These Spectrum screens were recovered from 50+ microdrive cartridges used by me, Mark R Jones, while working at 'Ocean Software' between 1987 and 1991. They were found in 2005 and were sent to Andy Barker who, very kindly, offered to see what was recoverable from them. All together 422 whole screens were recovered as well as some animation / map files and a few utilities used in house at 'Ocean' to produce the graphics.

If you're interested in this then the following links should prove worth a goosey gander too:

"Ocean Experience":
http://www.theoceanexperience.co.uk/
"Ocean Experience Forum":
http://oceanexp.proboards44.com/index.cgi
"Andy's ZX-Spectrum Pages":
http://newton.sunderland.ac.uk/~specfreak/snaps.html
"The World Of Spectrum":
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/
"The World Of Spectrum Forum":
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/login.php
"Mark Jones Portfolio":
http://www.salesbytes.co.uk/markjones/

The following text is from a forum post at the 'Ocean Experience' forum about the discovery of the microdrives:

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 Topic: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives!  (Read 554 times) 

Mark Jones Junior 
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I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives! 
«Thread started on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 12:37am » 
I wonder wether you could get any data off them still? Somehow I doubt it. I found these in me mum's attic last week. I can see 2 MD's of my abandoned 'Athena' graphics and some for an 'Ice Hockey' game! God I forgot about that. Can't even remember if anything was done with them. I think maybe Gary was trying to keep me busy after 'Wizball'! And something called 'Iron Sword, shame they proabably won't work anymore, that looked GREAT!! 

And here's me microdrives of CLASSIC games I had with me at 'Ocean'. Used to load one up either on a rainy dinner hour or when I was struggling to get something right, a nice round on 'Boulderdash' would give me something fresh to look at before going back and trying again. 

You when you've been looking at something for SO LONG you can't even TELL if it's good or bad anymore, I'd have to wander off for a bit then come back 15 mins later. 

Some classics there!! 

«Last Edit: Feb 11 th , 2005, 11:48am by Mark Jones Junior »
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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #1 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 01:00am » 
can you say "ebay?" 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #2 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 01:52am » 
"E-Bay!", there, yes I can. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #3 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 04:16am » 
so, do they work?? 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #4 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 12:05pm » 
I'm very sure that guys on the Speccy scene will be able to give some pointers if you wished to port stuff over to PC etc. 

I often port C64 stuff to PC, so I imagine the Speccy scene has very similiar devices. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #5 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 12:43pm » 
I have no idea if they work. Wouldn't I have to set a Spectrum with an interface one and then try and remember that mouthfull of a command you have to type to get the microdrive to load? I've got an Apple Mac, it's be good to actually see if there's retrievable data on them now. They've been stored in a dry attic for many years. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #6 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 1:08pm » 
it was something like; 

Load *m;1;"blah" wasn't it? 

I'm sure there's a way of sucking the data off (oo-er) ono the emulators... 

«Last Edit: Feb 10 th , 2005, 1:09pm by Paulie »
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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #7 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 1:09pm » 
they should be fine - you just have to get a setup to load them - have you still got your old spectrum and microdrive? 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #8 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 1:10pm » 
If I still had my QL, then I'd be able to help.... 

But I don't. 

So, no good crying to me. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #9 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 1:39pm » 
on Feb 10 th , 2005, 1:09pm, Bill Harbison  wrote :

they should be fine - you just have to get a setup to load them - have you still got your old spectrum and microdrive? 

Yeah i have, back home tho, not in Manc. But then once they are on the TV screen, what THEN? 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #10 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 3:51pm » 
you need a PC to Speccy 'doobrey' 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #11 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 5:01pm » 
A PC to Speccy doobrey would be no good with a MAC! 

«Last Edit: Feb 10 th , 2005, 5:01pm by Mark Jones Junior »
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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #12 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 5:38pm » 
Try asking at the World Of Spectrum forums - Theres the guys (Andrew Barker and Gilby) who do their preservation project, so if anyone can help, they will be the ones! 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #13 on: Feb 10 th , 2005, 11:29pm » 
You NEED to get this stuff off those Microdrives and onto the net. 

There must be some fantastic stuff for us retro geeks to paw over on there 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #14 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 03:10am » 
Yeah would be good. Who wants to volunteer to find out I get them off a Spectrum on to an iMac? 

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 Topic: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives!  (Read 555 times) 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #15 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 08:29am » 
I've emailed Steve Brown, who will know about this kind of stuff, and posted a link to this forum post. 

Hopefully he'll come up with some suggestions 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #16 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 11:50am » 
Grand job, I await with baited bref! 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #17 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 5:38pm » 
It's all sorted. I'm going to send them off, when I get them in my hands from me parent's attic, to Andrew Barker (ZX Spectrum Preservation Project Manager - http://newton.sunderland.ac.uk/~specfreak/ )
and he's kindly offered to see if he can retrieve the data from them. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #18 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 5:46pm » 
on Feb 11 th , 2005, 5:38pm, Mark Jones Junior  wrote :

It's all sorted. I'm going to send them off, when I get them in my hands from me parent's attic, to Andrew Barker (ZX Spectrum Preservation Project Manager - http://newton.sunderland.ac.uk/~specfreak/ )
and he's kindly offered to see if he can retrieve the data from them. 

Send it this way if you get anything, ask him if he can save any bitmaps as PNGs so that there's no lossy. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #19 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 5:48pm » 
OMG... the return of "Ocean Draw" 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #20 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 5:56pm » 
Oh I wondered what the cart with 'Water Draw' written on it was. (Ocean=Water mmmm) Gawsh, what a wag I was! Wasn't it just a modified version of Melbourne Draw? 

I see also there's a cart with 'Mike's Map Editor', this was the utility that Ronnie Fowles did his 'Renegade' maps with IIRC. 

I wonder what other 'delights' are lurking on them there 52 carts! 

«Last Edit: Feb 11 th , 2005, 5:59pm by Mark Jones Junior »
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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #21 on: Feb 11 th , 2005, 8:51pm » 
IIRC it was Melbourne Draw with a tagged on sprite grabber - I think "BTF" did it. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #22 on: Feb 12 th , 2005, 12:07am » 
Anyone still have C64 disks they want porting?  Anything I can document on my unreleased game site? .... ( http://cs.c64.org )

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #23 on: Feb 20 th , 2005, 11:24pm » 
The carts are now in the hands of Andy Barker. Fingers crossed. 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #24 on: Feb 23 rd , 2005, 4:00pm » 
Just got this email from Andy Barker 

"So, to data, I'm managed to recover the Athena, Ice Hockey, Iron Sword, 
Arkanoid and VERY interestingly Total Recall. 

There's been a disussion on our internal WOS MIA mailing list about the 
unreleased Total Recall that was canned as they failed the deadline. 
Could this cart contain graphics for it, they don't seem to be the same as the 
one I've played and own on Tape and Disk. 

Shall I send you stuff as and when ?" 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #25 on: Feb 23 rd , 2005, 4:07pm » 
If all the graphics are there... Maybe someone can program it with decent scrolling this time? 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #26 on: Feb 24 th , 2005, 12:43am » 
Andy's just sent me the first batch of stuff recovered from my carts. These include some 'Athena' mock ups that were never used (I showed Bill just now, he says he prefers mine to the ones used! ), a start I made on the loading screen (again not used). Some graphics for an Ice-Hockey game that never came out. Some screens showing the development of the 'Arkanoid II' loading screen. 

There's about 25 screens of stuff drawn for the unreleased version of 'Total Recall', including a mock up of the end screen with a nice graphic of a volcano going off and the  text "Well done Mr Buzzard, you've saved Mars from Little Miss Muffet and her Wendy gang. Don't you feel proud? I would! Press any key to play this sh*te all over again!" Lots of screens of sprites, objects and 2 screens of bitmap images used to illustrate the story. 

Then there's some screens of sprites and mock ups of a game I was working on in my spare time (in between projects) called 'IronSword'. Got some big fat sprites of a helmeted lead character, a big winged demon thing, tied up princesses and princes and a monk laden down with a huge back-pack full of goods to buy. Again, never used. 

This is about 10 carts full, there's another 40 odd to go. 

«Last Edit: Feb 24 th , 2005, 12:46am by Mark Jones Junior »
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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #27 on: Feb 24 th , 2005, 08:48am » 
I think the guy who runs this page would love to post up some pictures of Total Recall V1... 
http://tzxvault.retrogames.com/time.htm 

Just wish it was C64 stuff that was found here.. ! 

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Re: I found my old 'Ocean' development microdrives 
«Reply #28 on: Today at 7:25pm » 
Just received the last lot of screens saved from my drives. 422 screens were readable all together. I'm waiting for the animation and map files and utilites to come through then that's is all done with! 

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