DENKI

One of the big complaints people make about television is that there are so many channels but nothing to watch.

Even today we can find schedules chock-full of repeats of the most dire of programmes endlessly running one after another.

Back in October 2001, however, Sky Television (or BSkyB as it was known) sought to give viewers an alternative to aimless channel-hopping. It tapped into the videogame market by launching Sky Gamestar, which grew to host many casual titles over a good number of years.

By pressing the ‘Interactive’ button on the Sky remote and selecting ‘6’, viewers could enjoy games based on classic characters such as Scooby Doo and Tom and Jerry, as well as lots of original content. But who was making these titles? The answer to that lies, in part, with a small Dundee-based developer called Denki.

For much of the Noughties, Denki was one of the most prolific videogame developers in the world. Set up in March 2000 by four former DMA Design employees – Colin Anderson, Aaron Puzey, Stewart Graham and David Jones – it was created as an antidote to the technological arms race that existed at the time. Within a short timeframe, Gary Penn, the legendary Zzap!64