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| Founded By: | David Ward, Jon Woods |
| Location: | Ocean House, 6 Central Street, Manchester M2 5NS. Later at Ralli Building, Stanley Street, Manchester, M3 5FD |
| Year Started: | 1983 |
| Year Wound Up: | 1998 |
| Titles in Database: | 229 |
| Rights Now With: | Infogrames UK |
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| Ocean was one of the biggest European video game developers/publishers of the 1980s and 90s. Originally incorporated as Spectrum Games in 1982, the name was changed to Ocean in 1983. 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. |
Titles per Year
Breakdown by Genre
Breakdown by Platform
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Added: 19 Sep 2016
1983
Founded by David Ward and John Woods, initially called Spectrum Software, Ocean Software began as a publisher hiring many outside programmers and development teams. The companies first releases included Digger Dan, Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, HighNoon, Mr Wimpy: The Hamburger Game and Hunchback II: Quasimodo's Revenge.
1984
Purchased rival software studio, Imagine which was based in Liverpool. This allowed Ocean to start developing in-house games and also enabled self publication of games. Ocean later struck a deal with Konami to publish their arcade games such as Hypersports, Ping Pong and Kung Fu using the Imagine brand.
1985
Ocean began developing and publishing its first Movie licensed games such as Rambo, Short Circuit, Cobra, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, some becoming classics such as Batman, Wizball among many others. The company start developing games for 16-bit computer systems such as Amiga and Atari ST and well as working on gaming platforms like Sega Master System and DOS.
Ocean Software signed a deal with Japanese games developer Taito Corporation to port their arcade classics such as Arkanoid and Renegade on various platforms. Ocean Software continued to grow becoming one to the biggest game publishers during this period.
1988
Ocean Software were voted ‘Best Software House’ in various computer magazines. Movie licenses continued to dominate their portfolio with their most successful release Robocop coinciding with the movie premier. This game received critical acclaim by gamers and critics alike entering the game charts at No. 1 and staying there for over 18 months. Ocean continued to produce more movie licensed games (Batman, Rambo III) and arcade conversions ( Operation Wolf) which strengthened their position within the industry.
1989
During this year Ocean saw its output grow by 50% and now they were regularly producing games for all major 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. More successful movie licensed games followed such as Batman: The Movie featuring cinematic cut scenes.
Early 90's
Ocean were going though a transitional phase focusing on bringing the Television, Movies licenses and conversions to new systems such as the Amiga, Atari ST and NES. These were fairly successful such as Robocop 3, Lethal Weapon, The Addams Family.
Mid/Late 90's
Ocean produced fewer self published games as they focused on converting games developed by various companies over to the SNES and Game Boy consoles.
In 1998 Ocean Software purchased Digital Image Design however with the introduction of the next generation consoles; Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64 very few in-house games were being developed. The last game developed by Ocean Software was Mission: Impossible for the Nintendo 64. During this year it was purchased by French Software house Infogrames for $100 million. Ocean, and its staff, merged with Infogrames to form Infogrames UK. During its 15 year history Ocean Software produced over 200 game titles. |
TheOceanExperience
Added: 30 May 2011
Hello
I would be interested in hearing about the way sprite drawing routines were coded for ZX Spectrum.
Any tricks or tips about masking, rotating or mirroring of sprites (or other)?
Were there different routines for drawing different sized sprites?
Paul Hughes (ex-Ocean) writes:-
"I suppose the most common way was to interleave the sprite and mask data, and then point the stack at the graphic. A single POP would retrieve both mask and data;
ld a, (hl)
pop de
and d
or e
ld (hl), a
inc l
You would have that repeated for each sprite width and then self modify the jump in address and Y line loop branch to the point you needed for your sprite width.
For speed you would have the sprites pre-shifted in X so you only needed to plot on byte boundaries and for mirroring you would either store them x flipped (big memory footprint) or take the data byte and mask and look up the flipped equivalent in a 256 byte table (although this was much slower!) before drawing."
| TheOceanExperience
Added: 30 May 2011
Gary Bracey (ex-Ocean) writes:
"The first games originally went under the 'Spectrum Games' banner, and I think their first was Armageddon.
The first actual Ocean-branded title was (I think) Mr Wimpy.
A couple of years before my time, so might be mistaken."
Paul Hughes (ex-Ocean) writes:
"From what I remember (working in a computer shop in my early teens!) - The first game with the original blue Ocean Logo was Transversion, followed by Digger Dan, Kong, Rescue, with Mr Wimpy being the first licensed title, followed by Hunchback. Road Frog and Caterpilla were re-releases on the Ocean Label. Royal Birkdale was (c) 1983, but shipped in 84 - to round off my uber nerding - they switched the logo to the classic metallic OCEAN in '84. I'll get my coat." | Wikipedia.org
Added: 30 May 2011
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.
* In 1985, Ocean Software managed to secure the first movie licences, such as Rambo, Short Circuit and Cobra, as well as the TV show Miami Vice and Robocop who about a year on the top of the charts.
* In 1986, a deal was signed with Taito and Data East for home versions of their arcade games such as Arkanoid, Renegade, Operation Wolf and New Zealand Story.
* In 1986 Ocean Software created with Marc DJAN Ocean Software France. This 16-bit studio will create most of the 16 bit arcade conversation between 1986 and 1991 then became the French marketing and sales subsidiary of Ocean software Ltd.
* In 1987, Ocean Software published original games again, after a marginal season filled with licences, resulting in Head over Heels, Match Day II and Wizball, which are considered to be classics by many old school gamers.
* Ocean was acquired by Infogrames in 1996 for $100,000,000 and renamed to Infogrames UK in 1998.
* Ocean acquired Digital Image Design in 1998.
* The last game released by Ocean was Mission: Impossible in 1998, for Nintendo 64.
| The Retro Isle team
Added: 3 Feb 2026
Click here to view a list of titles we have in the database here at Retro Isle. | |
Added: 24 Jun 2012
Ocean produced fewer self published games as they focused on converting games developed by various companies over to the SNES and Game Boy consoles.
In 1998 Ocean Software purchased Digital Image Design however with the introduction of the next generation consoles; Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64 very few in-house games were being developed. The last game developed by Ocean Software was Mission: Impossible for the Nintendo 64. During this year it was purchased by French Software house Infogrames for $100 million. Ocean, and its staff, merged with Infogrames to form Infogrames UK. During its 15 year history Ocean Software produced over 200 game titles. |
Codetapper Interview with Mick West
Added: 19 Nov 2011
When you were working for Ocean, how were the games allocated to the programmers?
Gary Bracey was pretty much in charge of that. Games were just assigned by him to whoever was available, based somewhat on the importance of the game. Gary assigned Darkman to me as I was new, and it was not a major license. He says he regrets that now, as I turned out an alright coder, so might have been better used elsewhere. But I think it was probably the right decision.
Ocean relied quite heavily on movie licences for a while, snapping up all manner of movies. How did Darkman perform?
The movie did not do particularly well, as I remember.
What happened if a game was delayed?
I don't remember any delays at Ocean. At BDL the games were not released on time, but I don't really remeber a big fuss about it. There was very little in the way of scheduling - it was just: stick a guy in a room for a few months, and see what comes out.
If a game was going to be late, would Ocean throw extra programmers at it or cut levels or something else?
You'd just work longer hours. The programmers they had then were all basically kids in their early 20s or younger, so had little in the way of lives. Working very late was not uncommon.
Extra programmers rarely helped, at best they could do stuff like cut-scenes, but towards the end of a game there was generally just one programmer who knew all the code, and could safely make changes. That's a consequence of games being A) small, and B) in assembly.
Did you get feedback from about the quality of your games? Or Ocean simply wanted the games ready and as long as they worked that was enough?
No, that was a problem at Ocean really. There was very little feedback during development. They did not tell me they wanted the Amiga version done first until after I'd finished the Atari ST version, they had just expected I'd know. We were pretty much left on our own.
Did you ever have to rewrite sections using another algorithm if they were too slow or anything like that?
I was always optimizing the code. Generally you'd just make sections of the game do what the code was capable of. Since it was just the artists and programmer working closely together, you'd not get situations where a designer would put something in that was too slow - we just did whatever worked.
Did you get royalties based on the games or a bonus based on sales while at Ocean?
We got a bonus when we finished a game. I think I got £5,000 for finishing Lethal Weapon, which I promptly used to leave the country :) There were no per-unit royalties or bonuses that I was aware of. However a lot of people were leaving Ocean at the time, and the company in the US that was poaching them (Malibu Interactive) was offering large royalties. So Ocean were planning to introduce that. | TheOceanExperience
Added: 30 May 2011
What software tools were used at the Ocean office for game development in the 8-bit era?
And what tools did you use when you started coding games in assembler for the first time (maby at home)?
Bill Harbison: "Personally on the art side i used The Artist II for loading screens and an inhouse sprite/animation editor written by John Brandwood for the Atari ST which could even handle Spectrum sprites. It was a great utility and way ahead of it's time."
Paul Hughes: "Initially on the code side we used a Tatung Einstein based cross assembler (written by Mike Webb) for the Spectrum and a Commodore 128 based cross assembler for the C64 (again by Mike Webb) - around 1988 we wrote a new cross assembler / dissasembler / debugger on the Atari ST that could assemble to Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, ST, Amiga, NES, SNES, Gameboy, Megadrive and even the Konix Multisystem! (written by Dave Collier, Paul Owens, Alan Shortt and myself).
When I first started writing (on the Vic20!) I used to enter everything in hex in a machine code monitor! Once I got a C64 I wrote my own assembler and used that until I discovered Crystal Computing's Zeus Assembler. "
Mark Jones Junior: "I used an amended version of 'Melbourne Draw' that could handle animation for sprites and the 'Artist II' for loading screens. On the ST I used the aforementioned John Brandwood written animator. Was jolly good! :) All backed up on Microdrives, which, STILL, were readable nearly 20 years later when all the data was salvaged off them."
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