Taking time out of their mile-crushing schedule to talk to us at Games Freezer, we took the opportunity to get to the heart of this extremely hands-on and quite frankly, impressively gruelling mission.
Hello Wave Studios! We’ve been chatting over Twitter for months now but for those unfamiliar with you, can you give a little background on WAVE and how your relationship with the talented Senile Team came to be?
Hello! It was been a real pleasure to chat with and get to know you over the last few months. And that’s what this is all about, bringing gamers together.
Based on Norwich, WAVE is made up of two brothers, Nick and myself (Daniel). We have been involved in the distribution and online retail side of gaming as individuals for about 15 years, but WAVE is fairly new having been set up in 2015 to distribute games to UK game shops.
The publishing side of things is even newer though and started with Intrepid Izzy about a year ago.
We have been fans of Senile Team’s work since their very first release, Beats of Rage, back in 2003. In the early days, we were on their forum helping people make mods, whilst also making our own, so we are very familiar with their games.
Intrepid Izzy is very clearly a good game, but at what point in the production did you feel so passionately about the title that you had to immerse yourself further in making sure as many people played it as possible?
Surprisingly, given our history, it was only this year that we started working with them after Brexit opened a can of worms with regards to distributing Intrepid Izzy in the UK.
We had backed the game on Kickstarter in 2017, so knew how awesome it was going to be. We didn’t want anyone missing out on what we believed to be one of the very best ever released for the Dreamcast. We offered to handle that task for them, and also help to promote the game with our years of experience doing the same for more mainstream games, and I’m happy to say it has paid off.
Where did the seed of the idea to travel throughout Blighty come from, and what drove you?
That actually came from the really positive reception from our existing retail partners, and also their surprise that people are still making games for the Dreamcast.
We realised that there are 100+ retro game shops in the UK, and at that time zero of them sold indie games. Most of them didn’t even know they were available!
Being the mad lads that we are, we figured why not just pay them a visit with a copy of the game to show them what all the fuss is about :)
That proved to be a smart move, because as of this writing 38 shops are stocking Izzy and are seeing a really good response from their customers, many of which also didn’t know these indie games existed!
Can you definitively advise the best places for fish and chips now?
P J’s Take Away in Great Yarmouth, hands down. In general, though, it seems the best places are the ones “up north” who are still using beef dripping in their fryers. Not great for vegetarians though, to be fair!
I know from our chats that you have had extremely mixed experiences but what moments stood out for you and what were the biggest learning curves?
Overall, I’d say the experience (of travelling to all the shops) was overwhelmingly positive. Apart from one or two, everyone we met was awesome. Many were super surprised to learn that great indie games are being released for the Dreamcast and other retro systems, and from a commercial point of view about 40 asked to stock Izzy.
Only one shop owner outright refused to have anything to do with indie games, so can’t really complain!
So out of the 107 we visited, that’s a pretty good outcome. Aside from the goal of selling games, of course, we had the opportunity to chat (sometimes for hours) with some really cool folks.
Would you attempt something like this again for future releases?
We can’t wait to get out there again, to be honest. Personally speaking, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed myself that much in years!
There are a few new shops which have opened up since our trip, and a handful which we missed due to them being closed (due to the current global situation). Not to mention seeing some of our new friends again.
Finally - where can people discover more about Intrepid Izzy and what’s next for WAVE?
The best place to learn about our current and upcoming games is our website. It’s by far the most comprehensive collection of all things WAVE.
What’s next? Well, immediately on the release calendar we have Yeah Yeah Beebiss II for Dreamcast.
This NES style game was put together by YouTuber John Riggs as a sequel to Yeah Yeah Beebiss I, which is a strange little curiosity in that it never existed. There’s a whole YouTube rabbit hole you can go down with that one!
We’ll be showing Beebiss off (alongside 3 other games) at OLL ‘22 Games Convention on 15th/16th January, for anyone who is local to Norwich or doesn’t mind making the trip.
From a personal perspective, I was just a flat-out fan of the game and we got chatting naturally through Twitter, it’s been a genuinely heartening thing to see such passion rise around such a deservedly well-received game. I look forward to discovering whatever Senior Team comes up with next and hope that 2021 has been an incredibly successful year for both WAVE and Senile!
Thanks so much for spending the time with us.
It’s been a pleasure. Let’s chat again sometime soon!
Daniel Crocker WAVE Game Studios
Nice
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