page_title: Rockstar North
section_title: Background (1984–86)
hierarchical_section_title: Rockstar North / History / DMA Design / Background (1984–86)
caption_attribution_description: English: The computer game Lemmings had its 20th anniversary on Feb 14th, 2011. Dundee's Lord Provost turned up for the unveiling of a plaque along with the original DMA Design members. From left to right: Lord Provost John Letford, Russell Kay, Mike Dailly, Steve Hammond, Gary Timmons, Dave Jones.
context_page_description: Rockstar North Limited is a British video game development company and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Edinburgh. The company was founded as DMA Design in Dundee in 1987 by David Jones, soon hiring former classmates Mike Dailly, Russell Kay, and Steve Hammond. During its early years, DMA Design was backed by its publisher Psygnosis, primarily focusing on Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64 games. During this time, they created successful shooters such as Menace, and Blood Money, but it soon turned to platform games after the release of Lemmings in 1991, which was an international success and led to several sequels and spin-offs. After developing Unirally for Nintendo, DMA Design was set to become one of their main second-party developers, but this partnership ended after Nintendo's disapproval of Body Harvest.
  In 1997, DMA released Grand Theft Auto, which was a huge success; the game sparked a successful series. The company was soon acquired by Gremlin Interactive. Following the release of Grand Theft Auto 2, Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames. After the Infogrames acquisition, the DMA Design assets were sold to Take-Two Interactive.
context_section_description: In 1984, David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly often met at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club (KACC) in Dundee, Scotland. While Jones used an Amiga 1000, the others used Sinclair Spectrum or Commodore 64. They developed numerous small games while attending the KACC: Jones and Kay developed Moonshadow (eventually renamed Zone Trooper), Daily developed Freek Out, and Jones and Dailly collaborated on The Game With No Name. When later attending the Dundee Institute of Technology, Jones began development on a game tentatively titled CopperCon1, working under the temporary name "Acme Software", alongside Kay, Hammond and Dailly. To publish the game, Jones first approached Hewson Consultants, where Andrew Braybrook played and recommended the game. When Jones was informed that Hewson wanted the game to be the "Amiga version of Zynaps", he realised that sales would be limited, and refused to sign the contract, instead signing a deal with publisher Psygnosis. The game was renamed Draconia, with Tony Smith working on graphics and Jones designing levels.
caption: The original members of the DMA Design team in 2011. From left to right: Russell Kay, Mike Dailly, Steve Hammond, Gary Timmons, David Jones.
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