The early 80s was a difficult time for gaming. You hear many horror stories about the Video Games Crash of ’83 — those Atari carts of E.T. all being taken to landfill.
However, these stories all come from the same place: the United States. Across here, there was no video game crash. Instead, we had classroom wars about whether the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64 was the best home computer. Gaming was very much still a thing over here, and we were in those years where Nintendo had yet to launch its home console.
The story is very similar to how Nintendo games ended up on Atari: licensing deals. This era, though, had some UK anomalies. Atari had the US rights to develop games like Mario Bros. Here in the UK, Ocean Software had the converted licences to Nintendo’s crown jewels.
You’ll hear a lot about Ocean and bad games, but it’s not necessarily true. The Batman 1989 game on the home computers — particularly the Amiga — wasn’t bad. Their versions of Rainbow Islands and Robocop were also pretty good, in my opinion. I’m sure, as the late Queen once said, recollections may vary.
With the amount of games they were churning out in the early 80s, Ocean acquired licences for anything they could: Robocop, Rambo, Batman, Hook, Jurassic Park, Knight Rider, early WWF… I’m sure there were more. Turnaround times, from what I understand, were fast. If you had a home computer, chances are you had an Ocean game.
Granted, I’ve now played the Atari version of Donkey Kong, and it’s probably slightly better — only because Mario’s movements seem more precise. I played that one years later on the C64 Mini. But the Ocean version is recognisably Donkey Kong, and had this been my introduction to the game, I wouldn’t have been too disappointed either.
Plus, all those movie licenses meant that the Ocean games lined up looked like the VHS shelf at Barry’s Video Shop. Speaking of which… we’re approaching the haunting month of Halloween, and we never did get around to discussing those films Barry wouldn’t rent me …
More next time