From The Archives: Ocean Software France
Having established itself in post-industrial Manchester, Ocean Software rode the waves to France to set up a new studio that would handle most of its 16-bit coin-op conversions
Discover how this French company excelled at fantastic 16-bit arcade conversions
Ocean Software’s former developers often tell of long days working in the ‘dungeon’ – the windowless basement of 6 Central Street in the heart of Manchester. There, immune to the inevitable rain that would pound the ground, they’d create some of videogame’s most iconic titles. Yet this location doesn’t tell the full story.
As Ocean bid to become one of Europe’s leading developers and publishers, it looked to expand its horizons, soon venturing across the English channel from where it would bring the gaming world some of its finest 16-bit coin-op conversions. “Things happened really quickly,” recalls Marc Djan, of the decision to push ahead with a French subsidiary company in 1986.
Ocean’s cofounder David Ward had long had his eye on France. As a strong Francophile, he knew it was a strong market and that there was plenty of opportunity for any company which could build strong contacts with retailers, advertisers and the media. Marc was the editor of the French videogame magazine Génération 4 and he knew many talented people in the fledgling industry.
“I had met David many times as part of my job but I was also working on an indoor football game called Hotball, so David visited me in Paris to take a look,” Marc says. During this meeting, the conversation moved swiftly. “David told me that Ocean needed a team to convert the arcade games Operation Wolf and Bad Dudes Vs Dragonninja on to the 16-bit computers,” Marc says. “I knew a lot of French programmers were already coding on 16-bit machines so we decided to open Ocean Software France.”
Marc became the new division’s head and he promptly hired three programmers and three graphic artists to work on the arcade conversions for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. First to be released was Operation Wolf which, despite suffering from too much disc-swapping, looked and sounded fantastic (C&VG magazine gave the Atari ST version 91%). It also sold well, as did Bad Dudes Vs Dragonninja when it was released on the company’s acquired Imagine label. The move into France was already paying off.
“Marc was running the facility and I oversaw it, travelling over there every couple of months,” says the former UK software development director Gary Bracey. “There were a lot of very talented developers over in France so it made sense to have a dev studio out there.” Marc was certainly keen to seek out more work.
“I had a connection with French coin-op distributors so I soon began to find good arcade games to convert,” recalls Marc, whose team worked in Sarcelles, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris. “I’d inform David who would work to get the licences. We also became special because we decided from the very beginning to stay as close as possible to the original coin-op and we had really great graphic artists.”
To work on a growing number of titles, Ocean Software France began to recruit more developers, among them was Michel Janicki who had previously coded on the Commodore VIC-20 and C64 and was making a name for himself on the 16-bits. “I’d read in a computer magazine that Ocean Software France was hiring and, because it was a well-known
I knew a lot of French programmers were already coding on 16-bit machines so we decided to open Ocean Software France
Marc Djan
studio and I wanted to work in the games industry, I contacted them,” he tells us.
At first, Michel was asked to convert the arcade title P47 Thunderbolt but the project didn’t work out. He was then assigned the Amiga version of Beach Volley, an original game that had been designed by Marc to fill in time between acquiring coin-ops (Marc would often contribute graphics to Ocean Software France’s titles).
Cabal was the next major game to be taken on board, converted from TAD Corporation’s original shooter. Michel became a key coder on this port and he was assisted by Guillaume Saviard on the Amiga, with Jean-charles Meyrignac working his magic on the Atari ST.
“When we started to convert a coin-op game we would get hold of an arcade machine and play for hours while taking notes and having so much fun,” Michel says of the typical process. “Then I would program and try to respect the gameplay of the original as closely as possible.” That said, in the case of Cabal, the original level two involving scuba divers was dropped and, as a consequence, a five-level game became a four-level one. “We were having a hard time recreating the original,” explains graphic artist Thierry Levastre of this quirk.
Michel and Jean-charles also worked on an original title called Ivanhoe which, again, was released on the Amiga and the Atari ST. “We decided to create new games such as Ivanhoe because sometimes Ocean in the UK was slow to get a licence and our teams would be free after finishing their games,” Marc explains.
In this case, Marc designed the game with Michèle Bacqué but the reviews were mixed upon its release in 1990. It’s not that the graphics weren’t superb – French games were generally artistic and this game was no exception – but the animation was sluggish and it also suffered from repetitive gameplay. Indeed, Amiga Power praised the presentation but said: “Next time can we have a game supplied with our pretty pictures, please?” Perhaps part of the issue was that development had not been straightforward.
“I had been hired to finish the game on the Atari ST because finishing games was my speciality,” says Jean-charles, who was known on the Atari demo scene as Mcoder. “The programmer had undertaken compulsory military service and he’d volunteered to spend an extra year at La Réunion
[an island in the Indian Ocean] but I told Marc that I could release the game because I was already a games programmer with six years of experience.”
When Jean-charles, got hold of the title, it was in a reasonable state. “But it needed some polish,” he tells us. “Basically, I removed some levels and fixed the bugs, trying to optimise some slow parts.” With that complete, he moved to the Atari ST
conversion of Cabal and completed it in a month, gaining immense job satisfaction.
It helped that the office was split among two teams: one creating Atari ST games and the other Amiga. “There was strong competition between the Atari and Amiga coders, with everybody wanting to make the best possible game,” Jean-charles explains. “The Atari ST coders were stronger, though, because everything had to be done by software – displaying the sprites required shifting them with four planes and it was a slow process. The Amiga coders used the blitter coprocessor.”
By 1990, Ocean Software France had certainly hit its groove and it was taking on arcade projects that weren’t necessarily big-name blockbusters such as the Taito puzzler Plotting and the 16-bit conversions of Pang – Thierry creating graphics that were as near arcade-perfect as they could be, complete
with beautiful backdrops against which the frantic balloon-popping was played.
“The graphics were made on the Atari using DEGAS Elite and Neochrome at first, then on Sprite Editor and Map Editor which were software developed by Ocean,” Thierry says. “We’d take the original arcade games that were integrated in small metal suitcases and plug them in using Péritel [SCART] connections to a television. We had a pause button on these cards and we were capturing the background, digitising each RGB channel independently. The result was average but it made for a good starting base. The sprites were reproduced pixel by pixel. We were fierce.”
Indeed they were. In 1991, Ocean Software France released the shoot-’em-up platformer Toki which had pixel-perfect graphics so impressive many a gamer proclaimed them better than the original coin-op version.
“We reprogrammed the whole game, according to the constraints we were given,” says
Jean-charles. “For example, I wanted to have a fullscreen scrolling for Toki, but Marc insisted on a vertical display. I also remember the graphic artists playing the original game and pressing a button to pause it so that they could reproduce the pictures manually. Sometimes, the button crashed the game, so they had to replay the whole game to try to reach the frame they wanted.”
By this point, Ocean Software France had hired about 15 employees and their talents were shining through. Even so, frustration bubbled. It wasn’t so much that the studio building didn’t seem to be in the best of shape (“It was rotten and certainly stuffed with asbestos,” says Thierry. “I remember the electricity was once cut because someone had not paid the bill…”), but some work was starting to go to waste.
Four games in particular were never published: WEC Le Mans, Liquid Kids, Snow Bros and Hammerin’ Harry. Of those, the latter three cutesy arcade games are perhaps the most curious since they were rather far into their development when the plug was pulled. In fact, they were even previewed across three pages of Zero magazine, and yet it transpired that Ocean Software in the UK simply couldn’t get the licences.
So why crack on with development in the first place? “Sometimes we decided to anticipate a signature by starting and even finishing games before getting the licence in,” Marc explains. Thankfully, two of the games – the side-scroller Liquid Kids based on a Taito original and the Bubble Bobble-esque Snow Bros were saved in 2003 and 2006 after copies were found and leaked online.
Shortly afterward those games were canned, however, Ocean Software France pulled back from in-house development. The company instead began to manage sales and marketing for Ocean Software’s games. “Marc decided to stop producing games and so we were all fired,” Jean-charles recalls, bluntly. But one of the problems facing the French team was a rise in 16-bit development by the team in Manchester.
“Once our guys moved on from the 8-bits, we did more of the conversion stuff on 16-bit,” says Manchester-based artist Paul Hughes. Given neither of the two teams had met or worked together, joint projects were also seemingly off the table. “They did their projects and we did ours and, in general, never the twain met,” Paul continues.
In the last throes of its life Ocean Software
France worked on Mr Nutz, with Pierre Adane and Michel Dessoly spearheading its creation on the SNES, Mega Drive, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. “The hope was to challenge Mario and Sonic but we never reached this goal,” says Marc, who was nonetheless pleased with the sales.
“Mr Nutz was an incredible success in France for Christmas 1993, though,” Marc continues. “I remember crying when watching kids requesting the game in the store. It was out of stock after four days.” Despite that, it would be Ocean Software France’s absolute final development and, when Ocean Software announced a £100 million merger with French publisher Infogrames in 1996, the writing was on the wall for Marc’s subsidiary.
By 1998, a decision was made to rebrand
Ocean Software to Infogrames and Ocean Software France was no more. Even so, the company will be fondly remembered for its quality conversations.
“All the games I worked on at Ocean were special and they are known and recognised by fans and retro gamers today,” says Thierry. “Although
I’ve made many games since. I am sure few will have the same honour.”
The result was average but it made for a good starting base. The sprites were reproduced pixel by pixel. We were fierce
Jean-charles Meyrignac