Having first encountered videogames while running a nightclub in the US, Ocean cofounder David Ward returned to the UK in 1981, immediately noticing the green shoots of the industry across the country. But the lack of a real bricks-and-mortar retail market discouraged David and his friend, Jon Woods, from venturing into the business of computer games. Then came the startling rise of Imagine Software and all the talk of flash cars and mega games that accompanied it. The pair took a punt and advertised four (then non-existent) games within the pages of Your Computer magazine. Inundated with postal orders, they suddenly realised that they needed games – and fast.
Under the banner of Spectrum Games, David and Jon focussed on creating homages (or clones) of arcade favourites such as Frogger and Missile Command, but as they were also selling games for other computers such as the VIC-20, the name was problematic. In the 2013 book Ocean: The History, Paul Finnegan, who had joined from Imagine, cites a van passing their office window emblazoned with ‘Ocean Transport’ as the source of the name. Whatever its origin, Ocean Software, or just Ocean, was up and running, advertising for games and programmers and publishing its first products under a bright new logo.