| Former type | video game developer and publisher |
|---|---|
| Fate | Acquired by Infogrames in 1996 and renamed to Infogrames UK in 1998. |
| Predecessor | Spectrum Software |
| Successor | Infogrames UK (1998) Atari UK (2004) Atari, Inc (2009) |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Defunct | 1998 (Renamed) |
| Headquarters | 6, Central Street, Manchester, England |
| Key people | David Ward, Jon Woods, Gary Bracey, Marc Djan (ocean france) |
The British company Ocean Software (or Ocean Software Ltd. and sometimes known in North America as Ocean of America, Inc. but generally only referred to as Ocean) was one of the biggest European video game developers/publishers of the 1980s and 90s. It was acquired by Infogrames in 1996 and renamed to Infogrames UK in 1998, and again in 2004 to Atari UK, and once again in 2009 now known as Atari, Inc.
The company was founded by David Ward and Jon Woods and was based in 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.
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The company's early releases in 1984 (Moon Alert, Hunchback, High Noon, Gilligan's Gold, Daley Thompson's Decathlon etc.) were developed in-house, but later in that year Ocean Software 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.
One of the most recognisable features of Ocean games on the Commodore 64 was the Ocean Loader. Since this computer used cassettes as storage, loading a game could take several minutes. Ocean used a special loading system that displayed a picture based on the game and played music 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.
Ocean was famous for often buying the rights to make video games from different arcade, movie and television franchises. Many license games combined several styles for example featuring platform action and car driving. The most well received 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. The 1986 game Batman got a rating of 93% in Crash magazine.[1] Among Ocean's license games are:
Although Ocean was best known for its licensed games, it had many other releases.
