History
In February 1988, Darren and Jason Falcus formed Optimus
Software Limited. Both had been developing computer and video games
since the very early days of the games industry in 1981.
For the next five years, Optimus grew steadily. At a time when much
of the British development scene consisted of individuals programming
from back bedrooms, Optimus was one of the first 'development studios',
having realised that the trend would soon be towards small teams rather
than individuals. During this period, it developed several commercially
successful games for various British publishers such as Codemasters,
Gremlin and Interceptor. Its first game reached no.1 in the UK Gallup
games chart.
By 1993, video game development was starting to become much more professional
as it grew in size. There was an increasing opportunity for British
developers to gain a foothold in the now lucrative U.S. video games
market. This was largely because of the immense talent pool in the U.K.
It was at this time that Optimus met up with a U.S. developer called
Iguana Entertainment, and soon after became Iguana U.K. The first game
created as part of this new partnership was NBA JAM, which was developed
on several home video game console systems over a period of nine months
by a team of nine staff. It subsequently went on to sell in excess of
four and a half million copies, making it the best selling sports game
ever, at that time. This was soon followed by a sequel, which performed
almost as well, selling over three million copies only a year later.
1995 saw the sale of Iguana to Acclaim Entertainment Inc, based in New
York. Iguana became the first of six internal development studios based
in both the U.S. and England.
By this time, Iguana U.K. (recently renamed Acclaim Studios Teesside
in line with all of the other studios) had expanded to over forty staff,
with two full development teams working on many gaming platforms simultaneously.
Over the next few years, it continued to expand up to three development
teams, support staff and management totalling over seventy staff.
Shortly after this, having felt they had achieved everything they could
within Acclaim, the Falcus brothers decided to leave and start up their
own independent development studio. And in July 2000, Atomic Planet
Entertainment Limited (or APE) was formed.
APE has managed to attract many high profile clients
since its inception, including Capcom, Codemasters, Take Two Interactive,
Global Star, and Empire Interactive. Its strong games industry heritage
has placed it in a strong position of trust among publishers and we
use our experience to continue producing the best products.
