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Falcon 030 Power 2
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OCEANGOD.DOC
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OCEANGOD.DOC
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1995-12-03
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9KB
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161 lines
066010303050000132002006006010000
11
2#1
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9[....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆....◆...]0010
Ç
OCEAN IN GREAT 16-BIT GAME SHOCKER!
-----------------------------------
A report by Leon O'Reilly
The date, early January 1991. People up and down the country
merrily played the latest software titles they had acquired for
christmas.
In Abermule a dog barked as the postman pushed a brown parcel
through the letterbox of Cwm towers. A bleary eyed Atari freak
ripped open the jiffy bag. Out fell a cardboard box bearing the
legend:
"BLASALEN"
Opening the box revealed a thick manual and two disks. Closer
examination revealed two double sided 3.5 inch disks. Taking a
careful sip of my coffee I leaned back and placed my feet on the
table, a thoughtful expression on my face.
I opened the door of my office. Various piles of books,
leaflets and boxes promptly collapsed. Swimming through the junk
to the far corner I found my computer. Unplugging the SM124 I
slotted in the lead for my CM8833. I inserted disk A, turned on
and waited.
Suddenly from out of my soundblaster's speaker poured an the
most amazing sounds, guitars, drums, bass all high quality
sampled instruments. Six channel digisynth at over 20Khz. Wow!
This made me really sit up.
Then came some great animation with some more samples.
Who is this game by? I wondered as the next sequence loaded.
The screen filled with hundreds of small ocean symbols scrolling
in eight directions across all four borders and with a huge Ocean
logo flipping and scaling. I fell off my seat.
Ocean? OCEAN? OCEAN??????
The game finished loading. The opening screen informed me it
was a 3D extravaganza. It started with the main character boarding
a spaceship in the bowels of the earth in a secret space station.
The next sequence was flying through the cave, a cave infested
with all manner of creatures and weapons. The graphics were filled
3D moving amazingly fast. There were at least 200 colours on
screen, a great digi-synth soundtrack and sampled effects and
overscan graphics. The best thing about this level was that it was
tremendously addictive and extremely playable.
Set throughout 26 levels, stonking graphics and storming
sound with terrific playability, this was probably the best ever
game seen on the Atari ST. The most outstanding thing about this
game was that it was made by Mancunian mishaps, Ocean.
The phone rang. Another chap who'd received the new game.
"It's awesome! And its by Ocean."
A trip to Abermule post office revealed even more. The
popular press had received their copies of the game earlier.
"MANCHESTER SOFTWARE HOUSE RELEASE NEW GAME"-Independent
"LEFTY DROPOUTS GO RIGHT AND UNVEIL ASTOUNDING GAME"-Telegraph
Ç"FORMER DRIPS, OCEAN, RELEASE GREAT NEW TITLE"-Express
"CHARLES AND DI FIND APPEALING GAME"-Mail
"BLASALEN BETTER BE BLOODY BRILLIANT"-Today
"CRAP CODERS MAKE GOOD GAME"-Sun
"GOTCHA!"-Mirror
"OCEAN IN 'THREE IN A BED WITH GAY ALIENS' SCANDAL"-Sunday sport
This was such a shock that it was gaining national
significance. Turning the one o'clock news on when I got back home
I was greeted with this message:
"...because of this, there will be an extended news. James
McScotishbutiveonlygotasmalltraceofanaccent now reports.
"Ocean have been called the Sheffield United of the
programming world, they find it extremely hard to keep their heads
above water. To call their previous releases dismal is an
understatement. There other games include:
Robocop, Bad Dudes versus Dragonninja, Red Heat, Shadow warriors,
Ivanhoe, the bug ridden F29 retaliator, Tie break, Narc, Night
Breed, Victory road, Slap fight, Rambo 3, Run the gauntlet, Daley
Thompson's olympic challenge and Sly spy secret agent are amongst
the trash that this Manchester based company has been churning
out. Buying their games is like throwing £20 down the gutter,
Sprites move like they've just had ten pints, sound is appalling
and gameplay worse. Originality doesn't enter into their
vocabulary, their games are either coin-op conversions or film
licences which they turn into uninspired platform shoot-em-ups.
They call their games 'entertainment' which is foul abuse of the
word. I'd find it more entertaining to smear myself in HP sauce
and jump naked into a remote island full of cannibals yelling
'Dinner time!'.
Their latest release has taken the world by storm. Original,
with good graphics and sound and astounding playability. No-one
could believe that Ocean had the talent to create something so
wonderful. Eric Moanon, computer analyst and professional
boring fart comments:
"I've been involved in computers since I was as big as a pin.
I used to make 'em! Eye, them were the days. None of those fancy
microchip thingies, just valves and pistons. I made a 4 megabyte
portable computer out of a Bicycle pump, three empty washing
liquid bottles, an abandoned spitfire engine, a pinch of salt,
three fresh eggs and a dash of whiskey. I've always to a little
tipple. Never done me any harm has it? A bit of spirit inside me,
warms me cockles my great grandfather used to say, and he should
know...."
"Mr Moanon, could you get back to the subject please?"
"Well I ask you? I've owned a spectrum since the days they
were a fashion accessory. Hehehe! That used to really impress the
girls. I'd say to 'em, 'Want to come and see my ZX81 with
Rampack?' 16K it was. They could never say no. It was a great
aphrodisiac! My doctor told me to stop it, my heart just couldn't
take all the strain, but what did he know? Bloody doctors, think
they know everything. And he had ginger hair, now what sort of
colour is that for a doctor? Anyway, later I got the big Atari
thing with all the diagonal keys. I could never work out why they
should be diagonal! What with my arthritis, I just couldn't handle
Çit! Anyway I always enjoyed playing those really awful games from
Ocean, they made a day watching BBC2 films seem fun. Now they've
gone and spoilt it! A good game from Ocean! What's the world
coming to! Next thing they'll tell me is that the Tories are doing
more for us senior citizens!"
Mr Moanon has recently been certified.
I turned off the news and started chewing a nearby mouse mat.
Something about this whole business wasn't quite right. I just
couldn't put my finger on it.
Flicking through the pages of ST Format it struck me like a
sledgehammer swung from a crane. No advertising campaign! When
Ocean release a game they waste thousands on a massive advertising
campaign with glossy ads inside the front cover and on the back
cover of all magazines even 'Widows Knitting Monthly'. The main
feature of the ad campaign is that game isn't released until about
a year after the campaign starts, sometimes, with games like 'Lost
patrol', its longer than that. A call to Ocean should sort this
out.
"Hello?" Said the quivering voice of top Ocean bod Gary
Bracey.
"It's about BLASALEN,..."
"I thought it could. Why oh why? All I've had today is
complaints about that. He's trying to ruin us you know..."
"Slow down," I said " who's trying to ruin you?"
"A disgruntled ex-employee. We fired him so he sneaked in
here and sent out preview copies of this game we're working on."
"These are only preview copies?" I said startled imagining
how good the completed game must be.
"Yes, we've got to put at least two years work into this game
before we can release it."
"It seems great to me." I said
"That's the problem. First we'll replace all those sampled
tunes with some standard soundchip ones. Beeps will do fine as
explosions - saves memory you see. We have to cut out those
animation sequences, they get tiresome. The graphics run much to
fast, but I'm sure we can slow them down. We should be able to
turn those ghastly filled 3D vectors into some good old fashioned
monochrome wireframe graphics. As for graphics in the border, who
has ever heard of such a ridiculous idea? We'll throw in some very
dodgy collision detection and we'll make sure it bombs out as it
loads in the big guardian at the end of the last level."
I put the phone down a wry smile on my face. Of course, this
was just a demo version. Well, maybe the world was getting back to
normal. The phone rang again. I lifted the receiver to hear a
frantic voice.
"Leon, have you heard? US Gold have released a good game!"