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.

Kong Strikes Back, ZX Spectrum

Ocean Software‘s 1984 release for the ZX Spectrum, Kong Strikes Back, is an unashamed clone of Universal‘s Mr. Do’s Wild Ride, but with elements of Donkey Kong also thrown into the mix.

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Island of Death, Oric

Ocean‘s Island of Death is a game I remember seeing back in 1984 (because of the striking Bob Wakelin cover art), but have never played – until now.

And I’m quite surprised by how good it is…

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Rainbow Islands, Amiga

Graftgold‘s Amiga conversion of the legendary Rainbow Islands is pretty much flawless… Well, if you discount the three secret hidden worlds the developers had to ditch when they discovered them… And the lower resolution, compared to the arcade original.

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Putty Squad, Super Nintendo

Putty Squad is the sequel to the Amiga game, Putty, and was developed by System 3 and published by Ocean Software for the Super Nintendo in 1994.

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Rainbow Islands, Atari ST

Thanks to British developer Graftgold the Atari ST has an almost perfect conversion of Taito‘s arcade classic, Rainbow Islands. To all intents and purposes the ST version of Rainbow Islands is identical to the arcade original. Well, kind of…

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Where Time Stood Still, Atari ST

Where Time Stood Still is a conversion of a classic ZX Spectrum game made by Denton Designs. The Atari ST version was publish by Ocean Software in 1988.

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Addams Family Values, Super Nintendo

This British-made SNES game is something of a surprise coming from publisher Ocean Software – it’s not a platform game! Congratulations to them for NOT making it into one by the way…

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Batman, ZX Spectrum

There were a number of decent Batman games on the ZX Spectrum, but this one from Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond was particularly memorable. For having a pudgy Batman and an isometric viewpoint…

Batman was released by Ocean Software in 1986 and was Ritman and Drummond‘s first isometric game together.

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