DMA Design - History
From a Dundee student bedroom to one of the most important game studios in history.
Noclip: History of GTA, Lemmings & DMA Design — the essential documentary.
1987 - The Founding
DMA Design was founded in 1987 by Dave Jones while he was a student at what is now the University of Abertay Dundee. The company name — Dynamic Motion Algorithm — reflected the technical ambitions of a programmer determined to push hardware beyond its documented limits. Working initially from a bedroom setup in Dundee, Scotland, Jones began developing software for the Amiga platform.
The early team assembled around Jones included Mike Dailly, Russell Kay, Gary Timmons, Scott Johnston, Brian Johnston, and Steve Hammond, who served as managing director. Together they would build a studio whose output would define an entire era of British game development.
1988–1989 - Psygnosis Partnership
DMA Design's first commercial release was Menace (1988), a scrolling shoot-em-up for the Amiga published by Psygnosis. Menace demonstrated DMA's ability to push the Amiga's hardware — smooth scrolling, detailed sprites, and an aggressive soundtrack composed by David Whittaker. It was followed in 1989 by Blood Money, another Psygnosis-published shooter with multi-directional scrolling and a robust shooting mechanic.
The relationship with Psygnosis would define DMA Design's early years. Liverpool-based Psygnosis was among the Amiga's most prestigious publishers, known for technically ambitious games and Roger Dean's iconic artwork. DMA provided the technical muscle; Psygnosis the publishing infrastructure. The partnership would produce DMA's most celebrated Amiga titles.
“For publishing context, see the Psygnosis fan site — they published Lemmings.”
1991 - Lemmings Changes Everything
In late 1989, Mike Dailly was experimenting with Deluxe Paint on the Amiga, animating a tiny two-pixel figure walking across the screen. Dave Jones saw it and asked: “What if those little things were walking off the edge of something?” That question became Lemmings.
Released in February 1991 on the Amiga and published by Psygnosis, Lemmings was unlike anything that had come before. Players had to guide a procession of mindlessly walking lemmings to safety by assigning them roles: builders, blockers, diggers, climbers, and more. The combination of accessible controls, escalating puzzle complexity, and the irresistible charm of the lemmings themselves created a phenomenon.
Lemmings sold over 20 million copies across all platforms — Amiga, DOS, Mac, Atari ST, SNES, Mega Drive, Game Boy, C64, and more. Music was composed primarily by Tim Wright (CoLD SToRAGe) with original compositions by Brian Johnston. Amiga Power Issue 1 (May 1991) made it a cover feature. It remains one of the best-selling Amiga games of all time.
1991–1993 - The Amiga Golden Years
Lemmings's success allowed DMA to grow and take on more ambitious projects. They released Oh No! More Lemmings (1991), a standalone expansion with 100 new levels, and began work on three very different titles simultaneously.
Walker (1993) was a mech-walker shooter set in a time-travel narrative spanning WWII London and the far future — technically breathtaking on the Amiga. Hired Guns (1993) was a first-person dungeon crawler notable for supporting four simultaneous players in split-screen on a single Amiga — a feat of engineering that astonished the industry. Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993) expanded the formula with twelve tribes and 120 levels, each tribe with unique abilities.
All three were published by Psygnosis and featured soundtracks by Tim Wright (CoLD SToRAGe), whose Amiga MOD compositions became inseparable from the DMA Design identity.
1994 - Uniracers and the Pixar Lawsuit
DMA Design's first console-exclusive title was Uniracers (known as Unirally in PAL regions), released for the Super Nintendo in 1994 and published by Nintendo. A fast-paced racing game starring animate unicycles, it sold over one million copies.
Then came one of gaming's strangest legal stories. Pixar Animation Studios filed a legal complaint arguing that the unicycle characters in Uniracers bore a resemblance to the unicycle character in their 1987 short film Red's Dream. Nintendo agreed to halt production of new Uniracers cartridges. A sequel was never made.
The Uniracers episode illustrated both DMA's creative ambition and the unpredictable risks of the games industry. But it did nothing to slow the studio's momentum.
1995–1997 - Race and Chase to Grand Theft Auto
By the mid-1990s DMA Design was experimenting with a new concept — an open-world crime game originally titled Race and Chase. The concept went through numerous iterations before emerging as Grand Theft Auto in October 1997, published by BMG Interactive in the UK/Europe and Take-Two Interactive in North America.
GTA's top-down perspective, open city environment, and gleefully transgressive content attracted both controversy and enormous commercial attention. Its chaotic, emergent gameplay — rob cars, complete missions, escape the police — felt unlike anything available. The game was ported to PlayStation and later Game Boy Color, and spawned a franchise that would become the most commercially successful in entertainment history.
Dave Jones, who had led DMA through the Lemmings years, departed the studio around this period to co-found Rage Software (later Realtime Worlds, creators of Crackdown).
1996–1999 - Acquisition and Body Harvest
DMA Design was acquired by Gremlin Interactive in 1996. Gremlin was subsequently acquired by Infogrames in 1999 — and Take-Two Interactive, parent of Rockstar Games, acquired DMA Design from Infogrames in 1999, completing a complex chain of ownership.
During this period DMA shipped Body Harvest (1998) for the Nintendo 64 — an ambitious open-world alien-invasion action game that had originally been planned as an N64 launch title before Nintendo rejected it. Published by Gremlin Interactive in Europe and Midway in North America, Body Harvest showed DMA's ambitions for 3D open-world design that would directly inform the GTA III era.
Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) followed, published by Rockstar Games / Take-Two Interactive, and was DMA Design's last major release before the final name change.
2002 - Rockstar North
In 2002, DMA Design was formally renamed Rockstar North. The studio immediately began work on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, following the revolutionary GTA III (2001). The Dundee studio — which had begun making shooters for the Amiga — was now the creative engine behind one of the most successful franchises in history.
The DMA Design era ended, but its legacy endures. Lemmings remains a touchstone of puzzle game design. Grand Theft Auto defined open-world gaming. And the Dundee games industry — seeded by the University of Abertay and DMA's example — grew into one of Scotland's most significant creative industries.