Editing Imagine Software (section)

==History==

===Founding and early success===
Imagine Software was founded in 1982 by former members of [[Bug-Byte]] Mark Butler and David Lawson. Butler and programmer Eugene Evans had previously worked at Microdigital, one of the first computer stores in the UK.<ref name='bbc_crash' /> The owner of Microdigital, Bruce Everiss, was invited to join the company to run the company day-to-day and run the PR department.<ref>{{Cite web |author=<!-- Staff writer (s); no by-line --> |title=Bruce Everiss |url=https://www.retrogamer.net/profiles/developer/bruce-everiss/ |date=2014-08-22 |access-date=2021-09-02 |website=Retro Gamer |publisher=Future Publishing}}</ref> Imagine Software produced several very successful games, including ''[[Arcadia (video game)|Arcadia]]''<ref name='bbc_crash' /> for the [[Vic 20]] and [[ZX Spectrum]], throughout 1982 and 1983, but some games shipped with serious, game-breaking bugs. The company grew in size through this period, at one point employing upwards of 80 people, a large number for its time, and splashed out large sums of money on company cars and the founding of a racing team to race in the Isle of Man TT race.<ref>{{Cite web|title=» imagine The Digital Antiquarian|url=https://www.filfre.net/tag/imagine/|access-date=2020-10-09|language=en-US}}</ref>

===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.<ref name=Crash7.84>{{cite news | title=The Bubble Bursts | date=August 1984 | publisher=[[Newsfield Publications Ltd]] | url =http://www.crashonline.org.uk/07/news.htm | work =[[Crash (magazine)|Crash]] | access-date =18 December 2008 }}</ref> The following year the debts mounted, with further advertising and [[magnetic tape|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 by a [[BBC]] [[documentary film|documentary]] crew while in the process of going spectacularly [[bankruptcy|bust]].<ref name=bbc_crash>{{cite news | first=Roger | last=Kean | title=The Biggest Commercial Break of Them All | date=December 1984 | publisher=[[Newsfield Publications Ltd]] | url=http://www.crashonline.org.uk/12/imagine.htm | work=[[Crash (magazine)|Crash]] | access-date=17 December 2008 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190105132126/http://www.crashonline.org.uk/12/imagine.htm | archive-date=5 January 2019 | url-status=dead }}</ref> Mark Butler also made an appearance on [[Thames Television]]'s ''Daytime'' programme in 1984, talking about his experience of having been a millionaire who lost his money at a young age.

On 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 of Justice|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).<ref name=PCW19Jul84 /><ref name=PCW5Jul84 />

===Legacy===
Former programmers went on to establish [[Psygnosis]] and [[Denton Designs]].<ref name='bbc_crash' /> The company's back catalogue was owned by Beau Jolly, who in turn later sold those rights to Subvert, while rights to the Imagine label were acquired by [[Ocean Software]], which primarily used it to publish [[home computer]] conversions of popular [[arcade games]].

===In other media===
The ''[[Black Mirror]]'' [[interactive film]] ''[[Black Mirror: Bandersnatch|Bandersnatch]]'', released in 2018, alludes to Imagine Software and the failed work to produce ''Bandersnatch''. The film starts on 9 July 1984, the date of Imagine's closure, and includes a shot of the cover of ''[[Crash (magazine)|Crash]]'' reporting on the closure. Within the film, the fictional software company Tuckersoft, which had developed both [[Commodore 64]] and ZX Spectrum games, places its financial future on the attempt to produce ''Bandersnatch'', and in some scenarios falls into bankruptcy after the game fails to appear.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/film/black-mirrors-bandersnatch-game-real-13785695|title=Black Mirror's Bandersnatch game was real - and truth about Jerome F. Davies|work=[[Daily Mirror]]|last=Rowney|first=Jo-Anne|date=28 December 2018|access-date=28 December 2018}}</ref><ref name="telegraph speculation">{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/bandersnatch-solving-riddle-black-mirrors-secret-christmas-episode/ |title=What is Bandersnatch? Solving the riddle of Black Mirror's secret Christmas episode |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|last=Vincent |first=Alice |date=20 December 2018 |access-date=25 December 2018}}</ref>