Ocean Software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ocean logotype had an often prominent placement on the box art.
The Ocean logotype had an often prominent placement on the box art.

Ocean Software (or Ocean Software Ltd. and sometimes Ocean of America, Inc. but generally only referred to as Ocean) was one of the biggest European video game developers of the 1980s and 90s. The company was founded by David Ward and Jon Woods and were based at 6, Central Street, Manchester. Ocean developed dozens of games for a variety of systems such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga, PC, and video game consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System and Sega Mega Drive.

Contents

[edit] History

The company's early releases in 1984 (Moon Alert, Hunchback, High Noon, Gilligan's Gold, etc.) were developed in-house, but later in that year Ocean acquired its former Liverpool rival, the defunct software developer Imagine, and focus shifted from development to publication of games. Also in 1984, Ocean struck a deal with Konami to publish their arcade games for home computers.

[edit] Ocean Loader

One of the most recognisable features of Ocean games during the 8-bit era was the Ocean Loader.[citation needed] Since most 8-bit computers used cassettes as storage, loading a game could take several minutes. Ocean used a special loading system that displayed a picture and played music (Commodore 64 only) while the game was loading. The Ocean loader music is still popular by fans of chiptunes. Five versions of the tune exist; 1 and 2 were composed by Martin Galway, 3 by Peter Clarke, 4 and 5 by Jonathan Dunn. The Ocean Loader was first used in the game Hyper Sports. Up to 1987 the Ocean Loader was written by the in house Ocean programmer Bill Barna, from 1987 to the end of the Commodore 64's commercial life the loader was replaced by "Freeload" written by in house programmer Paul Hughes.

[edit] License games

Ocean were famous for often buying the rights to make video games from different movie and television franchises. Many license games combined several styles for example featuring platform action and car driving. The most well received[citation needed] license games by Ocean were RoboCop (1988), Batman The Movie (1989) and Robocop 3 (1992) which featured 3D graphics in 16-bit versions. Also the adventure game, Hook (1992) got positive reviews. Among Ocean's license games are:

Screenshot of Highlander for the Commodore 64
Screenshot of Highlander for the Commodore 64

[edit] Well received titles

Although Ocean was best known for its usually high quality licensed games[citation needed], it had many other releases which were well received by the public and computer game magazines.

* Titles marked with asterisk are arcade conversions

[edit] External links