Simon Bennett, Director, Roll7: Well, John (Creative Director) and I skated for years, in fact John was a sponsored skater back in the day. Thumbsticks: What was the inspiration for OlliOlli? Did any games influence yo,u or was it born from a desire to capture the spirit and feel of skateboarding? We caught up with Simon Bennet, direct of developer Roll7 just as the combo edition was hitting his doormat. It’s quite the celebration for the unassuming and deceptively simple game that has earned a legion of fans with its in-depth gameplay and daily challenges. The beautifully assembled package features both OlliOlli games on disc, a new combo rush mode, plus exclusive making of videos and booklet and an extended OlliOlli: Welcome to Olliwood soundtrack. Now BadLand Games joins the list by bringing the BAFTA winning skateboarding game to retail in the shape of OlliOlli: Epic Combo Edition. It has also spawned a sequel, OlliOlli: Welcome to Olliwood, and has been in the hands of multiple publishers including Devolver Digital, Team17 and Roll7 themselves. Since OlliOlli was released on PlayStation Vita in 2014 the series has seen ports on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Android, Wii and 3DS. "I think for a lot of the music we were using, all of them would cite computer game music as some sort of influence in what they were doing, so I think it was a natural next step.As OlliOlli: Epic Combo Edition lands at retail we speak to Roll7 director, Simon Bennett. It wasn't as much of an uphill struggle as I think we might have thought it was going to be." Not only that but they'd be interested because either they skated when they were growing up and listened to all the music associated with that, and they'd love to have their music do the same now, or they were absolute computer nuts, really into computer games, and it was their dream to have their music in a game. "When we spoke to artists directly, they would say that sounds awesome, cool. The team started casually reaching out to artists on social media and on Bandcamp until they would invariably reach a solid contact. the sort of music that DJ Lefto in Belgium, Giles Peterson or Benji B, or more recently people like Soulection Radio in the States would play."īennett and Roll7 decided to chase after licensing for this type of music the music that they were more personally interested in. "So we scrapped all of that, contacted all the artists and said, 'We're really sorry, but we've gone in another direction.' But we started again, and started focusing more around the music that we both shared an interest in, which was more the Independent Dance Music, glitchy, jazzy, chilled out. I think, had we have gone with that original set of 15 rock tracks, OlliOlli would not have done as well as it has. And having some Japanese girl scream down your throat and have all this really heavy, in your face music, was absolutely not going to be the one. "Once we got a version of it on the Vita, and sat down and just played the rock music at the same time, it became really clear that actually, it's quite a frustrating game. "This was before the game had really taken much form," Bennett says. Failure happens easily, and it happens often. The only problem being that OlliOlli was that much harder than those games, and that much more focused on one long, continuous, unending flow of tricks and landings. Being a skateboarding game, OlliOlli having a solid soundtrack of great rock would push it that much closer to the classics of the genre like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Skate. "Had we have gone with that original set of 15 rock tracks, OlliOlli would not have done as well as it has." I probably spent about a week and a half of actual work on it. We reached out to everyone, a massive piece of work, got everyone to agree to it and spoke to record labels. John had a list of artists for that, like Bo Ningen, and there was some full on thrash rock bands, some hippy stoner rock stuff from America. "So I think we were like, 'Hey, why don't we find some indie artists and reach out to them and see if they'd be interested in being in a skate game.' So we did a first round of work on that. The problem with those is that A) that's really out of touch, and B) I didn't think we'd be able to get a license for that easily." "I'm quite old now, I'm in my 30s, so it was grunge Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. "I used to be in a band, so the rock music that I used to listen to." Bennett says. Initially the musical direction of OlliOlli was starkly, and aggressively, different. Talking to Simon Bennett, the producer on OlliOlli and the guy in charge of getting that music licensed and into the game, I found out that this wasn't always the case, though.
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