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yezo
Added: 1 Oct 2013
Cool |
Added: 21 May 2013
Denton Designs was founded in September 1985 following the collapse of Imagine Software. Six Imagine staff - Steve Cain, Ian Weatherburn, Ally Noble, John Gibson, Karen Davies and Graham "Kenny" Everitt - made redundant by the company's demise, founded the new software house and carried on where they had left off at Imagine.
When Denton Designs was contracted to develop Shadowfire, Ian Weatherburn became disillusioned with the fact that the company was no longer operating as it had when they had been part of Imagine, and on providing an ultimatum was sacked by the rest of the directors. He subsequently joined Ocean.
In March 1986, the company split, with founders Cain, Davis, Everitt and Gibson leaving to join Ian Weatherburn in setting up a new software house. Only Ally Noble of the original founders remained.
In December 1995, Denton Designs was acquired by Rage Software. | Sinclair User, Issue 40
Added: 30 May 2011
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 hi | Crash! Issue 17
Added: 30 May 2011
Tucked away in the heart of Liverpool’s Harley Street, down among the doctors, you can find Denton Designs. Not ‘Denture Designs’ as they’re sometimes addressed by medical supplies firms, who can’t believe that a software house could possibly set up shop in Rodney Street, Liverpool’s medical heartland. Denton Designs.
DENTON DESIGNS
As a Limited Company, Denton Designs came into being during September last year, and it consists of a nucleus of five people — John Gibson, Karen Davies, Steve Cain, Graham Everitt and Ally Noble. They first came together under the wing of the ill-fated Imagine where, amongst other things, they worked on the Megagames.
On 9th July 1984 the Imagine bubble burst. The crew that become Denton were made redundant, and suddenly found themselves embroiled in the wranglings over the rights to Bandersnatch. It seems the Receiver couldn’t believe there was so little to show for the mega hyped games — little more than one disk existed, with most of the storyline and concept still inside the heads of programmers and designers.
Bandersnatch and Eugene Evans went to Fireiron, the company founded by Messrs Lawson and Hetherington, and after a few week’s planning Denton Designs was set up by the Founding Five. The company’s first, and major capital investment was in the Sage computer systems used by Imagine to develop games, which download code into the target home micro. An office, a telephone, some clean paper and a few sharp pencils later, Denton Designs were in business.
‘We just sat down and rang round the major software companies offering our services,’ Karen Davies explains. ‘We were surprised at the reaction we got from companies — it was invariably favourable. Business-wise people were naturally a bit wary at first, because of the Imagine reputation, but as programmers and artists we had a good grounding and reputation, and people had heard of us through the Imagine name.’
Although Denton Designs was set up as a traditional company, which means someone has to be Company Secretary, someone else Chairman and so on, it is run very much as a co-operative. There are no immediate plans for Dentons to publish software in their own right — the company acts very much as a facilities house offering the full range of services from straight conversions, through game design to an all-in parcel including conceptualisation, game design, programming and package design.
‘We all work together,’ Karen told us, ‘we’re not frightened to criticise each other’s work, and no-one’s a prima donna. There’s no laying down of laws, with someone saying “I’m one of the directors so you must do what I say”.’ Which would be difficult — everyone in the team is ranked equally as ‘Director’ on the Denton business cards, and nobody’s absolute boss in the office. ‘We enjoyed working together and writing games together at Imagine, which is why we decided to stay together and continue writing games — it’s good fun,’ she added.
Denton Designs team
* Steve Cain
* Ally Noble
* John Gibson
* Karen Davies
* Graham Everitt
Argument, discussion, debate are all shared, with everyone participating in the work of the company as a whole. Each program, whether it is a conversion job (‘we try to squeeze them in between big projects as they pay the wages’) or a major piece of work is treated as a project. Specific staff or freelance helpers are assigned to a project, but in reality everyone gets a say in the final product, passing comment as the work progresses.
So far Denton have converted Spy Hunter for the Spectrum and are currently working on implementing Roland Rat on the same machine. Gift From The Gods was their first large project, for Ocean. David Ward of Ocean wanted a new game in time for Christmas and went to Denton who put forward a couple of ideas. A choice was made, and Denton produced the game on schedule.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood, previewed on the following pages by Dash Ed himself, was born from a very basic brief indeed: ‘We don’t want lots of Frankies running around, otherwise |
Added: 21 May 2013
Partial list
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Gift from the Gods (1984)
Bounces (1985)
Cosmic Wartoad (1985)
Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1985)
Shadowfire (1985)
Enigma Force (1985)
The Great Escape (1986)
The Transformers (1986)
Eco (1988)
Where Time Stood Still (1988) | The Retro Isle team
Added: 5 Sep 2026
Click here to view a list of titles we have in the database here at Retro Isle. | |
Added: 21 May 2013
Tuesday 5 December 1995 | 00:00 CET | News
Denton Designs (UK), independent development company, has been acquired by Rage Software. Denton will be integrated into Rage. Ally Noble and John Heap, both Denton directors, will be named as product managers at Rage. |
Added: 20 Mar 2012
Rights now owned by Rage Software. | |
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