In 1986, a deal was signed with Taito and Data East for home versions of their arcade games such as Arkanoid, Renegade, The NewZealand Story and Operation Wolf.
While initially focused on British licences, such as Hunchback from Manchester's Century Electronics, Liverpool's Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Olympic decathlete Daley Thompson, its attention soon shifted to film licences, with The NeverEnding Story becoming its first movie tie-in in 1985. Over half of Ocean's releases for 8-bit home computers were coin-op conversions and licensed games. The compilation went on to sell over a million copies itself as did the second and third instalments in the series.
: 69 The first release featured Ocean's Daley Thompson's Decathlon, US Gold's Beach Head, Jet Set Willy from Software Projects and Sabre Wulf by Ultimate Play the Game - all titles which had sold over a million copies - which led to the title They Sold A Million. In 1985 Ocean and US Gold collaborated again to launch a new label, The Hit Squad, for releasing compilation packages. Although originally intended to be a label exclusively for arcade conversions, the Imagine logo would also be used on a number of original titles, as well as on UK releases of games licensed from Spanish developers Dinamic.
In October 1984 Ocean bought the name and branding of Imagine Software from the liquidators of the failed software house. US Gold had no developers to port the Commodore games for the UK's most popular home computer, the ZX Spectrum, so Ocean produced the conversions of titles such as Beach Head, Raid Over Moscow and Tapper through its external development team, Platinum Productions. US Gold was created by Geoff Brown, owner of Centresoft software distribution, and specialised in importing American Commodore 64 games for the UK market.
: 16 The company was renamed Ocean Software leading to some of its games being re-released with different titles so the Berzerk clone Frenzy was reissued as Robotics and Missile Attack became Armageddon.īy September 1984 the success of Ocean allowed Woods and Ward to invest £50,000 in a new software house in return for a 50% stake in the company. While trying to sell their titles into high street stores it became clear that the company name was confusing to owners of machines other than the ZX Spectrum. : 13–14 Their initial catalogue was based around clones of arcade games like Frogger and Missile Command : 13 for various home computers including the ZX81, ZX Spectrum and VIC 20. To get you in the mood, why not check out these Olympic posters? Or if you're feeling a little more catty towards Olympic branding, then see how the Paris 2024 logo was mercilessly mocked.Jon Woods and David Ward created Spectrum Games as a mail-order business in 1983 after being inspired by the success of Liverpool based software houses Imagine Software, Bug Byte and Software Projects. The Paralympic movement has benefitted from having the space and time to develop its own unique voice."Īnd with all eyes on Tokyo this summer, and this striking new identity for the Paralympics, it looks like this year's games will be more memorable than ever. "There is a risk that by combining the two more closely, the pre-existing popularity of the Olympic movement might somehow obscure (or even perhaps inhibit) the increasing popularity of some of the Para Sports. "There is certainly no reason to believe that the two will always be separate, but for the time being there are practical benefits to having separate, related identities," explains Clinch. With the identities of the Olympics and the Paralympics being brought more closely together, you might be wondering whether they'll merge into one in future. The new system works with a variety of assets (Image credit: North)