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 Supertest, ZX Spectrum

Jonathan Smith followed-up his superb multi-event sport game Hyper Sports with this – another multi-event sports game! Except this time: an officially-licensed Daley Thompson sports game.

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Smash TV, Atari ST

On the face of it the Atari ST conversion of Williams Electronics‘ classic Smash TV looks pretty good, but scratch below the surface and you might realise that it has one or two major deficiencies.

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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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