The Senile Team History

Senile Team is an independent game developer, who achieved instant fame in 2003 with the surprise hit "Beats of Rage". This moddable, open source engine was ported to over a dozen platforms and sparked the revival of the scrolling beat 'em up genre with over 100 community-developed mods.

"Beats of Rage" was followed by Senile Team's first commercially released game, "Rush Rush Rally Racing", released for Dreamcast and WiiWare in 2009 and 2012.

With their continuing love of the 16-bit era, Senile Team’s goal is to create new and original games inspired by the classics.

Why the name "Senile Team"?

This is probably our most-heard question. We only found that we needed a name for ourselves when Beats of Rage was almost finished, but we didn't have to think for a very long time about what it should be.

We had already been using the name "Senile" for various things for years. It was originally conceived as the name for a mailing list. All the names that actually made sense were already taken, but after typing a few random words it turned out that "senile" was still available.

As a name for our team it is far from meaningless though. The word "Senile" hints at old age, thus matching our interest in old-school gaming. And since senile dementia affects the memory (amongst other things), our motto became "proudly forgetting ten years of video games history". Meanwhile that should probably be about fifteen years.

Team Members

Roel van Mastbergen
Roel has been fascinated by video games ever since he first learned of their existence. But his life was really changed forever when he learned how to make them. Since that fateful moment in nineteen-ninety-something, not a day has passed that Roel wasn't involved with some game development project or another. Consequently he has oodles of experience and his proficiency in graphics, game design and programming make him a true Renaissance man in gaming. As such, he is the engine that drives Senile Team.
Roel's favourite games include Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Road Rash II and Shadow of the Colossus.

Jeroen van Mastbergen
Jeroen learned to love video games during the golden age of 2D gaming, which for him means during the 16- and 32-bit consoles era. He loves a wide variety of games. And yes, even some newfangled 3D games, but somehow always compares them to some ancient game and claims that “Zero Wing did the same thing but better”, or something similar.
Previously he has worked on Beats of Rage and Rush Rush Rally Racing as level designer and tester, and of course game designer, since Senile Team really is a team, and we really do work together on our games. Still, you won't find Jeroen doing any programming, because programming is impossible! He still doesn't understand how anyone can turn coded letters into a running game. He's sure it's some form of dark magic.
In his spare time he is an unrecognized writer of absurdist stories and practitioner of Ryūkyū kobujutsu.
Some favorite games: Ristar, Vanquish, Streets of Rage 2, We Katamari, Jet Set Radio, Samurai Shodown 2, Shovel Knight, What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2

Ben Boahene
Ben is an everlasting fan of the 16-Bit and the 32-Bit era of video games. The first own console he owned by himself was a Sega Mega Drive, which was a gift when he was 14 years old. By the way, it still functions and is used up to this day.
Ben has been a musician for over 25 years. His development as a musician started with trombone in a classical orchestra, continued with drums & percsussion which he performed in classical orchestras and various bands. About 20 years ago he started with his own compositions and working with keyboards and synthesizers. His favorite music styles to listen are dance, drum & bass, hip hop, techno, latin and classical music. Ben is the only member who is not resident in Holland. He currently lives in the Schwarzwald region of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.
His first experience in creating game music was a remix CD for the Mega Drive title Streets of Rage, which brought him and the already existing Senile Team together, which he joined after the completion of the team’s Bare Knuckle homage ‘Beats of Rage’ in 2000.
One of his many hobbies is cosplay, so don’t be surprised if you run into him on various conventions.
His favorite games are the whole Shining Force series, the Streets of Rage series, the Sonic Series (but limited to the 16 Bit releases) and the Thunder Force series.

Albatross
Albatross is a mysterious team member who didn't write a bio for himself. He mainly does 3D modelling and video editing.

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