Stamp Of Approval
Developers are delighted with Royal Mail’s videogame tribute
Devs on seeing their games as stamps, while Sam Dyer discusses their creation
The games industry received a nice nod of legitimation at the beginning of 2020 with Royal Mail’s release of a new collectible stamp set. There’s a focus on Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft with four stamps – as you’d expect for such a culturally relevant character – and it has delighted Lara’s creator, Toby Gard, who was completely unaware of the honour. “It’s totally awesome,” he told us upon hearing the news. “I’m not sure I can think of what’s better. Maybe going on a £50 note? Thanks for bringing my attention to this, I’ve got to frame me one.”
Toby will have to act fast, as presentation packs are currently limited to 2,500 copies, meaning they’re bound to be in demand when you consider how collectible items within the retro games market can be. In addition to four Tomb Raider stamps, eight other games are represented: Elite, Sensible Soccer, Worms, Dizzy, Populous, Lemmings, Micro Machines and Wipeout. It’s a solid representation of classic games and the inclusion of Dizzy has excited the Oliver twins.
“It was both a surprise and great honour that Dizzy was chosen by the Royal Mail to have his own stamp!” says Philip Oliver. “I think Royal Mail chose Dizzy as he’s the mostly fondly remembered UK retro game character. He had an innocent charm, ambition and optimism that caught young gamers’ imaginations.” David Darling, the cofounder of Codemasters, which has stamp representation via Dizzy and Micro Machines is also pleased. “It’s very weird seeing the game images as stamps, I can’t quite get my head around it,” he says. “We never would have guessed that might happen when we made the games!”
While developers are clearly delighted with the new stamps, how were they created in the first place? Julian ‘Jaz’
Rignall has now revealed that he worked on the editorial content of the set’s presentation pack, while Bitmap Books’ Sam Dyer has also been involved at a high level. “For the past three years, I have shared an office with old college buddy, Jamie Ellul,” he tells us. “Jamie runs a design studio called Supple
Studio and has worked with Royal
Mail for years. When the opportunity came up for Supple to work on a set of special stamps for their videogames issue, it seemed like the perfect time to collaborate, as I could bring my design skills and knowledge of retro gaming to the project. This also appealed to Royal Mail as they always like to have an ‘expert’ on-board. I also used my trusted contacts to work on the project, bringing in Julian Rignall for the writing, Gonçalo Lopes for screenshots and Craig Stevenson on pixel duties.”
With a team in place it was then a case of choosing the actual games that would be represented. “We supplied a long list to Royal Mail which contained around 30 games,” continues Sam. “Our main consideration to this list had to be whether, aesthetically, the game would look good on a stamp. The final eight were ultimately chosen by Royal
Mail. Summing up nearly 40 years of British videogames in eight stamps was always going to be tricky.” It was a tricky task, and while we’re somewhat surprised to see nothing from Ultimate/ Rare or Matt Smith, there’s no denying they represent a solid window into the British games market. Interestingly, the Oliver twins agree, feeling that the likes of Knight Lore, Ant Attack or a Jeff Minter game would have all been “very deserving”. Philip even suggested there might have been the opportunity for a second set. “For us, we think that the Playstation era was a different time and should have been celebrated with another set of stamps,” he concludes.
One of the things we love about the stamps is how great each game looks. “I think that is where I was able to really add to the project,” continues Sam. “I know all the games well and know what images are ‘iconic’ from them. The exact screen was down to us to decide. Some images had to be manipulated to work in the space, such as Elite where we had to move the odd planet here and there to get it looking perfect. Sensible Soccer was the most fun for me as it’s actually a recreation of Geoff Hurst’s second goal in the World Cup final on 1966. No one would ever notice but I was just having fun.”
Sam may have been having fun, but it shouldn’t take away from the difficulty of creating stamps in the first place. “Supple Studio are really the experts here and brought all their experience to the table,” concludes Sam. “Designing a stamp is a real art and often what looks good in your head, looks terrible on a stamp. It’s such a small area that you’d think it would be easy to work with, but it’s very tricky. I think that main design choice was really spending time to get the perfect screenshot.
The t-rex scene from Tomb Raider must have been played through literally hundreds of times to get just the right timing. Sorry, Gonçalo!”