Under the Sea

At the moment, Song of the Deep has been doing the rounds. However, upon seeing the gameplay to this game I reminded of Search for Dr. Riptide.

Original video located here. Accessed 10th August 2016

This was a game that came out on DOS in the mid-nineties. Interestingly enough, it was made by an Australian developer - which was kinda rare for the time.
One look at the video above and comparisons to Song of the Deep are immediate: The player controls a submarine that goes in the depths of the ocean to explore and contend with various dangers therein.

However, looking back at the game from the distance of twenty years, I have to admit this game hasn't aged well. There are a lot of garish colors in the graphics, some of the sound effects are grating, and there are some sprite animations look kinda dumb. Still, I do admire this game for it's technical accomplishment: I do recall at the time that it looked a lot better than a lot of other DOS games that were around and even now I stand by that notion. I liked the use of the JASON (that's the mini sub that follows the PC around) and i will even admit that the music is surprisingly moody for a PC speaker soundtrack.

That being said, one has to wonder if the makers of Song of the Deep were inspired by In Search of Dr Riptide when they working on their game.
Probably not, but one can only wonder....