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Waxing lyrical about the dramatic transition from cartridges to CDs might seem somewhat twee in this era of seamless digital downloads and cavernous terabyte hard drives, but back in the early 90s the entire industry - and those who followed its progress dutifully - was caught up in the excitement and anticipation of the glorious, data-rich future that those shiny plastic discs promised.Companies such as Sega, Nintendo, NEC, Apple and Fujitsu threw millions upon millions of dollars of R&D budget into CD-based gaming hardware, while PC developers embraced the expansive storage offered by the medium to create games with full motion video sequences, hours of spoken dialogue and high-quality audio. During this time of intense upheaval, development studios had to shift from creating relatively simplistic cartridge-based titles to games that could make use of over 600 MB of storage space. This meant having to master a whole new range of design disciplines, including video, CGI, CD-quality music and much more besides.
One of the companies which adapted best - and consequently found itself at the forefront of this technical revolution - was Liverpool-based Psygnosis, famed for publishing titles like Shadow of the Beast, Lemmings and Barbarian on home computer formats. Co-founded by the charismatic Ian Hetherington, the company invested heavily in the latest graphical technology, including Amiga rendering package Sculpt 4D and a raft of expensive Silicon Graphics workstations. Its pre-existing focus on creating lavish, cutting-edge visuals put the company in the perfect position to exploit the massive storage space offered by CD-ROM.
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