Ocean Software Ltd was a British software development company founded by David Ward and Jon Woods and was based in Manchester. Ocean developed dozens of games for a variety of systems such as the ZX Spectrum, Oric 1, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, MSX, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 16, Atari ST, Amiga, PC, BBC micro and video game consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Master System and Sega Genesis. Woods and Ward created Spectrum Games as a mail-order business in 1983 after being inspired by the success of Liverpool based software houses Imagine Software, Bug Byte and Software Projects. The company was renamed Ocean Software to avoid confusing owners of systems other than the ZX Spectrum. In 1996, Ocean Software merged with French publisher Infogrames, remaining a separate division publishing their own games until 1998, when they were rebranded to Infogrames United Kingdom Limited.