Domark | Code Like It's 198x

In 1984 two young advertising men launched a software company with a game nobody could finish. Eureka! hid a telephone number at the end of five linked adventures, and the first person to ring it would win £25,000. The company was Domark, named after its founders, Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan. It became known for something else: licences. James Bond, Trivial Pursuit and the Star Wars arcade games were Domark games, and so for several years were the home versions of Atari Games’ coin-ops. In 1995 the company was bought by Eidos, a video-compression firm, and within a year it had become part of Eidos Interactive, the publisher of Tomb Raider.

Fast facts

Founded: 1984, in London, by Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan.
Name: DOminic plus MARK. They considered calling it Swift, for “Strachan Wheatley Independent Future Technologies”.
First game: Eureka! (1984), designed by Ian Livingstone.
Way of working: no programmers of its own in 1988. Every game was written by outside teams paid a royalty.
Ended: bought by Eidos in 1995 and merged into Eidos Interactive in 1996.

Two admen and a prize

Wheatley and Strachan met at an advertising agency. In 1983, Strachan told ST Action, they watched the home computer boom and thought that “no matter what the software houses released onto the market, the games would sell like hot cakes”. They left the agency in 1984. Wheatley said they first pitched their idea to Commodore: an adventure in which the player would find a telephone number worth a cash prize. Ian Livingstone, who designed the game, remembered that they had been inspired by Kit Williams’s treasure-hunt book Masquerade.

Eureka!

Eureka! went on sale by mail order on 31 October 1984 for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum at £14.95. It held five adventures, each with an arcade section, which took the player from the age of dinosaurs through ancient Rome, King Arthur’s Britain and Colditz to a spy adventure in the present-day Caribbean. Domark’s teaser advertisements promised “250K of pure mystery”. Clues were split between the game and an illustrated booklet, and together they spelled out a telephone number. The deadline was 1 December 1985. If nobody rang in time the £25,000 was to be shared out, and a Domark spokesman guessed the puzzle “may take as long as 15 months to solve”.

It was written by Hungarian programmers. Computer & Video Games credited “the Domark Andromeda teams led by Hungarian programmers Donat Kiss and Andras Császár”, and Commodore Computing International quoted Domark describing “Hungarians programming in secrecy behind the Iron Curtain”, a team of 20 with four graphic artists, two musicians, “a professor of logic and an Oscar winning cartoonist”. Andromeda Software was the company of Robert Stein, a Hungarian-born agent based in London who had Western games programmed in Budapest. Two years later Stein saw Tetris in Budapest and sold its rights in the West, which led to the Tetris legal battles. Livingstone recalled several visits to Budapest to meet the programmers.

The prize worked as advertising. In February 1985 Big K reported 50,000 copies sold in Britain, 11,000 bound for America, a French edition with its own prize and a Hungarian one in preparation. Wheatley’s own later figure was far lower. He told MoneyWeek in 2011 that the game, which cost £50,000 to develop, sold “about 15,000 cassettes”, enough to cover its costs.

Someone did finish it. In October 1985 Commodore User reported that 15-year-old Matthew Woodley had rung the prize line “exactly a year after the competition began”. Your Commodore added that he phoned four times before he had the courage to leave his name.

Near misses, then Trivial Pursuit

Domark’s first licence was the 1985 Bond film A View to a Kill. It was three separate games, set in Paris, City Hall and a mine, linked by a code earned at the end of each. Computer Gamer found Paris “the most disappointing section” and the other two “good enough to stand on their own”. The American advertisements promised “the computerised version of the hit single ‘A View to a Kill’ by Duran Duran and John Barry”. Strachan’s own verdicts on it varied. In 1988 he called it and Friday the 13th “real no-no’s” that “simply vanished into oblivion”, and said the company had then found it hard “to keep ourselves afloat”. A year later he said A View to a Kill “did sell, in spite of itself”, because it was “probably one of the first major movie licences”.

Paul Holmes joined from Elite as software manager. After the puzzle game Split Personalities came Trivial Pursuit (1986), the computer version of the board game. Strachan said it sold “well over 300,000” and made Domark “a credible name in the industry” again.

The licence years

By 1988 Domark had twelve staff in Wimbledon, no programmers and a clear strategy. “Do people know who James Bond is?” Strachan asked ST Action. A child facing a shelf of unfamiliar boxes, he argued, would reach for The Living Daylights because he knew the name. Wheatley added in 1989 that the company had grown from twelve people to twenty in a year and was putting out about three games a month.

James Bond. The Living Daylights (1987), programmed by Design Design under the name Walking Circles; Live and Let Die (1988), Licence to Kill (1989) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1990). Live and Let Die was a joint release with Elite: disappointed with its own version, Domark took a speedboat game Elite was already writing and put the Bond name on it. The Games Machine reported a German order of 5,000 copies of Licence to Kill.
Star Wars. Domark bought the home rights to Atari’s three Star Wars coin-ops cheaply, Strachan said, because the arcade Star Wars was nearly five years old and others thought the films had lost their appeal. Vektor Grafix converted it, and Star Wars was out by Christmas 1987 at £9.95 on the Spectrum. By August 1988 it had sold more than 150,000 copies. The Empire Strikes Back followed in 1988 and Return of the Jedi in early 1989.
Atari Games and Tengen. From 1988 to 1992 Domark converted Atari Games’ coin-ops under Tengen licences, and the boxes carried both names: Xybots, APB, Toobin’, Hard Drivin’, Klax, Badlands, Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, Thunderjaws and others. Not all were good; one modern Spectrum history judges that “the results are not always up to expectations”. Atari Games describes how Domark’s programmers squeezed Hard Drivin’’s polygons into home computers. In 1989 Wheatley named Tengen and Brøderbund as Domark’s American partners, and in the console years the two companies published each other’s games, Domark in Europe and Tengen in North America.

The 1990s

Domark also published other people’s systems and games. It sold Incentive’s Freescape games from Castle Master (1990) and its 3D Construction Kit (1991, £24.99), the British Amiga version of Prince of Persia (1991), and Championship Manager, Paul and Oliver Collyer’s football management game. By April 1995 Amiga Computing reported that Championship Manager had sold more than 250,000 copies. Mike Singleton’s Maelstrom was writing Lords of Midnight III for Domark on the PC.

The 8-bit market that Domark had grown up in was gone. Ian Livingstone, who had invested in Domark in 1984, joined its board in 1992 and later described the company as “clearly under-capitalised” as the 16-bit market fell away: “we learned that you need deep pockets to survive a hardware transition”.

Eidos

In 1995 Eidos, a small listed company whose business was video compression, agreed to buy Domark and two developers, Simis, which made flight simulations, and Big Red Software, in a deal Edge put at more than £13 million. The stock market called it a reverse takeover. Eidos said one reason was to get a platform for its compression technology, and Edge noted that three Domark games had already used the Eidos codec in their intro sequences. At first each company kept its own name under Eidos plc. In 1996 Eidos also bought CentreGold, owner of U.S. Gold and Core Design, and GamePro reported that U.S. Gold and Domark had “joined forces and became one company under a new name, Eidos Interactive”. Domark’s name still appeared beside Eidos’s on some games in early 1997.

Livingstone became chairman of Eidos. Wheatley told MoneyWeek that he was chief executive of Eidos until 1997, took a sabbatical, and later started a business selling social-network software, SocialGO.

Sources

ST Action issue 4, August 1988, pp. 36–38: company profile and interview with Mark Strachan (the advertising agency, 1983 and 1984, the name and “Swift”, Eureka!, A View to a Kill and Friday the 13th, Paul Holmes, Split Personalities, Trivial Pursuit’s sales, the Star Wars licence and Vektor Grafix, 150,000 copies, twelve staff, no in-house programmers, the Bond quote; offices in Wimbledon).
The Games Machine issue 23, October 1989, p. 61: company profile with Wheatley and Strachan (the Commodore pitch, “one of the first major movie licences”, growth from 12 to 20 staff, about three games a month, the 5,000 German order for Licence to Kill, Brøderbund and Tengen as American partners).
Retro Gamer issue 102, May 2012, pp. 86–91: interview with Ian Livingstone (Masquerade, programming in Budapest, the answering machine and the cheque; his investment in 1984, joining the board in 1992, “under-capitalised”, the merger with Eidos, Simis and Big Red; his chairmanship; Championship Manager and the Collyer brothers).
Computer & Video Games issue 36, October 1984, p. 75: Eureka! teaser advertisement (“250K of pure mystery”). Issue 37, November 1984, p. 29: Eureka! preview (Livingstone’s storyline, release on 31 October, the 15-month limit, the Andromeda teams, Donat Kiss and Andras Császár).
Commodore Computing International, October 1984, p. 76: PCW Show report (Eureka!, the £25,000 telephone number, “15 months”, the Hungarian team of 20, the deadline of 1 December 1985).
Commodore Computing International, December 1984, p. 48, and Personal Computer News issue 90: charts listing Eureka! (Domark, Spectrum and C64, £14.95).
Big K issue 11, February 1985, p. 5: Eureka! sales (50,000 in Britain, 11,000 for America, the French prize and Hungarian edition). Big K issue 12, March 1985, p. 30: visit to Andromeda and Robert Stein.
Computer & Video Games issue 56, June 1986, p. 76: Andromeda Software in Budapest; “their most famous game to date came out of the collaboration between Domark and Ian Livingstone”.
Commodore User, October 1985, p. 5: “Eureka! Prize Claimed” (Matthew Woodley, 15). Your Commodore, December 1985, p. 4: Woodley’s four calls.
Computer Gamer issue 4, July 1985, p. 14: A View to a Kill review. Compute!’s Gazette, December 1985, p. 94: Domark’s American advertisement for A View to a Kill.
CRASH issue 43, August 1987, p. 94: The Living Daylights (Walking Circles, “Design Design in new guise”). CRASH issue 57, October 1988, p. 8: Domark and Elite’s joint Live and Let Die. CRASH issue 75, April 1990, p. 32: Castle Master (Domark). Amiga Format issue 20, March 1991, p. 77: Prince of Persia (Brøderbund through Domark, £24.99).
CRASH issue 48, January 1988, p. 163: Star Wars review (Domark, Vektor Grafix, £9.95). CRASH issue 61, February 1989, p. 82: Return of the Jedi (Domark, £11.95).
Alessandro Grussu, Spectrumpedia, volume 1, p. 228 (modern book): Domark’s Bond and Tengen games, Trivial Pursuit by Oxford Digital Enterprises, the 1989 agreement with Atari, the acquisition by Eidos on 25 September 1995 and the merger into Eidos Interactive on 31 March 1996.
Tengen/Domark advertisements and credits, 1988–1992, for example ACE issue 29, February 1990, p. 14 (“Tengen Inc. Licensed by Domark Ltd”) and Computer & Video Games issue 115, June 1991, p. 126 (Thunderjaws, “another in Domark’s long line of Tengen coin-op conversions”). Sega Retro, “Tengen” (web, secondary), on the Tengen–Domark publishing agreement: https://segaretro.org/Tengen
Amiga Power issue 27, July 1993, p. 71: Championship Manager ’93 (Domark; original game by Paul and Oliver Collyer). Amiga Computing issue 89, April 1995, p. 87: Championship Manager “sold over 250,000 copies”.
Edge issue 9, June 1994, p. 40: Lords of Midnight III (PC, Domark, developer Maelstrom).
Edge issue 30, March 1996, pp. 18–19: Eidos’s purchase of Domark, Big Red and Simis, “over £13 million”, the reverse takeover and the codec in Domark’s games. Computer Gaming World issue 139, February 1996, news section: each company to keep its own name under Eidos plc.
GamePro issue 95, August 1996, p. 19: U.S. Gold and Domark become Eidos Interactive. PC Zone issue 47, February 1997, p. 113: a game credited to “Eidos Interactive/Domark”.
MoneyWeek, “Dominic Wheatley: My ‘Eureka’ moment in computer gaming”, 23 February 2011 (web, secondary): the £50,000 development cost, “about 15,000 cassettes”, Wheatley as Eidos chief executive until 1997, and SocialGO. https://moneyweek.com/30449/my-eureka-moment-in-computer-gaming-52536