This week we take a look at Team17, most famous for their Worms games. Martyn Brown, head of Team17, gushingly talks you through their impressive history and plans for the future.

Team17 were formed in December 1990 when a group of young, enthusiastic and highly motivated designers and developers thought that they could do better than most of the commercial games releases of the time. The start-up members were Martyn Brown, Andreas Tadic, Rico Holmes, Mick Robinson and Debbie Bestwick, who are all still with Team17 today.

At the time, the European home computer market leader was the Commodore Amiga. In June 1991, Team17 released Full Contact, a beat 'em up which rocketed to the top of the Gallup charts and stayed there for weeks. This was to set a trend for the company and more success followed with Alien Breed, Assassin, Project X, Superfrog, Body Blows and Alien Breed 2. They all became fantastically successful games which earned Team17 an outstanding reputation for classy, highly playable titles. This culminated in a joint Software House of the Year award in 1993, with the prize being shared with the giant Electronic Arts.

The success didn't stop there and the desire and hunger to produce bigger and better games went on. 1995 saw us tie in with Ocean Software in Manchester. With Ocean we expanded onto console platforms, developing on PlayStation, Saturn, Atari Jaguar, CD32, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Game Boy.

More success was to follow when we released Worms. In 1997, Team17 entered into a European distribution deal with Microprose Software and this year saw the highly successful release of Worms 2 on PC, the sequel to Worms. In 1998, Team17 released the groundbreaking, super-playable Addiction Pinball on PC, as well as Nightlong, a huge cyberspace adventure game for the PC. It also saw Team17 tie up with Hasbro Interactive under a co-publishing deal for four new titles.

Team17 has a suite of exceptionally high quality titles under development for PC and console, to be revealed and released during 1999. Among these will be the ultimate in Worms games for the PlayStation and next-generation systems: Worms Armageddon. Phoenix PC is a space combat game that's set to be a milestone where the simple shooter and complex strategy sims merge. Stunt GP for PC and Dreamcast is a new brand that Team17 are developing. SGP is a unique, fun racing simulation using radio controlled stunt cars. The graphics are awesome, the physics unmatched and the experience incredible fun. Team17 will also release an unannounced title with Hasbro next year that will see the return of one of its most loved brands, but you'll just have to wait for that.