In January 1997 Edge found nine new cars with DMA number plates in the car park at Dundee Technology Park. The cars had been paid for by Lemmings, a game about tiny green-haired creatures that DMA Design had finished more than two years earlier and no longer wanted to talk about. “Don’t ask anybody at DMA what their favourite game is,” its PR man, Brian Baglow, told the magazine. Inside, the team was working on a PC driving game about stealing cars. That game, Grand Theft Auto, came out later that year. DMA made two of the best-known games of the 1990s in Dundee, and the studio carries on today as Rockstar North.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1988, Dundee, by David Jones.
- First games: Menace (1988) and Blood Money (1989), for Psygnosis.
- Best-known games: Lemmings (1991) and Grand Theft Auto (1997).
- Owners: independent; Gremlin Interactive from 1997; Infogrames with Gremlin in 1999; Take-Two Interactive from late 1999.
- Became: Rockstar North, in Edinburgh, in 2002.
Menace and Blood Money
Jones came to the Amiga from the Spectrum, RAZE noted in 1990. DMA Design’s first game, Menace, was a shoot-’em-up for Psyclapse, the second label Psygnosis started in 1988. Psyclapse advertised it in ACE in October 1988 as “a pure arcade game”. In May 1989 ACE reported that DMA, “flushed with the success of Menace”, was finishing its follow-up, Blood Money: four large levels that alternated between horizontal and vertical scrolling, with two players able to play at once. Blood Money came out on the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64.
Jones also explained his methods in print. In 1990 Amiga Format ran “The Menace Within”, in which he used Menace to show how an Amiga game is put together, from the vertical blank to hardware sprites and the game’s main ship.
By the time RAZE visited in November 1990, DMA was known as “the guys behind Menace and Blood Money”. Jones had chosen not to write another game himself but to build up his own company in Dundee, bring in outside programmers and expand the offices. He also wanted DMA’s games to come out on consoles, and his favourite at that time was the Mega Drive.
Lemmings
Lemmings came out early in 1991, published by Psygnosis. It began as a few seconds of animation of tiny figures walking to their deaths, and the team turned it into a puzzle game in which the player saves them by giving individuals jobs such as digging or building. The Lemmings entry tells its story. The One gave it 96%, and Amiga Format in January 1992 reported sales “in excess of 365,000 copies across all formats”. By January 1997 Edge was putting the total at 20 million copies across 21 formats, a figure that probably counts the sequels and every conversion.
For DMA the success was also a burden. “We had to have a break for a while after Lemmings. Three years of hell,” Jones told Edge. The team made Oh No! More Lemmings, Lemmings 2: The Tribes and All New World of Lemmings, and wrote several of the conversions itself. Edge put Jones’s dislike of publishing on every format for the sake of it down to the years of Lemmings conversions. “It’s very hard to explain to publishers that sometimes games just don’t go across all formats well.” In the end DMA sold the Lemmings rights to Psygnosis.
Not every project was finished. The One reported in January 1991 that DMA had shelved Gore, because keeping it going with an artist in Kent while working on other projects “was a little too much to manage”. An “interactive cartoon” called Cutie Poo was planned for the following month.
Walker and Hired Guns
DMA’s other Amiga games for Psygnosis came out in 1993. Walker was a scrolling shoot-’em-up in which the player steers a huge mechanical walker. It had no power-ups and “a distinctly un-cute main character”, as Amiga Format put it in a May 1993 issue that also reviewed Lemmings 2. Hired Guns, released at the end of the year, was a role-playing game with 3D action about a squad of mercenaries, with up to four players on screen at once. Psygnosis’s advertisements quoted scores of 97% in Amiga Force and 91% in Amiga Computing and The One.
Nintendo
The link with Nintendo began with a piece of technical work. Jones told Edge in 1997 that DMA had “initially … did some video compression on the Super NES, just in case they were doing a CD-ROM drive. When they saw that, they quite liked it.” DMA also made Uniracers, a two-player racing game on unicycles for the Super NES, released at the end of 1994. Nintendo Power noted that it was the second game to use the rendering technique behind Donkey Kong Country. In April 1995 Nintendo Power listed DMA among the developers working on Nintendo’s next console, as the studio “famous for creating the award-winning Lemmings games and Uniracers for the Super NES”.
Before that, DMA had spent about six months on the 3DO. “We bought the development kits and started looking at titles, but then there were signs coming through that it wasn’t going to do what it had promised,” Jones said. “At that point we were quite lucky because Nintendo approached us to try some work on the Ultra 64.” The result was Body Harvest, a shooter in which the player travels through history fighting giant alien insects, and can drive any vehicle found on the way. Nintendo was its publisher at first, and sent back notes on every version. “Mr Miyamoto has a couple of points about the gameplay,” John White, the project leader, remembered one saying. According to White the gameplay changed “no less than four times – mostly at the behest of Nintendo”. By 1998 Nintendo had let Body Harvest go. It came out that year from Gremlin in Europe and Midway in the United States.
DMA also made Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64. It came out in 1998, published by Take-Two.
Grand Theft Auto
At the start of 1997 DMA was working on three games for the music company BMG’s games division: Tanktics, Silicon Valley and Grand Theft Auto. Edge previewed GTA as a game about stealing cars and causing havoc in three American cities: 35 vehicles, 2,500km of road, missions from a crime boss that players could take or ignore, and a four-player network mode. “The good thing about GTA,” said Ian Johnson, one of its programmers, “is that you don’t have to go down a predetermined path.” Edge expected trouble: “with videogame violence once again becoming a contentious issue in Britain, DMA could well face a rough (joy)ride when GTA is released next year.” Jones was worried about a different market. He thought Americans, who wanted “everything in 3D”, might dismiss its overhead view.
BMG Interactive published Grand Theft Auto for the PC in 1997. By early 1999 BMG’s games business was part of the American publisher Take-Two Interactive.
Gremlin, Infogrames and Take-Two
In 1997 Gremlin Interactive of Sheffield bought DMA, in what Edge called potentially “the most significant takeover of 1997”. The magazine said DMA would stay semi-autonomous, keep its name for the time being, and bring Gremlin its ties with Nintendo and its N64 experience. Jones took a seat on Gremlin’s board.
Two years later, in 1999, the French publisher Infogrames bought Gremlin for £23 million. Edge reported “uncertainty concerning the position of Dundee developer DMA Design”, and noted that Take-Two “had its eye on DMA if Gremlin was to be broken up”. In September 1999 Take-Two bought DMA’s holding company from Infogrames for £1, taking on about $12.3 million of its debts. PC Zone reported that the new owner planned more Grand Theft Auto games, among them one in 3D. GTA 2 followed late in 1999, under Take-Two’s Rockstar Games label.
David Jones did not stay with the new owner. In February 2000, Edge reported, “former DMA boss David Jones” joined Rage Software to set up two new studios. In 2002 he founded Realtime Worlds, with a core of 15 staff from DMA. Realtime Worlds went on to make Crackdown.
Rockstar North
Take-Two moved the studio from Dundee to Edinburgh, and most of the staff left. Edge reported in 2001 that DMA, despite its 3D experience from Body Harvest and Wild Metal Country, had needed Criterion’s RenderWare middleware “to bring the team up to speed”. The game it was used for, Grand Theft Auto III, came out on the PlayStation 2 in 2001, published by Take-Two with “Rockstar/DMA” as the developer.
In 2002 the studio took the name Rockstar North. By October 2002 IGN Unplugged was writing of “Rockstar North (formerly known as DMA Design)”. Under that name it has gone on making the Grand Theft Auto series in Edinburgh. The Rockstar North entry follows its story.
Sources
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ACE issue 13, October 1988: Psyclapse advertisement for Menace.
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ACE issue 20, May 1989: DMA Design, Menace and Blood Money.
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Amiga Format issue 7, February 1990, p. 64: Dave Jones, “The Menace Within” (programming the Amiga, with Menace as the example).
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RAZE issue 1, November 1990: visit to DMA Design (Jones’s Spectrum background; building the company; consoles and the Mega Drive).
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The One issue 28, January 1991, pp. 46–50: Lemmings review (96%) and DMA feature (Walker, Cutie Poo, Gore).
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Amiga Format issue 30, January 1992: Lemmings sales “in excess of 365,000 copies across all formats”.
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Amiga Format issue 46, May 1993: Walker and Lemmings 2 reviews.
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Amiga Format issue 53, December 1993: Hired Guns advertisement (four players; review scores).
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Retro Gamer issue 39, 2007, “The Making of Lemmings”: Blood Money on the C64, Amiga and ST; Walker and Hired Guns in 1993; the sale of the Lemmings rights to Psygnosis.
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Nintendo Power issue 66, November 1994, and issue 68, January 1995: Uniracers. Issue 71, April 1995, p. 63: DMA as an N64 developer.
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Edge issue 41, January 1997, pp. 52–58: DMA Design studio visit and interview with David Jones (the car park; Baglow; Lemmings sales; the 3DO; Nintendo; Body Harvest; Silicon Valley; Tanktics; Grand Theft Auto).
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Edge issue 45, May 1997: “DMA snatched by Gremlin” (three titles for BMG; Jones on Gremlin’s board).
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PC Zone issue 55, October 1997: Grand Theft Auto (BMG Interactive).
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Edge issue 60, July 1998: Body Harvest moves from Nintendo to Gremlin. N64 Magazine issue 18, August 1998: Gremlin in Europe, Midway in the US.
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Nintendo Power issue 114, November 1998: Space Station Silicon Valley, published by Take-Two.
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PC Zone issue 73, February 1999: “BMG (now part of Take 2)”.
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Edge issue 71, May 1999: “Infogrames gobbles up Gremlin” (£23 million; DMA’s position; Take-Two’s interest).
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Edge issue 73, July 1999, and PC Player (Germany), July 1999: GTA 2 from DMA and Rockstar Games.
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PC Zone issue 83, December 1999: Take-Two buys DMA Design from Infogrames.
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Edge issue 94, February 2001: David Jones joins Rage, February 2000.
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Edge issue 105, Christmas 2001: the move to Edinburgh, the loss of staff and RenderWare; Grand Theft Auto III, “Rockstar/DMA”.
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Edge issue 110, May 2002: “DMA (now Rockstar)”. IGN Unplugged issue 17, October 2002: “Rockstar North (formerly known as DMA Design)”.
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Edge issue 211, February 2010: Realtime Worlds “founded by Dave Jones in 2002, with a core of 15 staff from his previous studio, DMA Design”.
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“Rockstar North”, Wikipedia: DMA Design’s founding in 1988 (web, secondary).
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Take-Two Interactive, annual report on Form 10-K for the year to 31 October 1999 (public record, web): DMA Design Holdings bought in September 1999 for £1 with about $12.3 million of debt. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/946581/0000891554-00-000145.txt