TOTAL REWRITE! The Chaotic Story Of Ocean Software’s TOTAL RECALL Games! Plus – Amstrad CPC Longplay & Review!
The story behind the creation of Ocean’s Total Recall game is both a crazy and chaotic one, and also a fascinating insight into British game development in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A cautionary tale of being lazy with film licences, and of infighting, blazing rows, dope smoking artists, two scrapped games, and developers working all hours to meet a Christmas deadline that looked impossible. Added into that we have the recovery of previously thought lost forever early scrapped versions of the game, which you will see running in this video!
So here we’re going to retell this story and go over the full history of Ocean’s Total Recall game across all the systems it appeared on, via Simon Butler’s story plus interviews I’ve done with ex-Ocean staff James Higgins, John Meegan, Mark R Jones and Bill Harbison! Including footage from the lost and recovered C64 and ZX Spectrum early Total Recall games, and later a comparison of the final released Ocean versions. PLUS you also get the full Amstrad CPC version longplay & review in the latter half of the video!
We’re lucky to have such insight and detail into this story, and that’s all thanks to Frank from the https://gamesthatwerent.com website, Simon Butler for retelling his story there and also speaking to me, and several other ex-Ocean staff who I interviewed for this video!
Again, thank you to Frank for his hard work recovering the C64 version and Mark R Jones (ex-Ocean) for discovering the Spectrum one!
For the full story and download of the C64 recovered version, please check out – https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/total-recall-v1/
Thank you again to Frank for his kind permission to allow me to use bits from his article there.
Simon’s Dinosaur Pie website – https://dinosaur-pie.co.uk/
Thank you again to Simon Butler for his kind permission to use bits from his ‘Creator Speaks’ story on the Games That Weren’t Total Recall section.
Amstrad Total Recall – https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2270
Thank you to Mark R Jones for the old Ocean photos and speaking to me. And thank you to James, John and Bill also for speaking to me!
(c) Ocean Software 1990
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Background music featured – “Galactic”, “Equinox”, “Timeless” & “Illuminate” by “24:7” – https://247retro.bandcamp.com/
Timings –
00:00 Video Intro
00:43 Chapter 1: Introduction
02:45 Chapter 2: Movie Overview
05:15 Chapter 3: Ocean & Active Minds
08:28 Chapter 4: Disaster At (In)Active Minds!
12:23 Chapter 5: Ocean’s Xmas Crunch!
19:18 Chapter 6: Lost Versions Recovered!
22:15 All Versions Comparison
30:11 Amstrad Longplay & Review
55:02 Amstrad Bonus Content
57:13 Outro
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