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.

Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, ZX Spectrum

Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, developed and published by Ocean for the ZX Spectrum in 1984, was possibly the first home computer game to feature a celebrity, and a person of colour, as the star of the game – at least in the UK anyway.

If you don’t know: Daley Thompson is a British Olympic decathlon star, and was a gold medal winner at the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and as such was a household name in the UK back when this game was released in 1984. Younger readers might not know who Daley Thompson is, but they really should. Thompson is a legend and has been described as the greatest all-round athlete the world has ever seen. Look him up on YouTube if you want to see his Olympic achievements.

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Rambo: First Blood Part II, Commodore 64

Rambo: First Blood Part II, by Ocean Software, is a legendary Commodore 64 game without much substance. People revere the music (by Martin Galway), and also like the simple 360 shooter gameplay, but the truth is: this is an example of an early video game without much to do, and what there is is rather simplistic.

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Pogo, ZX Spectrum

Ocean Software‘s 1983 release, Pogo, is arguably the best Q*Bert clone on the ZX Spectrum. And there were a lot of Q*Bert clones around at the time.

It was one of the very first Spectrum games I ever bought and it kept teenage me occupied for a few days, before I eventually grew tired of it.

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Navy SEALS, Commodore 64

Licensed from an Orion Pictures film of the same name, Navy SEALS is a surprisingly decent release from Ocean.

No one remembers the film at all, although quite a few remember this 1990 game, and generally think quite highly of it.

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The Untouchables, Commodore 64

The Untouchables is a classic movie-licensed action game developed and published by Ocean Software in 1989. It mixes a number of different gameplay styles.

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Special Criminal Investigation, Commodore 64

Special Criminal Investigation is quite a ‘special’ game. It is part of the Chase HQ series and was released on cartridge only, for the Commodore 64 at least, by Ocean Software in the UK.

SCI was also released late in the Commodore 64‘s lifetime (in 1990 to be precise), so benefited from coders knowing advanced programming techniques that could push the beige bread bin further than it had ever been pushed before.

And the result is a fast-paced, visually-impressive, and highly playable racing game. Sorry, chasing game… A conversion of the Taito arcade game, sometimes known as simply S.C.I. or Chase HQ 2: Special Criminal Investigation.

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Match Day II, ZX Spectrum

Match Day II is the 1987 sequel to Match Day. It was again coded by Jon Ritman and published by Ocean Software.

The graphics in Match Day II were created by Bernie Drummond (who famously made Batman with Ritman in 1986), and could be described as “more characterful” than in the previous game. One thing is certain, though: the players in Match Day II definitely have Eighties haircuts!

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Match Day, ZX Spectrum

Although it’s pretty laughable now, Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke‘s 1984 football game, Match Day, was a groundbreaking Spectrum game for the time.

Match Day wasn’t the first football video game ever made, but it was one of the first to at least make a reasonable attempt to translate the sport into something playable.

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Battle Command, Amiga

Battle Command is a classic Amiga tank game, developed by Realtime Games Software and published by Ocean Software in 1990.

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