DMA Design was founded in Dundee, Scotland in 1987 by David Jones, soon hiring former classmates Mike Dailly, Russell Kay, and Steve Hammond. During its early years, DMA Design was backed by its publisher Psygnosis, primarily focusing on Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64 games. During this time, they created successful shooters such as Menace and Blood Money, but soon turned to platform games after the release of Lemmings in 1991, which 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.

In 1997, DMA released Grand Theft Auto, which was a huge success; the game sparked a successful series. The company was soon acquired by Gremlin Interactive. Following the release of Grand Theft Auto 2, Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames. After the Infogrames acquisition, the DMA Design assets were sold to Take-Two Interactive. In 2001, after the release of Grand Theft Auto III, DMA Design was ultimately renamed Rockstar North and became part of the Rockstar Games label.