The company was founded as Acme Software in Dundee in 1984. The founders were classmates David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond, and Mike Dailly. It was renamed DMA Design in 1987. During its early years, the publishing company Psygnosis backed DMA Design, and it focused mainly on making games for the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64 game systems. During this time, DMA created successful shooters such as "Menace" and "Blood Money", but it soon turned to platform games after the release of "Lemmings" in 1991. "Lemmings" was an international success and led to several sequels and spin-offs. After developing "Unirally" for Nintendo, DMA Design was set to become one of their main second-party developers, but this partnership ended after Nintendo's disapproval of "Body Harvest".