a handheld retro gaming console that features curated collections of games from historic publishers like Codemasters, Team 17, Atari, Namco, Data East, and many more, all officially licensed. These are released in the form of physical propriety cartridges that work with the Evercade handheld console. The Oliver Twins Collection cartridge is one of 14 currently available since its launch in June 2020, and the Evercade will have over 250 games available by the end of 2021.

For more information on the Evercade, visit www.evercade.co.uk or email press@evercade.co.uk

For more information on The Oliver Twins Collection, visit https://www.evercade.co.uk/oliver-twins-collection-cartridge/

For more information on the National Videogame Museum and the BGI, visit https://thenvm.org/

Train2Game News National Videogame Museum opens soon

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Sheffield, 15th October 2018: The National Videogame Museum(NVM), the UK’s only permanent games museum that celebrates videogames and the people who make them, is opening in Sheffield on November 24th.

The NVM hosts scores of playable consoles and arcade machines, innovative exhibitions of studios, their games and how they are made, as well as cultural festivals, clubs for kids and parents, and a host of events. The NVM will feature unique exhibitions reaching back to the industry’s birth and forward to games still in development.

Following an acclaimed run in Nottingham as the National Videogame Arcade, the new museum will build on a pedigree of strong review scores, consecutive TripAdvisor awards and 50,000 visitors a year.

“We’ve always tried to do more than just put out games for people to play”, said Iain Simons, Culture Director of the BGI, which runs the NVM. “In our dynamic new space, we’re bringing videogame creators into the Museum to meet their players, showing visitors what games mean and responding to our community’s requests and ideas for new exhibits.”

Following the success of previous exhibitions featuring Football Manager, Dizzy and Monument Valley, the Museum is working with games companies to create new, more ambitious shows. “We’re delighted to launch a test lab with Boneloaf’s Gang Beasts and we’re talking to publishers and developers about showcasing their work to our broad audience.”

Kath Bidwell, founder of State of Play Games, said “I’m really excited about the launch of the National Videogame Museum at its brand new home at the heart of Sheffield city centre. The games industry is fantastically creative and culturally significant and now we have a great place to celebrate and embrace that.”

NVM Patron and BGI Chair Ian Livingstone CBE said “The NVM is the games industry’s own museum, celebrating our games, our studios and our sector’s achievements over 40 years. I invite anyone who cares about the cultural life of video games to join leaders from across the industry and support this amazing project with content, evangelism and funding to help expand the programme in the years to come.”

The NVM has been supported by patrons including Ian Livingstone, Andy Payne, Sumo Digital, Rebellion, Rami Ismail, Masaya Matsuura and many others over the years.The non-profit NVM is seeking help from the sector to take videogame culture to hundreds of thousands more visitors”.

Train2Game News: Train2Game Radio talks to Tarnya Smith

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Tarnya SmithI got the pleasure of talking to Train2Game student, Tarnya Smith, who already has a years experience in the games industry after leaving university and she now works at Distinctive Games who have just released the popular Rugby Nations ’13. You can find out what she has worked on and how she got to where she is now in the interview.

You can listen to the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1473120-train2game-student-radio-talks-to-tarnya-smith

Or read the transcript below

My name’s Tarnya Smith, I live in Sheffield and I’m doing the Designer course.

Hiya Tarnya, how you doing?

I’m good thank you, how are you?

I’m alright thank you very muchly. So tell me a bit about yourself then?

I started off playing games when I was a kid, with my brother, that’s how I got in to it. I did creative kind of stuff through university and things like that and when I finished university last year I was given the chance to work as a tester for Sega in London, so I kinda took that with both hands and that’s where it started really. Then I got the opportunity to come up to Sheffield, up here, to work for Sumo, which was doing the Sonic game at the time and I got a job here at Distinctive, as a tester as well, and I moved up here permanently because I was living in London at the time.

You’ve had quite a wealth of experience already then?

Yeah, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had a years experience straight off the bat, which is quite hard to come by but I work hard so I think that shows and I’ve always wanted to do, creative stuff. I didn’t really want to go back to university because I didn’t really enjoy it the first time around and I’ve always wanted to be a games designer so I thought I would do the Train2Game thing and see how that went.

Did you finish your university course then or did you just think that’s enough once you got the job opportunities?

No I finished, I finished back in May, but the testing job came straight up. I got given that at the end of July so I went straight into that after university.

Is that one you applied for or did they come and seek you out?

No, I know quite a lot of friends who work there and I never really thought about it before but then they started taking on a big bunch of testers so I went for it and got the job.

Very nice. What Sonic game was it you worked on?

Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed.

Oh was it? I do like that game, it is fun!

Well I’m glad because we worked hard on it! Yeah I really enjoyed working on it, it was great fun and I still play it from time to time.

Excellent. It does certainly have replayability a lot.

Oh god yeah!

So, you said you’re at Distinctive Games now. What are you working on there?

We’ve just completed the Rugby Nations ’13 that’s just come out. At the minute I’m just working on patches for old games that need updating for the new iOS and so on, but there are some projects coming out in the future that obviously, I can’t talk about but there good, I’m enjoying it.

Excellent, so are you a fan of Rugby then or is that just something you ended up working on anyway?

I was actually a big fan. I used to live near Twickenham, so I used to go to Twickenham Stadium when I got the chance but I’m not really a big fan of Sports all round but it’s fine!

Just what ever you can get your hands on really?

Yeah pretty much, it’s all good!

Are you a tester at Distinctive now?

Yeah, I’m a tester, yeah.

So do you think they’ll be an opportunity for you to move up to a designer instead soon?

Well I hope so, at some point.

Is that the main aim? I assume

Well, I’m quite happy to be a tester for a while, it’s not that it’s a problem but obviously my aim long term is to be a designer somewhere. So if I can get in here that’ll be awesome but you know, where ever life takes you.

You seem very relaxed with it all

Yeah, I just think I’m really lucky to get into something I’m really passionate about so I am just enjoying whatever I can get out of it, I’m not going to start stressing that I’m not getting the job I want straight away because that never happens.

That is a very good attitude to have

Yeah, so I am enjoying it and I am just going to try and enjoy it for as long as possible.

Excellent. So it sounds like you’ve had quite a good life already then!

I just think, the last year or so, I’ve been quite lucky and I’ve got to know some people that know people. It’s who you are that opens paths for you. I’ve been in the community a few years now and you do get to know people.

Perfect, well I think that’s all we’ve got time for today

Awesome.

So thanks very much for talking to us!

You’re very welcome!