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Imagine Software. A famous Liverpool software house, that was founded in 1982 by two former employees of Bug Byte Software, Mark Butler and David Lawson, with Eugene Evans a friend of Mark joining soon after.
They would publish many classic Spectrum, VIC -20 and C64 games in the early 1980’s. Games such as Arcadia (1982), Ah Diddums(1983) and Alchemist (1983) to name but a few. To kids such as myself it was a place of dreams, a place where everyone had Porsches and Ferrari’s, even 16 year old kids. Of course such extravagance fitted the Zeitgeist of the nation, and so gave them lots of coverage in both gaming magazines and even national newspapers of the time… They were the darlings of the industry, untouchable… it all looked to good to be true… It was…
You see, despite the three games mentioned being really good games, they also were releasing a lot of terrible games… Suddenly there was a massive chasm between the huge advertising budget and lacklustre sales.
This was compounded still further when Imagine started to invest heavily in two new games, called Psyclapse and Bandersnatch, game that was going to revolutionise both the C64 and Spectrum. With two games that was so ambitious, it would require additional hardware that extended the computers Ram to play the games. Imagine, would do a massive full page advertising campaign only weeks after the project had begun.
In 1984 Imagine Software was a big enough name in the UK, for the BBC show Commercial Breaks, to do a documentary on them. It was supposed to be about this dream place to work, in the exciting new frontier of video game development. Instead the documentary captured Imagine going bankrupt before their very eyes on the 9th July 1984.
It is a fascinating watch and can be found here on YouTube.
Suddenly all the staff found themselves out of work and dealing with bail iff’s trying to impound everything. Including the disks and tapes with all the hard work, already done in writing the two new games Bandersnatch and Psyclapse. It became a frantic race by the Imagine employees to rescue any hardware and software they could, before the bail iff's made it impossible. Imagine Software's game back catalogue, was sold off to BeauJolly and the companies namerights was sold to Ocean Software. (1984)
Some of the other people from Imagine Software such as Ian Weatherburn, Brilliant programmer John Gibson and artists Steve Cain, Ally Noble and Karen Davies, would start up the famous Spectrum developer Denton Designs. They would do brilliant games, such as The Great Escape, Where Time stood still, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Also the not so great games like Transformers.
Imagine brand name was bought by Ocean and from 1985 and on all Imagine releases were in fact Ocean releases using the Imagine brand. Ocean was heavily into licensing so the first games released were Konami arcade conversions.
They would publish many classic Spectrum, VIC -20 and C64 games in the early 1980’s. Games such as Arcadia (1982), Ah Diddums(1983) and Alchemist (1983) to name but a few. To kids such as myself it was a place of dreams, a place where everyone had Porsches and Ferrari’s, even 16 year old kids. Of course such extravagance fitted the Zeitgeist of the nation, and so gave them lots of coverage in both gaming magazines and even national newspapers of the time… They were the darlings of the industry, untouchable… it all looked to good to be true… It was…
You see, despite the three games mentioned being really good games, they also were releasing a lot of terrible games… Suddenly there was a massive chasm between the huge advertising budget and lacklustre sales.
This was compounded still further when Imagine started to invest heavily in two new games, called Psyclapse and Bandersnatch, game that was going to revolutionise both the C64 and Spectrum. With two games that was so ambitious, it would require additional hardware that extended the computers Ram to play the games. Imagine, would do a massive full page advertising campaign only weeks after the project had begun.
In 1984 Imagine Software was a big enough name in the UK, for the BBC show Commercial Breaks, to do a documentary on them. It was supposed to be about this dream place to work, in the exciting new frontier of video game development. Instead the documentary captured Imagine going bankrupt before their very eyes on the 9th July 1984.
It is a fascinating watch and can be found here on YouTube.
Suddenly all the staff found themselves out of work and dealing with bail iff’s trying to impound everything. Including the disks and tapes with all the hard work, already done in writing the two new games Bandersnatch and Psyclapse. It became a frantic race by the Imagine employees to rescue any hardware and software they could, before the bail iff's made it impossible. Imagine Software's game back catalogue, was sold off to BeauJolly and the companies namerights was sold to Ocean Software. (1984)
Some of the other people from Imagine Software such as Ian Weatherburn, Brilliant programmer John Gibson and artists Steve Cain, Ally Noble and Karen Davies, would start up the famous Spectrum developer Denton Designs. They would do brilliant games, such as The Great Escape, Where Time stood still, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Also the not so great games like Transformers.
Imagine brand name was bought by Ocean and from 1985 and on all Imagine releases were in fact Ocean releases using the Imagine brand. Ocean was heavily into licensing so the first games released were Konami arcade conversions.