Ocean Software
1983-98

For much of the 1980s, Ocean Software dominated the Spectrum software scene. Like many of its competitors, it began life as a publishing company (marketing games submitted by freelance programmers) rather than a dedicated producer of software in its own right. This soon changed, especially after Ocean acquired the rights to the name Imagine and took on several of that failed company's dedicated programmers. Thereafter, Ocean used its own name to publish original games and the Imagine name to publish conversions of coin-operated arcade games.

Ocean published a huge number of games during its decade as a Spectrum publisher - about 120 in all, peaking in 1986 - but unfortunately, during the mid-1980s, many were mediocre at best. The company gained an unenviable reputation as the originator of a seemingly endless stream of unimaginative, dull or just plain bad interpretations of a string of high-profile licenses - 1986's dire Knight Rider was perhaps Ocean's nadir. But the company also produced several outstanding classics - Daley Thompson's Decathlon, the Match Day series, The Great Escape, Head over Heels and others.

The launch of the Spectrum Plus 2 in 1986 revitalised the Sinclair software market, leading to something of a renaissance for Ocean at the end of the 1980s. The company stuck with the machine until 1992, when the Spectrum market was approaching its final commercial demise.

Ocean made a successful transition to the 16-bit market around 1988 and produced a fair number of successful games for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. However, the company never regained its former dominance of the market. In 1998, it was bought out by the French giant Infogrames, presumably to absorb its staff, as the Ocean label disappeared shortly afterwards.

Interviews and Articles

• Inside Ocean (ZX Computing, May 1986)
   
  
• Only Kidding (Your Sinclair, November 1988)

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© Chris Owen 1994-2003