THE MAKING OF ROBOCOP 2
By any measure, Ocean Software’s multiplatform adaptation of the hit Eighties movie RoboCop was a success.
As well as receiving top ratings across formats when reviewed, Ocean’s licensed title broke every record by staying at number one in the games charts for 18 months. The Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions were designed by coder Mike Lamb, but as former Ocean artist Ivan Horn explains, the design of RoboCop’s inevitable return to Sinclair and Amstrad systems was given to him instead. “I think Mike Lamb left Ocean after working on the Batman game,” Ivan ponders, “so by the time that work started on RoboCop 2, he was either gone or known to be going. Andrew Deakin and I had always worked together as a team to that point, in so far as I’d been the only artist he’d worked with. So I think that might have led to the decision to have us be the sole artist and coder on the projects.”
Unlike RoboCop, however, Ivan and Andrew’s sequel was destined for the 128 model Spectrum and the Amstrad GX4000 console rather than the systems’ predecessors. “Most likely the reason for the decision not to do a CPC 464 version was that there was already a long list of platforms being planned for the game,” Ivan notes. “So adding another Amstrad version might have been too much, even if the 464 was an established system. I don’t remember there
