Category Archives: Ocean Software

Ocean Software was a Manchester-based video game development and publishing house that was founded in 1983 by David Ward and Jon Woods. It was known for its ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 games (although it did publish for a wide variety of formats), and its movie licenses. Ocean was wound-up in 1998, and later sold to Infogrames. Bandai Namco acquired the rights to the Ocean label in 2009.

Parallax, Commodore 64

First released by Ocean Software in 1986, Parallax is a wild overhead shooter from legendary UK gamedev company Sensible Software.

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Head Over Heels, Atari ST

The Atari ST and Amiga versions of Head Over Heels are pretty much indistinguishable, other than slight colour palette differences.

Both – I would say – are among the greatest video games of all time.

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Head Over Heels, Commodore 64

Although the Commodore 64 was not thought to be particularly well-suited to these types of isometric platform games, Head Over Heels bucks the trend by being arguably just as good – if not better – than the Spectrum original.

Thanks to the sterling efforts of programmer Colin Porch.

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Head Over Heels, ZX Spectrum

Jon Ritman did the programming and Bernie Drummond did the graphics. And the result was: Head Over Heels – an isometric platform game, published by Ocean Software, and featuring two different characters who can combine to become more agile.

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Head Over Heels Week

Happy April Fools Day!

A celebration of jokes and humour, and – in our world – video games.

Written by Jon Ritman, with graphics by Bernie Drummond, Head Over Heels was first released in 1987 and is still a fantastic game to play now – across a number of different formats.

So every day this week we’re going to be celebrating Head Over Heels – a classic 3D platform game like no other – starting with the ZX Spectrum original, and covering all the different versions of the game as the week progresses.

Anyway: welcome to April. You lovely gaming fools.

The King of Grabs

Head Over Heels on The King of Grabs:
ZX Spectrum versionCommodore 64 versionAmstrad CPC versionMSX version, Atari 800 version, Atari ST versionAmiga versionPC version, Head Over Heels Week