Platoon (Ocean, 1987)

Original Commodore 64 version: coded by Zach Townsend - graphics by Andrew Sleigh and Martin McDonald - music by Jonathan Dunn. // ZX Spectrum conversion: coded by Sean Pearce and David Lyttle - graphics by Andrew Sleigh and Mark R. Jones - music by David Whittaker. // Commodore Amiga and Atari ST conversions: coded by Sean Pearce and Colin Gordon - graphics by Sharon Beattie, Steve Wahid and Mark K. Jones - music and sound effects by David Whittaker. // Amstrad CPC conversion: coded by Sean Pearce, David Lyttle and Giles Weatherup - music by David Whittaker. // Apple ][ and DOS conversions by Quicksilver Software: coded by Lennard Feddersen - artwork by Walter Holland, Shann Chastain, Arlene Caberto and Nancy Nakamoto. // NES conversion by Sunsoft.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

Since 1979, video games have been made based on movies. The year 1982 saw the first proper licensed video game based on a movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari 2600. Since then, there were many big hit movie-games and some less big, like Alien from Argus Press, Rambo: First Blood part II and The NeverEnding Story from Ocean, Back To The Future from Electric Dreams, A View To A Kill and Friday the 13th from Domark, Ghostbusters from Activision, The Evil Dead from Palace Software and many others.

In 1986, Oliver Stone wrote and directed an award-winning war drama called Platoon, currently at #149 in the IMDb Top 250. The movie is not so much about the action and bloodshed, but instead focuses on the duality of man and the psychological impact a young man faces when put on the battlefield of Vietnam. Since the movie was such an enormous blockbuster, the game industry immediately sensed a good tie-in license for a game. Of course, it would have been impossible to make a war game based on something as abstract as psychology, so Ocean Software designed a fun multi-genre jungle shooter based on some of the more actiony scenes from the movie. That should work, right...?
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