Psygnosis

Psygnosis

Founded: 1984

Defunct: 2012

T-series code: T-113

Merged into: Sony Electronic Publishing (1993)

Headquarters:

South Harrington Bldg., Sefton St., Liverpool, L3 4BQ, United Kingdom^[1]

Psygnosis (rebranded SCE Studio Liverpool in 1999) was a prominent development studio who developed many games on the Sega Mega Drive, Sega Mega-CD and Sega Saturn.

History

Born from the ashes of Imagine Software, an 8-bit game company, in 1984, Psygnosis was far ahead of its competitors. The company started developing games on several M68000 systems far before 16-bit became the norm (likely why their expertise was second to Sega in the Mega Drive and Saturn age). Psygnosis even produced its own development tools, such as the command-line assembler ASM68K for the Motorola 68000, part of the PSY-Q development environment co-developed with SN Systems for these platforms.

Psygnosis was bought by Sony Electronic Publishing, then a multi-platform publisher in 1993, but soon found itself developing titles exclusively for the upcoming PlayStation. However, the company continued to enjoy a degree of freedom, and later chose to release video games for the rival Sega Saturn^[2] and Nintendo 64 platforms.

In 1999, Psygnosis was consoldated into Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, becoming SCE Studio Liverpool. The company continued to develop games for PlayStation platforms until their closure in 2012.