Imagine Software

Imagine Software
Industry Computer and video games
Fate Bankrupt
Successor Beau Jolly, Ocean Software
Founded Liverpool, United Kingdom (1982 (1982))
Founder Mark Butler, David Lawson
Defunct 9 July 1984[1]
Headquarters Liverpool, United Kingdom
Area served
 United Kingdom
Key people
 Ian Hetherington, David Lawson, Mark Butler, Bruce Everiss
Products Computer games
Number of employees
 80[2]
Promotion for the then under-development (and never-released) Bandersnatch, one of the planned "Megagames" (from left to right: Ian Weatherburn, Mike Glover, John Gibson, Eugene Evans).
Further teaser publicity for the Bandersnatch and Psyclapse Megagames
For the American company, see Imagine Software (US)

Imagine Software was a British video games developer based in Liverpool which existed briefly in the early 1980s, initially producing software for the ZX Spectrum and VIC-20. The company rose quickly to prominence and was noted for its polished, high-budget approach to packaging and advertising (at a time when this was not commonplace in the British software industry), as well as its self-promotion and ambition.

Following Imagine's prominent demise under mounting debts in 1984, the name was bought and used as a label by Ocean Software until the late 1980s.

History

Founding and early success

Imagine Software was founded in 1982 by former members of Bug-Byte including Mark Butler, David Lawson and Eugene Evans. Butler and Evans had previously worked at Microdigital, one of the first computer stores in the UK.[3] Imagine Software produced several very successful games, including Arcadia[3] for the Vic 20 and ZX Spectrum, before running into financial trouble in late 1983.

Financial troubles and demise

Rumours of Imagine's financial situation began to circulate in December 1983 following the revelations that an estimated £50,000 of its advertising bills had not been paid.[4] The following year the debts mounted, with further advertising and tape duplication bills going unpaid, and Imagine was forced to sell the rights to its games to Beau Jolly in order to raise money. The company then achieved nationwide notoriety when it was filmed the following year by a BBC documentary crew while in the process of going spectacularly bust[3] Mark Butler can also be seen on Thames Television's Daytime programme in 1984, talking about being a millionaire who lost money at such a young age.

On the 28 June 1984 a writ was issued against Imagine by VNU Business Press for money owed for advertising in Personal Computer Games magazine, and the company was wound up on 9 July 1984 at the High Court in London after it was unable to raise the £10,000 required to pay this debt (though by this time its total debts ran to hundreds of thousands of pounds).[1][2]

Legacy

Former programmers went on to establish Psygnosis and Denton Designs.[3] The company's back catalogue was owned by Beau Jolly, while rights to the Imagine label were acquired by Ocean Software, which primarily used it to publish home computer conversions of popular arcade games under the name of Imagine Studios. The final game bearing the Imagine name was released in 1989.

Megagames

Imagine had intended to develop six so-called "Megagames", the most well-known of which were Psyclapse and Bandersnatch. These games were designed to push the boundaries of the hardware of the time, even to the extent that they were intended to be released with a hardware add-on which would have increased the capabilities of the computer, as well as guarding against piracy. The games were advertised heavily and would have retailed at around £30 - an expensive price tag when the average price of a game at the time was £7.20 - but Imagine's collapse meant that they remained vaporware and never saw the light of day.[3][5][6]

During the BBC documentary it was revealed that the game Psyclapse was little more than a paper sketch,[3] though the name was later used for a sub-label of Psygnosis.[7]

Bandersnatch was subsequently acquired and completed by another company, Finchspeed.[8] It was eventually released under a different name, Brataccas, for the 16-bit Atari ST, Amiga and Macintosh formats[9] by Psygnosis.

Games

As Imagine Software

Under Ocean Software's Imagine Studios label

References

  1. 1 2 "Imagine in hands of receiver". Popular Computing Weekly. 19 July 1984. Retrieved 17 December 2008.
  2. 1 2 "Bitter split breaks Imagine". Popular Computing Weekly. 5 July 1984. Retrieved 17 December 2008.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kean, Roger (December 1984). "The Biggest Commercial Break Of Them All". Crash. Newsfield Publications Ltd. Retrieved 17 December 2008.
  4. ↑ "The Bubble Bursts". Crash. Newsfield Publications Ltd. August 1984. Retrieved 18 December 2008.
  5. ↑ Walton, Paul (5 June 1984). "The Ascent Of Everiss". Your Spectrum. Retrieved 17 December 2008.
  6. ↑ Gasking, Frank; Dawson, Marc; Weighill, Peter. "Mega Games". GTW64. Retrieved 17 December 2008.
  7. ↑ "Psygnosis History". Retrieved 2015-01-01. Psyclapse was actually the name of a Commodore 64 game that was never released [but] was to live on as a division of Psygnosis.
  8. ↑ "From Then To Now- Imagine Software". Retro Isle. Retrieved 2015-01-01.
  9. ↑ http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-bandersnatch?page=2
  10. ↑ http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/tag/wizadore/
  11. ↑ http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=167
  12. ↑ http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005746
  13. ↑ "Lemon - Commodore 64, C64 Games, Reviews & Music!". Lemon64.com. Retrieved 2012-09-17.
  14. ↑ http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2120
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