From DMA to GTA: How DMA Design Changed the World | Nostalgia Nerd

This documentary of gaming history charts of the story of DMA Design and their voyage from Thursday night evenings at the Dundee Computer Club back in 1983, through early ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 game conversions such as Zone Trooper & Shadow of the Beast, through the phenomenal success they encountered on the Amiga with titles such as Lemmings (and it's associated follow ups), past the Psygnosis days with the Nintendo period involving Unirally (and it's associated Pixar lawsuit) and Body Harvest and slap bang into The MS-DOS and PC era with the Grand Theft Auto series. The period when the name DMA Design began to fizzle away, slowly to be bought out and replaced with the now legendary Rockstar Games, and Rockstar North. This is a tale involving many games, many incredible ideas, much creativity and a lot of people; the people in fact who formed the very core of what DMA Design was about.
DMA Design begins with David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly, but finishes with over 250 employees, working ferociously to bring us some of the best entertainment to come out of the 1990s.
Some of the titles included;
Meance (Amiga)
Ballistix (Amiga, C64, DOS)
Bloody Money (Amiga, Atari ST, C64)
Shadow of the Beast (C64, TurboGrafx)
Lemmings (Too many formats to list)
Oh No! More Lemmings (Same)
Walker (Amiga)
Hired Guns (Amiga)
Christmas Lemmings (Amiga)
Lemmings 2: The Tribes (Amiga, Atari ST)
Unirally (SNES)
Grand Theft Auto (DOS, Playstation)
Body Harvest (N64)
Space Station Silicon Valley (N64, Playstation)
GTA London (DOS)
Tanktics (Windows)
Wild Metal Country (Windows)
GTA 2
GTA 3
Mike Dailly has brought up a couple of points relating to the content and for clarification purposes;
1. It was he entirely who did the GTA Isometric and perspective engines - not "the team". You can find more details at • Early Grand Theft Auto...
2. GTA development started in Dundee, the company didn't in fact move to Edinburgh offices until the end of it's life in 2000
3. Gary Timmons was a friend of Russell, rather than Dave
4. Salamander sounds weren't used in the final version of Menance, only as placeholders in the development stages.
5. The image of Tony is the wrong Tony. That's actually Tony Colgan shown in the sequence as opposed to Tony Smith.
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♜Resources♜
With thanks to Mike Dailly, and his compiled websites, detailing the story of DMA Design:
www.javalemmings.com/miked/abo...
www.dmadesign.org/
Names of the staff have been researched as best as I can, and I believe (hope) that I have labelled all appearing staff with the correct name. Please send me a tweet if you notice any which are incorrect.
Other resources for story content include;
www.nowgamer.com/history-of-dm...
readonlymemory.vg/the-making-...
www.dmadesign.net/tag/scott/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_Design
Video content sourced from (DMA's Offices by Steve Hammond);
• DMA Design Office Tour
• British Interview with...
• DMA Design Christmas M...
Some Magazine archives from;
archive.org/details/amigaform...
amr.abime.net/review_1374
archive.org/details/Amiga_Pow...
Other photo content is courtesy of Wikipedia/Wikimedia
Music;
Initial BG Music is Night Drive Turbo by Rad Universe ( / night-drive-turbo )
Music throughout is sourced from the game or era which is currently being discussed.
If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything in this video, please let me know, so I can add the source in. It takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake. All content is used for educational purposes to chart our computing and gaming history.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

[@madeinuk68]

Lemmings helped me get through a really traumatic period in my life.It sounds ridiculous,but that game,along with cannon fodder saved my life.I will be forever grateful to the creators of those games.And I am always looking out for a modern version of those two particular games.

[@photon_4422]

Stayshtum68 there is a new version owned by sony on the ps3 and PS vita

[@BrendonGreenNZL]

I think Oh No, More Lemmings (on our then brand new 286/16 with Trident TVGA) was my first introduction to logical problem solving; which may have sparked my interest in coding.

[@penguinspring]

Great Vid!!! you really pulled together many things i had forgotten about those early days working in DMA. It was a fun and amazing experience for sure and many of the staff really went onto amazing gaming careers all around the world, but for me DMA was the best (Former DMA Artist)

[@graemeanderson2141]

At least you got mentioned by name. Only my arm is featured pointing at Simon.

[@graemeanderson2141]

And yes, I JUST came across this video.

[@hobbified]

It's not so much "Infogrames are now under Atari" as "Infogrames are now calling themselves Atari". The old Atari disintegrated and effectively went out of business in the late 90s, and eventually ended up owned by Hasbro. Eventually Infogrames acquired the Atari brand and most of the IP, and then proceeded to rename themselves Atari.

[@badopcode]

No... not quite the whole picture. Atari as we knew and loved it was ran by Nolan Bushnell. When he sold it to Warner Bros WAY before the Tramiel and Hasbro had their chance of milking the corpse. From what I heard from Atari devs and engineers ... Warner Bros was absolutely deplorable. The CEO put in place by WB couldn't lead ants to a picnic and also spent money like no tomorrow. Hired a personal on site chef. Private jets. Etc etc. Most of the people that made Atari, Atari left shortly after Nolan left and WB took over. All that was really left was the ghost of Atari when Tramiel stepped in. Truly all he was trying to do is revive the dead. When Hasbro got in there the company was a rotting corpse and they were just there to pillage salvageable assets. Infogrames was just after the brand which was pretty much all that was left.

[@theannoyinggeek156]

I really love your documentary vids. Keep 'em up!

[@boblowes]

Sony now have the rights to Lemmings, and they've published some nice updates of the game that are true to the original on both the PSP, PS3 and the PS Vita. They're actually very good. I used to go to college in Dundee, where I was studying HNC Computing. Unfortunately, I was rather more interested in the 24 year old Swedish Blonde I was living with in halls of residence. Ah, to be 17 again ;) Many years later, I was working in technical support for a small ISP. One of the accounts we handled was for DMA Design. I had a long conversation about great games like Lemmings and Hired Guns. The guy I was speaking to mentioned they were working on Hired Guns II (this would be about 1997), but it never saw the light of day, from what I can tell. One of our other customers was Capcom. And I also received a call from a guy who wanted to know how to get past a particular level in Quake on the N64. This was on the strength of us having a Quake server. No really. Told him to use a bigger gun.

[@InputArchive]

I agree with the later PlayStation ports, they are surprisingly high quality versions.

[@majordelays4909]

"24 year old Swedish Blonde" - what was he called ;-)

[@TefenCa]

Wow, Incredible Documentary man! Thanks for sharing it in Retro PC Gamers :D

[@Nostalgianerd]

Thank you my friend

[@boombaby1769]

+Nostalgia Nerd Damn, this was really great research work you made here, good job!

[@KiraSlith]

There wasn't actually a lawsuit over Unirally. Pixar more or less threatened Nintendo with a flimsy case and Nintendo folded over to Pixar's moronic demand like a wet square of toilet paper.

[@SchlossRitter]

MortifiedDumplin ironic given Nintendo's early fight with then Hollywood giant Universal over Donkey Kong's supposed similarity to King Kong when they first broke into the world wide market. But then again Howard Lincoln was instrumental in winning that case, and I'm not sure if he was still in charge by that later era.

[@ecarlevaro]

@@SchlossRitter true but the case was probably different there. Lincoln and their team found that actually, Universal claimed rights have expired.

[@blackwersus]

@@SchlossRitter really? They are both just big gorillas...

[@MidnightMechanic]

Just considering the heavy irony here of Infogrames, the developers of the Driver series, buying game rights from DMA. The Driver games were direct competitors to the GTA games, that's why Driv3r and GTA:SA have little insults towards each other as easter eggs.

[@RetroGamePlayers]

Pretty awesome. One of my favorite moments while playing GTA 1 was when I was on a crime spree and made my getaway on a motorcycle, and at top speed had a head on collision with ANOTHER motorcycle. That moment will always live on for me as one of the best in gaming.

[@5chum1]

Hearing that Menace music brought back so many memories of playing it round my next-door neighbour's house on his Amiga 500. Excellent video and can't believe I've only just discovered your channel in the last few weeks :)

[@Orionrobots]

I had chills hearing the walker theme again - I loved that game.

[@FakeButt]

This was awesome! I love your pace of delivering information. I didn't notice when 30 minutes passed. I hope to see more of these

[@tjeerdnet]

Very well made documentary giving a good insight in the history of these classic game makers. I like the old VHS footage in there seeing them working in their offices and I can totally imagine the enthousiasm when working together as a team making these nice games. Must say that I didn't know all titles, but quite some brands mentioned are familiair. Well done.

[@truenorth365]

Thank you for uploading this documentary man! Really intresting story of DMA...ah so many memories! (thumbs up)

[@Skaera75b]

I really enjoyed this, you are one of my very favourite KZbinrs- thank you!

[@heidirichter]

Thank you for a job well done here! Fantastic work, well worth the time to watch. I'd rate this as right up there with the work by LGR and Kim Justice along the same sort of lines, although you all have your own unique styles, so even if say you and Kim made a video about the same company, it would still be worth watching both.

[@Etherian87]

I really enjoy the hell out of these documentary vids :) cant wait to see more

[@Robwantsacurry]

Oh wow how I do remember DMA and Psygnosis, some of the finest games to grace my childhood. Such nostalgia in this video. I take my hat off to you sir and have subscribed, I hope to see more awesomeness in the future.

[@atarirob]

This is so awesome! Can't wait for the next, very entertaining and informative :D

[@doctorbarrientos]

Really impressing documentary. Possibly one of your best pieces IMHO... Now watching it again and browsing for the lesser known titles. Thanks for this fine production! I guess it took you quite a long time and work :) Cheers from Madrid

[@retrogamerthomas9169]

Awesome video nostalgia nerd, I love these mini history videos you do, there so interesting. Nice one.

[@suichen5808]

I remember seeing the Psygnosis logo in G-Police (a 3D title released in 1997 that has mandarin voiceover --- not very common!) The 3D city divided into regions, each with its bounding box and connected with warp-gate tunnels, felt similar to the cities in the early GTA's ... I was wondering what was outside the impassible bounding boxes as a child :D

[@kasperdomagala4544]

Sui Chen I'm on disc 2

[@kasperdomagala4544]

Sui Chen I found my old Ps1 and I finiahed disc one in 1 day

[@justinbarkby3580]

Well done on a great documentary. Cannot wait to see more.

[@jargmon]

Wooow! Outstanding work! Thx for this video😽

[@spider-ham7140]

I once spoke to David Jones on the phone. Nice guy. I’m from Dundee and used to walk by there office all the time

[@querpmuerp]

thank you so much for all your work!

[@evildrome]

DMA stands for "Daves Mega Amiga". I used to share a flat with Brain Watson who was DMA's office manager and a programmer so awesome he put me off being a games programmer.

[@TommoHawkeye]

@24.40 it looks like the reporter wrongly states : "DMA had new offices in Edinburgh"...It should be : "new offices in Dundee Discovery Park". It shows Dundee offices with Gordon and Fiona! I worked there 1995 - 2000

[@cmomofilm]

They do have offices in Edinburgh though, huge glass front with "Rockstar North" plastered in a huge display, maybe they used the wrong pic?

[@queserai]

That was great. Learned a lot. Glad that they didn't lose themselves in the corporate world and got back together in some ways. It translates nicely in each game they put a lot of work in.

[@TinchoX]

29:22 Ahh the good old GTA 2 theme. 30:53 that's some nice purple Lemming right there ;) Thanks for the video by the way, it was an interesting story lesson, I didn't know DMA and Lemmings were ever connected! I learned something new today :P

[@tnetroP]

The music to Hired Guns was the best of its era. Stunning even today.

[@MRconfusedboy]

this is a very impressive documentation , seriously !

[@arlomoran2073]

Color me impressed! Kudos on your thorough research- I learned many things that I'd no clue of before this video. Now that we know someone's mum voiced the original Lemmings, perhaps we could discover who recorded the famous 'First, there was Menace...' sequence in the Amiga Blood Money intro? Thanks doing what you do- I look forward to your videos every week!

[@stunthumb]

Very interesting, I like these nostalgia videos. Plus I'm a Scottish gamer, it's impossible not to be interested in DMA and Rockstar North :) - they're about the best thing to come from Dundee, before that all they had was chlamydia.

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

i want a gta London in HD using the GTAV engine, rather than a usa city, take the series back to its roots...

[@krashd]

We also gave the world element 103(Du) or 'Dundee Cake' as it's known around here.

[@whalefsh]

Chlamydia and kit. Don't forget the kit. And pehs. The pehs are damage.

[@KasaiLifeTV]

Haruhi Suzumiya lol won't happen

[@gentarofourze]

Someone forgot about Dc Thomson

[@BazookaTooth707]

That was very intriguing. Great documentary.

[@fuzz11111111]

At 17:37 you mention using two mice as input how PC couldn't do it - infact it could, but it was a bit of a hack: Serious Sam 1 and 2 offered this capability but the secondary mouse had to be serial (not PS2 or USB) and NOT registed as a windows input device. It worked because windows (at the time) allowed applications to directly control the serial port, so the game interfaced with mouse directly rather than through windows. I also once played a Quake 2 mod that allowed this functionality (worked the same as far as using a serial mouse as secondary input, but it was even more of a hack because the "split screen" part of the equation was accomplished via having 2 instances of the game running windowed mode).

[@christophertolley2972]

I had Menace, Blood Money, Ballistix, Shadow of the Beast, Lemmings, GTA 1 & 2. Thanks for my childhood DMA Design.

[@maxsmarts8210]

Oh yes , blood Money on the Amiga was awesome, that intro was one of the best.

[@MaDdoGdaZ69]

I remember DMA Design and Psygnosis. Forgotten till now. Quality vids btw :P

[@ItsBigIan]

Superb video. You're going from strength to strength. Now I want to play GTA again.

[@NightRidersUrbex]

What an epic tour. Kudos. Great. Really.

[@spencerunknown2438]

Wow such in depth videos... so good

[@DrewberTravels]

23:00 I still have my copy of Unirally/Uniracers . I love that game so much. it was so unique. Unicycle racing with stunts.

[@SaulTPokit]

your videos are excellent mate, thanks

[@HomelessTechnology]

Loving your channel man. It's like Lazy Game Reviews but for us Brit's :) Keep up the good work loving the Thrift episodes and documentary's like this.

[@bisc67]

wow! just awesome. brought back quite a few memories.

[@pandasensei3016]

So, the guys who did lemmings did GTA and up to 2K and rockstar Holy crap

[@owenfitzgerald8944]

Great work as always Nerd. Here's to a Lemmings 3.

[@iQQator]

Hello from 2021, I don't know this history before, but start play in GTA from GTA first :) To DMA: Nice work guys... you fill my childhood with best game :) To NN: Thanks for this video :)) One of the best channel that I found in KZbin universe :)

[@skyplonk]

Very very good. Keep up the great work. Awesome.

[@hardcore8uk]

Excellent video dude

[@Laziter73]

Very informative documentary, thank you so much for this one :)

[@Nostalgianerd]

Thank you for watching

[@dulefontana]

You have such a cool voice. Not even once I didn't think its boring. Please make more documentaries.

[@Glenn83100]

Enjoyed this vid keep up good work

[@TheTotallyRealXiJinping]

As a GloryHammer fan, anytime you mention Dundee I can only think of Angus McFife fighting Lord Zargothrax for the glory of Dundee

[@mkolt]

well done! more of this please!

[@forry1909]

I'm from Dundee (and still work there) and can tell you the picture you have of the Kingsway Tech at the start of your video is, in fact, the old college on Constitution Road in Dundee. The Kingsway Tech is still open and used as a college to this day (part of Dundee & Angus College).

[@tremorist]

Nice. I have a complete box of Menace for the C64. Bought it when it came out.

[@bobohbuboh8604]

Me too! It was my first boxed game on the C64, I don't have it anymore but I remember the shop and the game, price was around 10 euros (converted to euros)

[@sammccarroll7827]

Great video, very informative!

[@carstorm85]

Love your style. Just discovered your channel. I hope there's a part 2 to this which follows Rockstar! How long did this take to make (including everything from planning and research to editing)?

[@andreserra5004]

Amazing stuff!

[@xtomvideo]

Great story, lemmings and GTA are gaming classics. This video must have taken ages to reaserch and make. Good job :)

[@AspLode]

I remember Unirally! That game was amazing!

[@krautgazer]

Amazing video.

[@thearchiveable]

Excellent production. It is a shame you do not have more subscribers.

[@desther7975]

It would be nice to see a modern GTA return to London, or perhaps give us other non-US cities and countrysides.

[@brizbraz]

This is a great retrospective about a local (for me) company, amazing work. In fact my dad had some (non gaming related) involvement with them. Sadly the building at 5:36 is not part of Abertay uni but part of Dundee uni (the Law school I think). Sorry about this, but the wife graduated from there and is a building pedant!

[@speedyreidy575]

Very late to the party..also the Kingsway Technical College mentioned @ 0:27 is actually Dundee College - Constitution Road Campus which is abandoned as can be seen in the picture. It is a few hundred yards from Abertay University. The Kingsway Technical college is now known as Dundee & Angus College - Kingsway Campus.

[@TYNEPUNK]

I worked at DMA and Rockstar :)

[@nathanielenochs1843]

Radiant Silver Labs Is that true?

[@TYNEPUNK]

yes, only for 3 months :)

[@nathanielenochs1843]

Radiant Silver Labs can you prove it?

[@TYNEPUNK]

I could but why would I need to do that?

[@TYNEPUNK]

look me up i was a coder and voice actor - gareth murfin

[@sounakkumar7240]

20:53 Holy shit! That smoothness in the Walker's animations!

[@TefenCa]

Unirally was a great game!! I spent hours playing that on SNES!

[@BrendonGreenNZL]

Very interesting. Although I distinctly remember DMA Design being credited in the opening credits of "Lemmings", I hadn't quite made the connection between that and Grand Theft Auto.

[@sinbysin666]

If you need a Lemmings fix, check out Flockers by Team17. It's basically Lemmings, but with Sheep.

[@iidirectxii7545]

With its dirty, futurist city and cars GTA 2 always reminded me of Judge Dredd, wonder if that was an inspiration for its style. Would live for GTA 6 to reference this somehow, perhaps have the game set around an update of the city of GTA 2. Would love to see a futuristic GTA, just think of what could be done with it's gaming world, Rockstar could go crazy with it.

[@jennybailey2998]

Wild Metal Country looks -in terms of graphics style, a lot like Hogs of War, also by Infogrames!

[@cmomofilm]

I used to frequent that arcade in Reform street in Dundee, next to McDonalds, shady as hell, and my cousin worked on Lemmings and the 1st 2 GTA's.

[@jbonkerz]

I still have Uniracers! I love that game :D

[@geezerdk]

Great channel you've got here

[@warp9988]

Lemmings! Loved that game!

[@chedarmentosbrown5922]

I owned Uniracers. I lost it in a house fire. I never could find it to re- buy. Now I know why.

[@MetalheadBuser]

You know what I love bout GTA (therefore Rockstar Games) most? They've seen that it was popular. They made other GTA's. But instead of being like "uhm.. this seems to be popular, let's milk the cash cow and flood the market with thousand of titels" they just occationally do a GTA title every few years. I mean latest at San Andreas EA would release a title at least every year, if not more often, it would have lost quality and the franchise would propably be dead by now. But R* just occationaly release a GTA title. And they do it fucking right. Every fucking time it is awesome. They know how to do it right, quality. Sure GTA production is expansive as hell. And not having massive GTA income every year isn't great for them. But look at any GTA of the past: it rocked hard and brought in TONS of money. So unbelievalby much money that it is more then enough to programm another GTA with tons of time to get it right AND having a good amount of spare money left. Other publishers should do the same. My prime example is my beloved Dead Space. It was so fucking awesome. Then the second came and it was... still very good but not as good as the first one. And then number thre came...... Dear lord.

[@urbanweekendwarrior7238]

Yup. They release a sequel when they have something to add to the franchise! Game companies take note

[@cmomofilm]

They literally go from GTA launch to working on the next one while a few teams work on updates and online, there's no gap, the games are so big they take years to build.

[@Destron5683]

Mike and Russell can commonly be found on the YoYo Games forums where they work on the GameMaker engine. Both brilliant guys.

[@EddieG1888]

0:26, that is Constitution Road, not the Kingsway Tech. I also remember some of the music being recorded for some of the early GTA games in the Seagate Studios in Dundee where my first band used to record, I had no idea at the time what it was for, but hearing some guy rapping about Dundee housing schemes was quite amusing! kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqvWqpeYm617itk

[@KingofPotatoPeople]

Jolly good video

[@GunRunner106]

**sees vid of robowalker** hey that looks like walker - **seconds later walker footage** man I loved that game... but fuckit was it hard.... I played body harvest a lot... I liked that game... (also really hard as far as i remember...)

[@scannaunderscore1]

Nice to see the inspiration for walker

[@whalefsh]

It's kind of hard living in Dundee, and being an Abertay graduate not to know a lot of the history already. A few friends worked at realtime worlds on APB. Shame it went the way of Timex...

[@krashd]

www.reagentgames.com/ Dave Jones is back with Crackdown 3

[@ianmcsherry5254]

It's a fair indication of how much Western society has changed. Rockstar North now occupy one of the poshest large office complexes in Edinburgh, formerly home to the Scotsman newspaper, near Holyrood. Few folk buy newspapers now, but they sure as hell buy video games. In the case of R* North, a LOT of video games.

[@makdelLabs]

You Rock! Absolutely!

[@insulfrog]

At 8.11 : Hello Tails :) The lemmings legacy still continues with fan made remakes and ports such as Lix, Lemmini and NeoLemmix along side custom levels, art and other things, check out the lemmings forums for that.

[@Spudcore]

Nice Nutcracker version! Wow, I didn't know Pixar were such a bunch of pricks. That's really mean and unfair what they did.

[@ingusmant]

In late 1997 the saturn was practically dead and nobody thought the n64 could catch up to the n64

[@i1KiCK1BUTT]

well you just earned a subscriber!

[@Dankyman100]

What the name of the tune at 3:50 ?

[@emolgatheelectricsquirrel6734]

8:05 hay its tails :D

[@SodaGumX]

where did that tails dpaint pic come from?

[@Bassjunkie_1]

I got this on my ps1 played it for 12 hours solid.. then i got a red screen of death with some random txt.. I was 16 i think at the time. Dam what a great game.

[@volodyanarchist]

Pingus. Pingus is a worthy update to Lemmings

[@MaDdoGdaZ69]

Haha what a game Lemmings was brilliant. The first gta. Was so much fun.

[@aaronmicalowe]

I remember when Lemmings came out I didn't think much of it because it seemed like an office game to me. Something you could play in the office and not a serious game you'd play at home. Just shows how wrong a person can be. 😂

[@blackhatfreak]

Basically the greatness of DMA died with Take-Two.

[@psychopoison]

Wich arcade game is that at 00:47?