While most companies have the odd game in development that may run for a month or two before being cancelled without even being announced, occasionally a game will be in development for months or even years with advertising and press coverage only to be shot down by the publisher or the developer themselves.

To newer gamers, high profile cancelled titles might seem like a reasonably recent phenomenon. The cancellation of Babylon 5 shocked and disappointed numerous gamers last year who were expecting the game to be something unique and special on release, and the announced cancellation of Warcraft Adventures was a sad blow to many fans of the series eager to discover more of the Warcraft story in a game style that would truly do a continuation of the rich Warcraft tale justice. However such cancellations have been with the gaming industry since early days. Enter the strangely titled Psyclapse and Bandersnatch, two so-called mega-game titles from one of the first "super" game developers. And you thought Ion Storm was the first.

In the early 1980's when home computer gaming was just becoming popular, one name stood out amongst the slew of recently formed British developers - Imagine Games. Truly one of the first "super-developers," Imagine was a company built largely on clever advertising. They signed a contract worth a massive £11 million with publisher Marshall Cavendish to produce games for the Sinclair microcomputers mainly on the strength of their previous titles. One of Imagine's young programmers, Eugene Evans, was strongly rumoured to be earning around £35,000 a year and could even afford an expensive car despite not actually being old enough to drive it. Yet for Imagine, theirs was a history of blunders and wrong decisions that ultimately ended in the demise of the company.

While the end of 1982 had been a bad time for game sales, by Christmas 1983 they were set to be huge. In an effort to sabotage the production of competitor's games Imagine booked the entire production capacity of one of the biggest British software duplicators of the time, Kiltdale. Unfortunately for them the idea fell flat on its face when they were left with a warehouse full of tapes (yes, this was well before even floppy disks were around) that was costing them big money. And then came the killing blow - the non-appearance of Psyclapse and Bandersnatch.

Psyclapse and Bandersnatch were titles in production by Imagine that were anticipated to be so successful and impressive that they were dubbed "mega-games". In 1983 artwork for boxes and ads was already done, and these ads were even appearing in various gaming publications. However while developer John Gibson was apparently working hard on Bandersnatch, Psyclapse was nothing more than a concept on paper. The public was eagerly expecting games that, in reality, were far from complete. Imagine's problems were further exacerbated due to a special hardware add on that was to be manufactured in the East. To sell for a reasonable price, the device would have to be produced in huge quantities and Imagine no longer had the money to afford it. Psyclapse never saw the light of day, and Bandersnatch was eventually released as "Brattacus" on the Atari ST. However the game didn't include many of the strange and interesting characters originally planned for inclusion and time had taken its toll, resulting in dire reviews and poor sales.

On the 9th July, 1984 a petition presented to the British High Court of Justice went unopposed and Imagine was officially done for after a history of debts and broken promises. Kiltdale duplicators were never paid the £60,000 they were owed and Steve Blower, head of an Imagine offshoot advertising company called Studio Sting, never saw the £89,000 they owed him. Bad management and over reliance on good PR rather than good, or indeed existent, products proved the death knell for Imagine Games.

The Imagine name was eventually bought by Ocean and used on a few titles. Ian Gibson, the man behind Bandersnatch, now works for the highly successful Sony-owned developers Psygnosis and Ally Noble and John Heap from Imagine also founded Denton Designs, which was subsequently bought by British developer Rage Software.