No love for BBC-B

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

The problem with the BBC is the audio comes from a small cheap[er than TV] speaker in the echo-ridden casing and there are only 8 colours. Apart from those 2 things, which the Master 128-512 inherited, it is a fine machine. Fast 2mh 6502, fast access to memory. Pretty good implementation of BASIC and DOS commands too.

Used one daily for years, whilst being the owner of a C64 and 520ST, in the mid 80s. The BBC B 32k and then Master 128 model cost as much as a 520ST, but the ST was bundled with a 3.5" disk drive and not a tape deck. There wasn't even a D9 joystick interface either, which they did make for the Sinclair machines.

Elite is really the only game of historical note on it in the grand scheme of things, all the other games were pretty much just poor ports or inferior copies of what the other kids were playing on Atari, Amstrad, C64 to be honest.

Oh dear, someone hasn't played Revs

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Oh dear, someone hasn't played Revs

I have played REVS, and REVS+, and they are frustrating simulations that would never sell a system mass market. It's a simulation nerd's game. At least the crap 'handling' of your Cobra Mk3 in Elite doesn't abruptly stop gameplay.

I played pretty much all BBC games from 85-88 because my Computer Science teacher was a prolific pirate. if it was released he had a pirate copy on disk, usually with menus. We even saw all the scene demos for the Master series with C64 REU style animations (Star Wars clip, the BBC 1 ident spinning globe etc). The thing I remember most about it was I coded a 20 player multi-user text adventure game to make use of the Econet network the school computer lab used, certainly couldn't do that on any other system. The fact you could buy a 'Winchester drive' for it AKA a hard disk drive, also put it far ahead of any of it's 8bit rivals. But to a home user these make zero difference.

Ultimately it was a highly professional and very capable 8bit computer with a solid design that played games OK, rather play Uridium on the BBC than Sinclair/Amstrad/ST to be frank, but it also cost too much for a home user to justify. Schools were getting a massive discount, think of it like the micro computer equivalent of the company car for massively discounted by manufacturer company car prices vs an individual paying full RRP for the same car.

Didn't say it only had 1 good game, had plenty, but you wouldn't spend £200 more to play Space Pilot on the BBC instead of C64. Elite was really the only game you might choose a £400 BBC computer over a rival choice on sale. £200 extra let alone £400 RRP just for a computer keyboard was a lot of money to spend in 1983, early adopter not mass market price point...they stuck with until 87/88 for an 8bit system.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Elite and Exile were the two BBC games that most stood out to me. Well, there was Repton but I wasn't a massive fan of that.

I do seem to remember there was no volume control or way to turn the sound off though.

I am actually liking it more than Boulder Dash 2 (C64) that we played in RGL few weeks ago. It would be far more superior game if you could finish level with 80 or 90% of diamonds, but again - it is more challenging this way.


Last night finally update MiSTer FPGA and tried Repton 3 and King's Valley (MSX) - both are part of RGL this week. Finally I was able to play game with game pad.


I find it interesting that there is a core on MiSTer that works really good, but none on other multi-machine emus including BizHawk and/or Ares.


RecalBox on RPi uses BeebEm for BBC and it works well.

[Anubis]

Just figured out that I am stuck with playing the game on PC with BeebEm, so that I can record the game. If using RecalBox or MisterFPGA, then I have to use ElGato to record gameplay and be able to see the high score, since lasts only 3 seconds on the screen and does not show again.

RecalBox uses BeebEM and it has nice 'on the screen' info regarding emulation. It works quite well for casual playing the games.