Over 40 years ago, in 1984, the BBC ran a documentary on the UK video game industry which was notable for charting the spectacular fall of Imagine Software, creators of the infamous 'megagames' Bandersnatch and Psyclapse.
Commercial Breaks: The Race For Santa’s Software also covered rival company Ocean Software, but is most notable for being "in the room" at the moment when Imagine went bust.
The documentary has become legendary in retro gaming circles, and the BBC has recently reuploaded it to YouTube (thanks, VGC).
Famous for its high standards and spurred on by commercial successes such as Arcadia, Zip Zap, Stonkers and Ah Diddums, Imagine aimed to reach the peak of the UK games development sector with a bold approach; Bandersnatch and Psyclapse would both require a special hardware add-on to bolster the power of the ZX Spectrum, and would therefore cost more money than your typical release—around three times as much, in fact.
The catch was that Imagine's reach far exceeded its grasp, and it eventually began to run out of money, leaving both advertising and production bills unpaid. The precise moment that the bailiffs were brought in to lock Imagine's offices is famously captured in Commercial Breaks.
Following Imagine's collapse, Bandersnatch was released under the title Brataccas by Psygnosis, the company founded by former Imagine bosses Ian Hetherington and David Lawson. Psyclapse would also find a home at the company, but not as a game; it instead became a sub-label of Psygnosis.
As noted by VGC, the Bandersnatch name would live on as part of Charlie Brooker's seminal Black Mirror series. Sadly, that interactive episode was delisted earlier this year.