While transitioning to home console game development the studio formed a partnership with Camerica, a Canadian video game company that were manufacturing and releasing unlicensed video games for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
When the development studio shifted their focus to 8-bit and 16-bit console games they also adjusted their model of creating budget titles, moving towards developing and selling full priced games. By April 1987, Codemasters started to hire full time employees to expand their in-house development team.Īs the market shifted away from computer games in favor of home video game consoles so did Codemasters.
The majority of the company’s early games were created by freelance developers such as G-Man and Danger Zone by Mike Clark, Terra Cognita by Stephen Curtis, Super Robin Hood and Ghost Hunters by the Oliver Twins, Super Stuntman by Peter Williamson, Lazer Force by Gavin Raeburn and ATV Simulator by Timothy Miller. Wanting to produce more games in a short amount of time the studio began hiring developers on a freelance basis, essentially becoming a video game publisher while continuing to develop in house games. The Darling brother’s strategy was to make budget priced games with the quality of full priced games in order to attract a larger customer base and in turn create better exposure for the newly formed company. The development studio’s first game was BMX Simulator, a successor to BMX Racers, a game they created while working for Mastertronic. The successful entrepreneurs used the capital generated from the sale of their share in Mastertronic to found Codemasters in October 1986. By 1985 Richard and David Darling owned a 50% stake in Mastertronic, which they decided to sell in March 1986 in order to start their own independent video game company. The brothers became very successful, earning £200,000 from the creation of their games.
Over the course of their relationship with the publisher Mastertronic the brothers created Space Walk, BMX Racers, Jungle Story, Orbitron, Sub Hunt, Pigs in Space and a video game creation tool called “The Games Creator”. The brothers decided to drop out of school to focus on developing budget-priced games for Mastertronic fulltime. The magazine ad got the attention of the newly formed publisher, Mastertronic who was seeking developers. They decided to place a half-page advertisement in Popular Computing Weekly for £70 in hopes to obtain some order for their software.
After getting settled in England the brothers formed another company called Galactic Software in order to do business in the UK. Richard and David Darling moved back to England to continue their education and purchased their own VIC-20 to resume creating video games. Heibert’s family owned a VIC-20 computer that the three students used to create video games clones of popular games such as Galaxian and Defender.
Wanting to pursue a career in video games the brothers along with a friend from school, Michael Heibert founded “Derbert Computers”. Their shared passion for video games and interest in computer programming led them to create a text-based version of Dungeons & Dragons using their father’s Commodore PET computer. Richard and David were introduced to programming in High School and had access to the school’s computer room after hours. The Darling brothers began their endeavour in the video game industry while attending school in Vancouver, Canada.
Based in Southam, England the game developer along with Llamasoft, Ultimate Play the Game, Gremlin Interactive and Rare is one of the oldest video game studios based in the United Kingdom. Codemasters is a British video game developer and publisher that was founded by brothers Richard and David Darling in October 1986.