This week, David Hayward takes a look back at a much loved software house
Last week, we took a look at one of the great videogame publishing houses from the 80s, Durell Software Ltd. But as great as that was, there another name that truly dominated the computer gaming scene in the 80s and 90s: Ocean Software Ltd.
The names of Jon Woods and David Ward are carved into the British gaming industry under the legend category, along with other such notable Ocean staff as Gary Bracey, Paul Patterson and Dawn Hollywood (nee Drake).
Although we never got to meet these individuals as gamers, they were spoken of as if they were cousins. It’s a funny thing, when you stop to think about it, that we’d mention Ocean, its games, its staff, the artwork of Bob Wakelin and what magazine interviews were around at the time. Yet we never really knew these people or what they got up to beyond being the faces or names behind the games we were playing. Believe it or not, they were just ordinary people, but working in an extraordinary business during an extraordinary time.
Its History
Jon Woods and David Ward had known each other for a number of years prior to going into business together under the Ocean name.
Their partnership existed as far back as the 70s, where rumour has it the pair were in the business of importing Afghan coats and other such unisex fashion statements. By the end of the 70s, though, the other high-street clothing firms had taken off, and the two parted company, with David Ward moving out to Los Angeles to open a nightclub.
According to legend, the local mafia had arranged a deal where they’d install some arcade machines in the premises. Woods recalls the queues of people pouring money into the machines, which were emptied every week by the local mafia henchman, with Ward receiving half the money back in dollar bills.
After his return to the UK at the start of the 80s, Ward spoke to his former partner Woods regarding the new video game craze and subsequently the business potential behind the technology.
The computer games industry was still in its infancy, and the pair decided to gamble an advert in the back of Your Computer magazine to see what kind of response they’d have. The advert consisted of a brief questionnaire of sorts, asking what platform the gamer owned and what game they liked the look of.
By Monday morning, the post was full of envelopes containing £5 mail orders for clones of games that at the time didn’t even exist. Thankfully, they had 28 days to honour the mail order code, then produce and post off the game. Sadly, though, there were no developers.
After another advert for games programmers, Ocean was officially created and started its first steps into the glamorous world of creating games for the home computers of the time.
As time marched on, the company moved from one location to another, and it started to branch out to get hold of lucrative movie and arcade tie-ins. Ocean, as we remember it, had started.
The Good
You could generally rely on an Ocean game being top notch, and the artwork was incredible.
The Bad
Often a bit more expensive than other games but ultimately worth it.
Conclusion
Thank you, Ocean Software Ltd. You brought us a world of imagination and helped many of us starting off in the gaming and computer industry.
Did You Know?
• It published something like 192 games over its lifetime.
• The Ocean Loader for the C64 showed both an image of the game and played music while the game loaded.
• It was finally purchased by Infogrames for $100 million.
• I met Dawn Hollywood nee Drake once. I had a cup of tea at her house. She’s very nice.