Crazed UK-based game webazine Way Of The Rodent recently added their latest ramshackle Issue - #86, called 'Caribbean Queen', and I particularly wanted to highlight their tribute to UK software 'legends' Ocean Software - who were eventually subsumed into the Infogrames monolith, but rocked things for about 15 years from their Manchester, England HQ.

Of course, it's filled with informal language and odd slang, but I quite enjoy this intro, for starters: "In my This Gaming Life two months ago, I made a claim that was in retrospect difficult to substantiate. I dared to suggest that Mankind's greatest accomplishment, his longest lasting legacy, was to have successfully converted Taito's coin op Chase HQ to the ZX Spectrum." A detailed analysis of the reasons that Ocean (sometimes maligned at the time) actually rocked ensues.

Ocean were probably best known to Europeans, of course, but their Wikipedia page explains things further: "Ocean were famous for often buying the rights to make video games from different movie and television franchises. Many license games combined several styles for example featuring platform action and car driving." Mm, Batman: The Movie for Amiga was a particular favorite of mine.