Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

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Mike Davies
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Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Mike Davies »

Just discovered this directory of archived pages: http://www.brataccas.com/arch/indexes/

Looks to be copies of web pages elsewhere (I recognise the Crash Online pages, Sinclair User Magazine Online pages and YSRnRy pages in there), and seems to cover the collapse of Imagine, the path of Bandersnatch to Brataccas, Psygnosis (and their business model of hiring artists inhouse, and contracting out the development), and a small trove of Denton Design articles from Crash and Sinclair User.

I didn't know Eugene Evans was one of the developers who went from Imagine to one of the holding companies that then became Psygnosis. He's the game developer, I believe, paraded by Imagine as being a teenage game developer, brandishing a Porsche yet not having a driver's license.

I'm fascinated by the various relationships, the Imagine / Denton Designs / Odin / Software Projects network. Well, I'm particularly interested in Denton and Odin. :-)

A snippet of info I stumbled on last year: Steve Wetherill (Nodes of Yesod, Heartland, Sidewize), after Odin, did some uncredited contract work for Denton Designs, a scrolling routine that I believe was used in Foxx Fights Back.
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Rorthron »

If you're interested in the Bandersnatch saga, here's a dump of relevant information:

1/ comp.sys.sinclair

In a time when creating games was usually a one person affair, Imagine Software believed they could corner the Speccy and C64 market with "mega-games" created by teams of programmers, artists and musicians. These games utilised Imagine's propiertary RAM packs that increased the memory of the Speccy and C64 to 128K (long before the Spectrum 128K or C128 were released). Imagine also run a teaser marketing campaign that created mystery and plenty of hype -- Bandersnatch and Psyclapse are comming!

Bandersnatch was Imagine's Speccy "mega-game" and was effectively the first Speccy 128K game, however it was far from complete when the company went bust. During the dubious goings on of winding up Imagine, a company called Finchspeed was created -- Imagine's intellectual assets transfered to it and the Bandersnatch team were employed by it. Finchspeed then sold the game rights to Sinclair Research (as a state-of-the-art release title for the then rumoured 128K Speccy) and started to develop a QL version before folding -- Dave Lawson and Ian Heatherington then formed Psygnosis and the development team formed Denton Designs.

Bandersnatch's programming techniques (large sprites and flip screen special effects) and graphical style can be found in Denton Design's first game "Gift Of The Gods" (published by Ocean) -- as John Gibson (lead programmer) and Ally Noble (artist) worked on both games. Other Bandersnatch team members included Ian Weatherburn (programmer), Steve Cain (artist), Fred Grey (musician) and many others.

Bandersnatch's plot was set in an inter-galactic nightclub on an asteroid, where buildings were linked by glass tubes across the surface. There were lots of interesting characters, including a fat bouncer (complete with bow tie) and a banana skin eating green worm (who inspired the green worm in Nodes Of Yesod), who all communicated via text in speech bubbles (just like "Where Time Stood Still" also by Denton Designs). The game genre was a flip-screen arcade-adventure.

Psygnosis revisited Bandersnatch for their first release: Brataccas (ST/Amiga). If you want to see Bandersnatch (minus the more original characters) load Brataccas into a ST/Amiga emulator.

Psyclapse was Imagine's C64 "mega-game", but only really existed on paper before the company went bust. The only demo had the hero, wearing knee-high black boots, stomping along -- he was fixed in the centre of the screen (like Tir Na Nog) and a stoney wall background scrolled left and right. The hero was actually quite large by 1984 standards, using mutiple raster sprites. The story was about an evil villain who had transported warriors from throughout time to his fortress castle on a secret island, the object of the game was to escape.

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg ... lvyRdRi_0J

2/ Concept Art

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/d ... rt-auction

3/ John Gibson Interview

Q: After cutting your teeth on the excellent Molar Maul, Zzoom and Stonkers you then began work on the infamous 'Megagame' Bandersnatch with Ian Weatherburn. Was the game all hype or did it have real potential to offer something different (for the time)?

A: Well, it wasn't quite all hype. There certainly was a game being developed and it certainly would have been something revolutionary for the time: a 176K Spectrum game courtesy of a 128K ROM add-on. At the time Imagine went bust the game was around half finished and we'd already used up all the ROM so a major design rethink would have been necessary to get it finished. Still that would probably have been academic as the projected cost of the game was £60. Would you have paid that much for a Spectrum game?

Q: How much of Bandersnatch was finished before the crash of Imagine, was there anything at all to see?

A: There was plenty to see. The game was essentially about exploring the environment and interacting with other characters. The environment was a futuristic domed city with each dome connected by a glass tunnel. There was also an underground, mine area. The city was populated by lots of chararcters, each of which had particular idiosynchrasies [sic]. You could talk to the characters via speech bubbles and they could interact with each other in the same way. The character that always springs to mind is The Fat Man. He used to pop up in the most unlikely places but was reluctant to get into a conversation with you simply because he had so much useful information. There was also a giant worm in the mines; a bit like those in 'Dune'. I'm sure there was a lot more but my memory isn't what it used to be!

Q: What did the hardware dongle that Bandersnatch was going to use consist of, was it just a case of adding more memory to the Spectrum or did it offer anything else?

A: See [above]. There was going to be more than just the ROM add-on. The game was to come in a BIG box containing lots of goodies like a T-shirt, character profiles, a map of the environment.

http://oceanexp.proboards.com/thread/162

4/ WoS Discussion

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/discussion/12827/

5/ Edge Article

Edge 118, Retro Edge 2

6/ WoS Post by Jonathan Smith

I've had the privilege of working (and drinking - with the Dentons and Odin/Thor and BugByte mob) with Gibbo (Yes - Stonkers!) and that mush of stuff [ie the hardware add-on] is just extra memory.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/d ... what-if/p1

7/ Bruce Everiss Blog

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.c ... ality.html

8/ Crash Article

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/12/imagine.htm
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Rorthron »

And some more:

9/ Microdrive Cartridges

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/d ... tch#latest

(Whatever happened to them?)

10/ SU Article

Spirit of Imagine

Whatever became of the Imagine team? Chris Bourne meets the folk who aim to put the Mersey back on the map

Once upon a time there were six happy Imagine programmers working their guts out on the legendary mega-game Bandersnatch up in Liverpool.

There was Ian Weatherburn, the games fanatic.

There was John Gibson, the ace programmer.

There were Steve Cain and Ally Noble and Karen Davies, the artists.

There was Kenny Everrett, no relation.

And there was a character at the top, where all the hype and the Ferraris and the duff cheques whirled about in a dust storm of vituperation and desperate attempts to keep going just another month, just another week, and his name was Dave Lawson.

"Do you want to know what the brief was for Bandersnatch?" asks Steve Cain. He's going to tell us anyway. "Dave Lawson came to us and said 'You've got four weeks to produce the best game graphics the world has ever seen'. That was all. We took four months and it still wasn't finished."

Then Imagine went bust, and the Bandersnatch team was out of a job, along with dozens of others who gave their soul for the most spectacular, romantic and, ultimately, sordid software company this country is ever likely to see. Dave Lawson and Ian Hetherington, both directors, wanted to keep the Bandersnatch team. They said they could get money in America.

Steve and Ian Weatherburn thought differently. "They told us the market in the UK was dead, you wouldn't get more than £5000 for a game tops, even if it was a number one."

They made a few phone calls and soon found out that the market was very much alive. "We talked to Bill Delaney at Beyond Software for half an hour and after that we were Beyond's men."

The idea was that Steve and Ian would set up a new company, Denton Designs, to write games for other software houses. For Steve, the attraction of Beyond had a lot to do with their products. "They had Lords of Midnight. Sometimes you see things by other people and you say 'I wish I'd done that'. Well, we thought we could produce things like that without having people of the calibre of Bruce Everiss around to cock it up for us."

Steve was anxious to include the other members of the team in the new deals. He'd been to college with Ally and Karen, and didn't want to see his friends sink without trace. The trouble was that most of them still wanted to believe in Dave Lawson. Then John and Kenny were served with writs along with Steve, so they joined up. After that, Ally and Karen came in.

"Beyond agreed to take two games from us, fund our development and premises. They wanted us badly but weren't prepared to take an almighty risk." Meanwhile Ocean was getting in on the act. The Denton team was turning into a hot property.

"All of a sudden up pops Steve Blower. He used to be at Imagine too, but he joined Ocean. Had we finished Bandersnatch? As far as we were concerned we were tied up with Beyond, and Bandersnatch would never see the light of day. But we met Ward, nevertheless."

The many faces of Denton: Ally Noble, John Heap, Dave Colclough, John Gibson, Steve Cain, Karen Davies.
The many faces of Denton: Ally Noble, John Heap, Dave Colclough, John Gibson, Steve Cain, Karen Davies.

David Ward, chairman of Ocean, told them not to worry about Bandersnatch. "Write a different game," he said. "Write one for me and I'll give you a contract for three and buy your old equipment from the receiver at Imagine." So Denton Designs signed up with Ocean as well and wrote Gift from the Gods. "It did OK, about 25,000 copies," says Steve. The game was designed in the main by John Gibson, and featured a large animated figure of the Greek hero Orestes searching a vast labyrinth for his sister Electra.

Denton Designs was split six ways between the original team, with everybody having an equal share. But Ian Weatherburn was unhappy. "For Ian, Imagine was heaven on earth," says Steve. "He wanted Denton to be just like Imagine. When we signed the contract to do Shadowfire, Ian said we had to do it his way or he would leave. So we sacked him. Actually, he's now working for Ocean."

Shadowfire, which we tipped as a Sinclair User Classic last month, is the most impressive piece of software so far programmed by Denton Designs. An icon-based adventure, it dispenses with text and uses menus full of pictures of objects. You move a cursor around these pictures, or icons, to choose your action or movement.

The game is very much Denton's, although published by Beyond. "Beyond has never pressed us on a game, although they do test it, and say whether it has appeal," says Steve. "If we had a game and both Beyond and Ocean didn't like it we would respect that. They have a pretty good track record.

"Writing software is as creative as writing a song. We need to appeal to people of all ages"

"On the Commodore 64 Shadowfire there was a bug. A phantom would appear and attack members of the Enigma team. We couldn't work out why, so we decided it was Zoff's pet. It turned out there was a spelling mistake on a single mnemonic in the machine code somewhere. We've taken the bug out now, so the bit in the booklet about Zoff's pet doesn't matter any more."

Gift from the Gods was a direct descendant of Bandersnatch, in that it had a large animated figure wandering through the screens. But the icon system on Shadowfire was new. Ian Weatherburn conceived the idea of an icon-driven adventure back in the Imagine days, but nothing was ever done about it. Denton sees the icon system as something on which a whole range of products could be based.

"After Christmas we may change direction and move away from games." ruminated Steve. "The icons could be used to produce a library of routines for education software, and maybe special software for magazines and the like."

Commodore freak Dave Colclough joined Denton after Ian left, and more programmers have come in since. They are mostly ex-Imagine people - from Thor, set up by Imagine director Mark Butler, or Concept, a similar outfit to Denton but responsible for the Argus Mind Games series. A sense of déjà vu creeps in. Wasn't it this that went wrong at Imagine - growing too fast?

"We had to expand or go bust," says Steve, simply. "People say we shouldn't but we had to." Contract work demands it - you cannot afford to turn people down. If you haven't got enough programmers you have to hire some more. That's the theory, anyway.

Certainly Denton has been in demand. Apart from Gift from the Gods and Shadowfire, the list of credits includes World Series Baseball for Imagine 84, Spyhunter for US Gold, and, yet to be released, Roland Rat and Frankie goes to Hollywood for Ocean, Shadowfire II and Bouncers for Beyond, plus, no doubt, more secret projects.

The games fall into two categories. There's conversion work, like Spyhunter and Roland Rat, and there's Denton's own which seem to be considerably superior. The Frankie game, example, is Denton's own work, and quite superb. "Frankie was deigned by four non-games-playing people and that could prove to be really good," says Steve.

John Gibson, Kenny Everrett, Ally Noble and Karen Davis are the lucky quartet. Lest you find the naming of names boring, know that Steve and his pals are saddened by the lack of recognition given to the programmers and artists. "These days when you pick up a paper it shouldn't be 'Bill Delaney of Beyond says ...'. It should be 'Mike Singleton says ...'." It's a fair point; Mike wrote Lords of Midnight, and he's a freelance.

"It works because we're all close friends," says John Gibson, taking a brief break from his labours on Frankie. "We argue a lot and call each other names but we're still friends. If my games lack anything I suppose they lack gamesmanship."

"Your games don't lack anything at all," soothes Karen.

"No, it winds me up sometimes," says John. "A game like Elite's Airwolf gets slagged off by all the reviewers but gets to number two in the charts. Other games with rave reviews don't sell at all." Haven't the distributors and retailers got something to do with that? "Smiths and Boots are important, yes. I strongly object to people like Boots who say they won't stock a game because the box won't fit on their shelves."

If anything has crossed over from Imagine, it's the sense that programmers are creative people, artists in their own right, and that software is part of the entertainment industry. "It's just as creative as writing a song," says Steve. "I'm talking from experience." Mind you, Steve Cain never made any money out of his songs.

"I'd like to see designers and programmers seen as creative people. Software is too much regarded as a toy. The vital statistics of the end user are changing." What? They're getting fatter? "No, they're getting older. We need to appeal to people, of all ages, instead of just producing masses and masses of arcade-type games. Mind you, it's probably about time for an old-style shoot-em-up."

Games design does not come easily, according to Steve. The idea of having a team of characters in Shadowfire, the Enigma team, was so the player would identify with at least one. "Karen insisted the game needed a female character so we invented Sevrina," explains Steve.

The desire to include female characters and the like opens up some of the moral questions about games. Does Denton Designs have strong feelings about the sort of games they write particularly since the programs are written for other companies? After all, the company has worked for US Gold in the past, who brought out Raid over Moscow, criticised for its political overtones.

"We wouldn't see that sort of thing as a game idea in the first place," says Steve after much reflection. "There are definitely some people here who would feel unhappy about it, although I have no strong feelings myself."

Violence in itself however is not an objection. Christmas will see the launch of Bouncer, which is what Denton is calling a new game for Beyond on its Monolith label. "The game has gladiators of the future trying to propel a metal ball to a goal. There are eight character types to choose from and you can play against an opponent."

The success of Denton in a short space of time has much to do with the relaxed, enthusiastic attitude of the team. It is also a benefit not to have to worry about advertising, duplication, packaging, distribution and all the other expensive aspects of producing games which so often bankrupt software houses. Are we seeing the birth of a new type of progamming house, where publishers seek out the creative team they require for particular projects? Steve is quite convinced of the rightness of Denton's approach.

"It will be more important to our clients to have our names on the box than theirs," he says, confidently. At Imagine they tried to conquer the universe, and failed. Today they'll be happy with a decent slice of the market - and seem set to capture a lot more.

Sinclair User
July 1985

http://www.brataccas.com/arch/indexes/sinclair40.html

11/ Games That Weren't Article

Mega Games was infamously a batch of very exciting games that were once in production for the c64 and Spectrum, and were said by the press (and of course Imagine themselves) to be very ahead of their time, with some incredible features. Imagine Software pushed the boat out with this one, but unfortunately it hit an iceberg pretty rapidly and sank without trace (or became one with Ocean, same thing I guess! 😉 )

None of the 6 planned games were released. Two of the main games proposed and advertised a lot in the press at the time were:

Bandersnatch – John Gibson & Ian Wetherburn – Spectrum with extra hardware
Psyclapse – Eugene Evans & Jake Glover – C64 with extra hardware. Graphics by Dawn Jones and possibly Ally Noble too.
Although neither got finished and only probably to around 30-50% completion status, they left their mark. Additionally there were two other titles in development, which very little focus was put upon:

Hero – programmed by John Heap (Spectrum) and Dave Colclough (C64) – A game we know very little about
Star Traders – programmed by Marc Dawson (C64) and Daryl Dennis (Spectrum)
Both games were started at the same time. Neither of these games had correct titles only working titles. The 5th and 6th games in the series are currently unknown, and hopefully some names will be produced soon to complete the story.

So what was so special about these games, and why did it eventually result in the ultimate demise of Imagine Sofware?

At the time, Imagine was enjoying huge sales and success, and expanding at a rate of knots. Unfortunately Imagine felt at the time that they were being damaged badly by piracy, and as a preventative measure, came up with the idea of the Mega Games series, which would require an additional piece of hardware attached to the machine to play the game.

The additional piece of hardware was essentially a glorified RAM expansion pack, very similiar to what MikroGen released later (and which ironically contributed to their downfall). Although the idea was pretty good with the ability to provide vastly improved graphics and sizable games, the price of RAM was very expensive – and would have made a purchase around £40-60. Of course, this was far too much for those used to spending around £6-10 for a C64/Spectrum game back then.

It has been suggested that the idea was the brain child of Mark Butler, and Bruce Everiss had tried to stop the idea – suggesting it was crazy and would never work. But it was decided to press on, and the entire meltdown of the company was covered by BBC documentary Commercial Breaks.

After not being able to pay various companies whom it owed money, Imagine went under and the name (and some of its assets) were brought by Ocean Software, who continued to use the name right up until around 1990.

The Mega Games themselves were never properly finished, though many ideas were taken onto other future games done by Denton Designs and Psygnosis (a company who’s name was based from Psyclapse – Psygnosis originally being called Psyclapse). Looking at Gift of the Gods, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Bratacus [sic] will show pretty much many ideas mean’t for both Bandersnatch and Psyclapse.

Bratacus in particular was essentially Bandersnatch patched up and finished off on the Amiga/ST as Psygnosis’ first ever release (and is is apparently actually a mix of the two original Mega Games).

In recent times, the Mega Games has provided a fascinating story of the rapid rise and fall of a games company in the early 80’s. Not only that, there is increased interest in the games that never quite made it and a lot of hope in recovering them in their final state. Although Bandersnatch seems all but lost, with John Gibson no longer having any materials – Ally Nobel offers hope that she still has all the logos and sprites on sketch paper in her attic … and of course Psyclapse and Star Raiders are known to have materials in existance which GTW64 is aiming to bring to the forefront.

Hopefully in time we’ll be able to find everything that there is to find and document about the series, and close the case on this one.

Contributions: Marc Dawson, Peter Weighill, Angelo from brataccas.net, Dawn Jones, John Gibson

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mega-games/
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Mike Davies »

Rorthron wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:19 am If you're interested in the Bandersnatch saga, here's a dump of relevant information:
Thanks for the extra links and resources, [mention]Rorthron[/mention].

Ahh Stuart Fotheringham was active on comp.sys.sinclair too. Fab, didn't know that. I've been trawling through his Eurogamer comments (stoomonster), since he posts a few fascinating background stuff about the game development scene (Software Projects/Odin/Denton) era.
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by PaulJ »

Very interesting reading. Fancy putting all together for a feature on The Spectrum Show?
Paul Jenkinson | The Spectrum Show & other stuff!
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Ralf »

Wow, that was a post, Rothron! ;)

But I don't see the link to Sinclair QL forums so I'll post it here:
http://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2033

To make it short: some rather early version of Bandersnatch for Sinclair QL was recovered from microdrive

Image

You can't properly play there, just walk around a few locations. But it is really similar to that Brataccas and proves that actually Bandersnatch=Brataccas.

I wonder if something for Zx Spectrum was recovered too or not.
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

Yeah, a very interesting reading!
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Rorthron »

Ralf wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:09 am Wow, that was a post, Rothron! ;)
:) I looked into Bandersnatch a while back and had clipped a load of stuff into a notepad. This thread seemed like a good reason to share it.
Ralf wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:09 am But I don't see the link to Sinclair QL forums
I'd never seen that. Thanks for sharing it. I'd wondered about the various QL cartridges before.

I should also have mentioned the famous Commercial Breaks documentary, which followed the whole story, and even has some brief footage of Bandersnatch and the hardware add-on (5:13-6:18):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt9BsZCifgU

And, as I've pointed out before, there really is now an asteroid called Bandersnatch (MPC 9780). Sadly, it seems to be a Carroll tribute, rather than the work of Speccy fans.
PaulJ wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:05 am Very interesting reading. Fancy putting all together for a feature on The Spectrum Show?
I had thought about writing this all up some time, but have never found the time. I doubt that is going to change any time soon, so if anyone else wants to try, go ahead.
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by Mike Davies »

One of the projects on my never-ending to-do list is to create a Wikipedia-like site about Spectrum games and the developers/publishers - citing resources. Since the explosion in interest in retro, and projects like the Spectrum Next pulling our game developers into the light, and people still interviewing and writing new articles about the history of various games, publishers and developers. It seems a pity there isn't an encyclopaedic summary of these fascinating bits of content. Although the commerical aspects of the ZX Spectrum mostly died in the early 90s, the fascination and discovery of stories about that time is still here.

And it also sounds like I'm not alone in compiling various bits of content. Certainly here is a good place to dump links and references to various bits of content. And we could pool it together into a high-quality citation-supported article.
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Re: Brataccas/Bandersnatch, Imagine, Denton Designs link cache

Post by 4thRock »

Mike Davies wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 12:00 pm ...create a Wikipedia-like site about Spectrum games and the developers/publishers ..
A very interesting idea, Wikis are great and very easy to edit.
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