"Commercial Breaks: The Race For Santa’s Software" Documentary Shows Game Developer Imagine Going Bust
It was more than forty years ago today… When in 1984 the BBC airs a documentary showing the moment that United Kingdom video game developer went out of business. This unique piece of video game documentary history, has been republished by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and uploaded unto YouTube.com for all to see. The documentary also mentions the so called “mega games” which were games that were to be released a couple of the more popular 8-bit microcomputers that pushed the limits of the hardware to the point that extra hardware may have been included with the official release of the game cartridge. Unfortunately not one of the so called “mega games” ever was released as it wasn’t very long after this announcement that these events happened when Imagine went out of business.
Relevant Links
- Wikipedia entry on game developer Imagine [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_Software] Some mega-games are mentioned here, as well as the fate of others to be re-used as elements in other games.
- Youtube video that is shown in the post [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buuUZFh_pyk] This was the video that the BBC republished 40 years later.
- Time Extension article [https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/06/the-bbc-has-republished-one-of-the-most-infamous-video-game-documentaries-ever-made] A bit more information about the video.
