Bbc games stairway to hell

Well, frankly I'd recommend they invest in a somewhat newer PC and get themselves a copy of Serious Sam! Just to answer the points on the page, the code is mostly basic, there is a little machine code for the sprite movement.

The program was never available to type in from a magazine not legally anyway. There was a separate Electron version later, but this isnt it. Although I first saw Bolo at the end of January , only recently have I received written details about it. As I noted then, Bolo is a real-time tactical wargame that allows up to 16 competitors - each using a different machine - to play simultaneously.

The game is set on a large island, the objective simply being to dominate it. However, with up to 15 other players trying to do the same, it is going to be no walkover.

Each player controls a tank which can move around almost any part of the island. The screen, which shows only a small part of the island, scrolls as you explore your surroundings. This technique will be familiar to players of games such as Repton and Ravenskull. The island has everything you would expect to find - swamps, craters, rubble, forests that actually grow and lots of water. The terrain slows your tank down to varying degrees, so you move more slowly through water than through a forest.

To allow you to change location speedily you can build bridges and tarmac roads. You can also construct buildings - your home base - and destroy the forests or anything that an opponent may have built. You have a limited number of shells and mines, armour plating of only a certain strength. All can be replenished by calling at a refuelling base but one or more opponents may hamper your access, leaving you at a disadvantage.

Conversely, you can try to keep opponents from getting through to refuel and rearm. There are also pillboxes, which at the outset shoot at anything in sight, but they can be disabled and made loyal to one player.

Thereafter they attack everyone except that player and his allies. You can form alliances with others so that two losing players can gang up on a third and form a more effective opposition.

Because these machines have RS serial interfaces, any combination can play together. Bolo is now nearing the end of its long gestation period. When it arrives it will be a blockbuster. Big news time: Elite are returning to the BBC games market! Bombjack, promised last autumn, is apparently nearly finished and Paperboy should follow it soon. Seems that the programmer had a coding block Elite confirmed that it has no future plans for the BBC.

I am still hearing rumours of a released but bugged and recalled Bomb Jack. Spotted on an eBay auction together with Fruit Catcher qv. The seller acquired the tapes from the former managing director of LiveWire software, a Manchester-based company that folded in the s. Neat conversion of this world-famous coin-op. Never got released though, not on the Beeb anyhow According to the game's loader screen it was set for a release - very late on in the commercial BBC games market.

Perhaps Firebird feared profits would be minimal - taking into account the dwindling market and the licencing fee that would have to be paid out for a Beeb release? The author, Peter Gillett, released the game into the public domain in January when he sent it to 8BS for inclusion in their catalogue. Update - a little clarification from The Bird Sanctuary website:. An unpublished BBC micro conversion that claimed to be from Firebird surfaced on the web a few years ago.

Coded by Peter Gillet with graphics by Martin Kelsey, this version was written entirely off the developer's own backs. Only once the game was nearly completed based upon hours of playing the C64 conversion!

Unfortunately for them, their efforts were in vain. By the late s, the BBC Micro market was no longer considered commercially viable by Firebird and the licensing costs added on top of that factor made an official BBC conversion a non-starter.

Peter approached a few other publishers including Superior Software but they all passed, and so the unofficial conversion remained hidden until Peter submitted it to a PD library and it eventually surfaced on the web.

I was mainly inspired by the Repton series of games released by Superior, and thought I'd try my hand at a puzzle game and level designer. I had taught myself assembler programming in the early days of the Beeb and invested in the How to Create Arcade Games reference book by Acorn I think. For amusement I had a great time hacking commercial games to see how they worked and to cheat of course.

These were always games that I had legitimately purchased of course! I did complete a few projects which I never really considered to be of commercial quality, but they amused me at the time. One was a scrolling space shooter which involved collecting fuel and assembling a launch platform whilst avoiding and shooting meteors and aliens.

I tested the with a number of hand-coded levels, as I was planning on writing the level editor afterwards! The actual level designer and levels took another few months to design and test and luckily I had the help of a few friends to try out the game at each stage of development. Total development time must have been about months in those days I had a lot more time and much fewer commitments!

Once I felt that it was finished, I decided to send it to Superior and Micro Power but received very nicely worded rejections, so never bothered to persue it any further. When I got my Master I developed another puzzle game called 'Shove-It' which I also sent to Superior this was also summarily rejected.

This included a level designer again, and was developed to run on a Model B in medium res monochrome or on a Master and Compact in medium res colour. If I discover them I'll be more than happy to send them to you.

I was particularly proud of "Shove-It", as this must have taken about a year to complete! I never did produce a commercial game in all the years I had a Beeb or Master, but did have great fun fiddling around with everyone elses games! I have to admit to being more than a bit sad when I sold my Beeb stuff, but it just wasn't practical to keep it. I have lots of good memories though, even if I DID spend a shed-load of cash over the years! The stuff I work with now is just a tad bigger and more powerful than the old Beeb, but I still get a kick out of playing the old games on my BeebEm emulator!

I hope that this adequately answers all your questions, and I also hope that my little game will be of interest to visitors of your web site. In , my eldest son Tom started raving about a new game in the arcade in Newbury: Crystal Castles, from Atari. Heck, he was only 12 - what was I doing letting him play on the arcades?

He persuaded me I had to do a Beeb version, so Castle of Gems was born. I knew this was going to be a winner, and that it needed some proper marketing. Although the other games were selling steadily, they weren't really making me much money, and I couldn't afford big advertisements. They liked it and wanted to take it on, but I told them that it was very similar to the arcade game, and the issue of copyright on look-and-feel wasn't clear at that time.

As soon as it went on sale, in October , Atari realised what was happening, and a letter from their solicitors was delivered to MRM on 26th October. MRM's solicitors responded robustly, but Atari were putting all their guns behind it and although the copyright issue had never been tested in court, MRM couldn't afford to contest it.

I don't have a record of my reply if any , but I know I didn't give them any money. Atari eventually released their own version of Crystal Castles for the Beeb, which in my view was nowhere near as good as Castle of Gems. I also have a letter from a company called CDS dated 16th August , which says "We have just agreed terms with Atari to allow us to release Castle of Gems on the BBC in this country and would now like to formalise our agreement with you".

I don't remember anything about this, so it must have fallen through. They were offering royalties of 20p per cassette and 45p per disk. After acquiring Tony's old Acorn equipment, Jon Irvine was delighted to discover a floppy that contained this historic artifact!

This version of Castle Quest is actually the original version, prior to Micropower's promotional version. It was originally called Castle Raider. This version may also contain some of the original bugs! I started to write Cave Rescue back in the 80's. The idea was to land in the caves and pick up stranded people while avoiding the missiles, bombs and volcano debris. I did not get very far with it! I'm afraid there is no chance of seeing the finished game on the Beeb - it's just too painful writing assembler these days!

Early version of Michael Jakobsen's classic arcade adventure. This might come as quite a surprise, but in Superior Software released a sequel to Citadel , the popular arcade adventure written by Michael Jakobsen. From Simon Storr aka Symo , May I wrote it as I was completely amazed by the original Citadel, though the code was entirely my own.

So what should be especially pleasing to fans is this unreleased conversion of the Spectrum arcade game of the same name. Another added bonus is that all the music was composed by Martin Galway , a figure worshipped by legions of C64 fans and quite possibly the most famous musician on the 8-bit scene. This glorious discovery was contributed by Dick Greening in January Coin-op clone that never got beyond pre-release status. It's enjoyable enough but the graphics are certainly below Acornsoft's usual standard, so it's not really any surprise that it got shelved.

Then again, the graphics on the original arcade machine were hardly anything spectacular. Fell foul of Atarisoft's decision to abandon the BBC scene in whilst many games were still in production.

Eventually picked up by US Gold some two years later. Fabulous Speccy-styled platformer with a thumping soundtrack to boot - all in all quite unique for the Beeb, really!

However, I've scanned through a number of old BBC mags and couldn't see it listed, either in advertisements or in the stock lists of various mail-order companies. A Mandarin release would make sense though, as they did distribute another Powerhouse effort - the superb Icarus. Anyway, you really MUST try this game! Note that it doesn't work on the current version of BeebEm v1.

Great game, as well. They were written during my teenage years on my home Acorn Electron in the late eighties. I hope you get some enjoyment or interest out of them. I was quite proud of them at the time. The programs have been successfully tested on ElectrEm and BeebEm. Never resting for a moment, Gary Partis has started yet another new game, this one called Daxis, for as 'many systems as possible', although coding is being developed on his Master The BBC version will require a disk as there will be several loads - the biggest game since Elite is the claim.

What sounds most intriguing is the gameplay - apparently the game will contain elements of all your favourite arcade games!

More news next month together with a scenario but be warned! It was apparently dreamt up at 3 o'clock one morning by Gary and Audiogenic's Product Manager Darryl Still when 'inhibitions were at a low point - and alcohol content at a high point! Any game with appeal across as wide a range of machines as possible implies to me that Audiogenic feel they're onto a real winner. Apparently Gary Partis' new megagame which includes elements of just about every game you ever enjoyed playing is nearing completion at the time of writing.

If you like to keep your collection in sync with the online archive then this log file will help you keep track of all removed and renamed files. It does not make reference to archives which have been merely been updated, as these can be identified by using the Index By Date Modified option above.

Fantastic as the emulators are, nothing comes close to the feel of a real Beeb. So it's understandable that you may want to transfer the disk images to BBC floppies so you can play them "properly".

Well, the good news is that this is possible. The bad news is that not all modern PCs are capable of writing to nor reading from single-density BBC disks. Then hook up the line in socket on your soundcard to the ear socket on your tape player. If you don't possess a nice, tinny old tape recorder then a walkman may work, but try to steer clear of using ghetto blasters and midi systems as they have a notoriously poor track record.

Press play on your tape player. If all is well you should soon be hearing the familiar data tones and watching the counter step up as each file loads in. Be ready to stop and rewind the tape if it encounters a loading error likely!

If you've encountered a poorly recorded or troublesome tape believe me, there's a lot of them about try setting MAKEUEF to use sign rather than peak measurements, e. Be advised that excessive experimentation with volume settings both on your PC and on the tape player itself may be required!

Certain tapes may transfer perfectly using one brand of cassette recorder but fail when tried on a different one, so the more tape players you have at your disposal, the better. You are encouraged to submit via email any commercial software you may have transferred, so it may be downloaded and enjoyed by other visitors.