Imagine Software
former British video games developer
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 high-profile 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 Mark Butler and David Lawson. Butler and programmer Eugene Evans had previously worked at Microdigital, one of the first computer stores in the UK. The owner of Microdigital, Bruce Everiss, was invited to join the company to run the company day-to-day and run the PR department. Imagine Software produced several very successful games, including Arcadia 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.
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. 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 by a BBC documentary crew while in the process of going spectacularly bust.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3148930. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 1982 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Imagine Software” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.