Commercial Breaks

Commercial Breaks - A documentary about Video Games Software companies at early 80's


Bit of history showing a behind the scenes of two software houses: Ocean and Imagine.


In early 1984 the Imagine team were working on a spectacular project known as Bandersnatch. The game was to come in an A4 sized box containing around 30 'goodies' including a required additional piece of hardware for your Spectrum computer.


The retail price of Bandersnatch was expected to be around £40 and it was to be a completely new concept in computer games. Apparently 10 professional artists were working on the graphics alone.


Bandersnatch was never released. On the 9th of July 1984, Imagine went bust after only 18 months of operation. Interestingly, its demise was documented by a BBC television program: "Commercial Breaks". (Watch The Video)


The Documentary shows also the catastrophical damages of pirating video games.


Later that year, 1984, ex-Imagine director Ian Hetherington started a new company known as Psygnosis. Many Imagine employees moved to the new team including David Lawson, Eugene Evans, John Gibson, and Jake Glover. Their first game was to be Brataccas, which was essentially a rebadged version of Bandersnatch on the new Amiga and Atari ST. Unfortunately it never quite lived up to the lofty ideals of the former game but it was the catalyst for what was to come.