Domark
Started with £25,000 hidden in a game written behind the Iron Curtain
Domark is remembered for licences — Bond, Star Wars, Trivial Pursuit — but it began with Eureka!, an original 250K adventure devised by Ian Livingstone, programmed by Hungarians working for Andromeda, and sold on a secret telephone number worth £25,000 to whoever found it first. It sold 50,000 copies in Britain.
Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan founded Domark — DO(minic) + MARK — in 1984, and are remembered as licensing specialists: Bond, Star Wars, Trivial Pursuit, Hard Drivin’. Quality ranged from good conversions to rushed tie-ins, and the strategy built a substantial publisher.
But the licences came second. Domark’s first release was an original game with a five-figure treasure hunt attached, and understanding it explains the company better than the catalogue does.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1984.
- Founders: Dominic Wheatley, Mark Strachan.
- Name origin: DO(minic) + MARK.
- Fate: Merged into Eidos (1995).
Eureka!, and the £25,000
Eureka! (October 1984, £14.95) is one of the strangest products of the British 8-bit era, and Domark’s whole approach is visible in it.
The game. Five complete adventures, each with its own arcade section, in “more than 250K” — you fight dinosaurs, outwit Nero and his gladiators, join the Knights of the Round Table, escape from Colditz, and finally arrive in 1984 to stop a Caribbean villain holding the world to ransom.
The author. Devised by Ian Livingstone of Fighting Fantasy, who also wrote the scripts and an accompanying colour-illustrated book of clues and symbols.
The prize. A secret telephone number was hidden at the end of the adventure. The first person to find it and call it would be paid £25,000. Domark’s own spokesman estimated the puzzle “may take as long as 15 months to solve”, and if nobody claimed it by the deadline the money was to be shared among those who had come closest.
The programmers. Commodore Computing International put it plainly in October 1984: the game “was compiled by a group of Hungarians programming in secrecy behind the Iron Curtain”.
It worked. By February 1985 Big K reported 50,000 copies sold in Britain alone, 11,000 bound for America, a French edition with its own separate prize fund, and a Hungarian edition in preparation. Domark was, the same report notes, besieged by pleas for help from stuck players.
The Andromeda pipeline
The Hungarian team was Andromeda, and the connection is worth following because it runs straight into another entry in this Vault.
Computer & Video Games, in 1986, describes the working method for a later Domark title: the “relatively unknown Andromeda team” had never seen the sport they were programming, so David Bishop ferried videotapes, course details and an actual golf club and balls out to them. Its summary of the studio’s reputation: “probably their most famous game to date came out of the collaboration between Domark and Ian Livingstone.”
Andromeda is the same Budapest operation that handled the Western rights to Tetris — the chain of sub-licences that ended with Mirrorsoft holding European rights and everybody in court. Two of the most consequential British software stories of the decade came down the same wire from the same city, and the first of them was a Fighting Fantasy author’s treasure hunt.
Licensing strategy
| Property type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Arcade | Hard Drivin’, Klax |
| Film | James Bond series |
| Star Wars | Multiple titles |
| TV | Trivial Pursuit |
A View to a Kill
The Bond licence (1985) shows the model in its mature form, and it is more structured than tie-ins of the period usually were: three distinct games — Paris, City Hall and The Mine — linked by a code awarded on completing each, so that the game is only finished when all three are. Computer Gamer found Paris the weakest and the other two “good enough to stand on their own”.
The American release advertised “the computerised version of the hit single A View To A Kill by Duran Duran and John Barry” — a film licence, a music licence and a games publisher in one box, in 1985.
Notable releases
| Title | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Trivial Pursuit | 1986 | Board game |
| Star Wars | 1988 | Arcade |
| Hard Drivin’ | 1989 | Arcade |
| The Empire Strikes Back | 1988 | Arcade |
| James Bond: The Living Daylights | 1987 | Film |
Arcade conversions
| Game | Quality |
|---|---|
| Star Wars | Excellent |
| Hard Drivin’ | Ambitious |
| S.T.U.N. Runner | Varied by platform |
| Klax | Good |
James Bond series
| Title | Year |
|---|---|
| The Living Daylights | 1987 |
| Live and Let Die | 1988 |
| Licence to Kill | 1989 |
| The Spy Who Loved Me | 1990 |
Corporate evolution
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1984 | Founded |
| 1993 | Eidos formed as holding |
| 1995 | Full Eidos merger |