It was all about K back then: more K = more power. Of the two heavy-hitters, the Speccy had 48K and the C64 has 64K. The humble Beeb (Model B) had 32K, so it was clearly crap, but the graphics were better than the Speccy, and the sound was nearly as good as the C64, but 32K… it just didn’t cut it.

Despite the lack of memory, the Beeb was way ahead of its time. It had networking and dual processor support, which was simply amazing for 1981. But, these extras were pointless for games and came at an enormous cost (not much change out of half a grand). The Electron was later released as a budget Beeb, but it was way too late by then to be a serious competitor to the Speccy and C64.

A computer. Categorically not yesterday.

Software for the Beeb was also expensive. You could get Speccy games for a couple of quid in Woolies, but Beeb games usually cost at least a tenner. Also, good luck finding them in the usual stores… Like some shameful little secret, it was mail-order or nothing.

The joysticks were analogue, a bit like modern consoles. This would have been fine, apart from one serious flaw – they didn’t centre when you let go of the stick. So, they were worse than useless - you just couldn't get the damn thing to stop moving. People would tie rubber-bands around the stick to try to get it to automatically centre, but it was hopeless.

We’re weak. This makes us cry stinging great tears of nostalgia – even
though none of us Chief Rodents ever even owned one of the bastards.

All Beeb games were keyboard only for this reason. Kind of daft, considering it had every kind of port known to man at the time, and could have easily accommodated a digital joystick. To this day, I still prefer keys to joysticks, thanks to the Beeb.

Now, on a level playing field – or playground – all of these flaws would have killed the Beeb. But it had a secret weapon – it was the favoured machine of both schools and education-conscious parents. On the downside, this gave it a nerdy, prescribed image and it was never taken seriously by the games mags. I remember C&VG used to have a few pages on Beeb games, but it was a brief fling. We were soon left with mags like Acorn User, which had a whopping three to four pages on the latest games, all written by someone who sounded like your dad or computer studies teacher.

The inventors of the BBC Micro. “NERDS!”

But, somehow it was enough: kids had Beebs (although few would admit it), kids wanted games, and so games were written. There was never the quantity of games that were available for the Speccy or C64, and they were usually just ported to the Beeb way after they had become popular on the other machines.

But, this just acted as a kind of quality filter - there was simply no point porting crap games to the Beeb, because they would never sell. So, usually when you bought one of the horribly overpriced games, you were at least reasonably sure that it would be good. At least, when they came from one of the big three software houses (more on that later).

After a few years, you could get all the great coin-op games, although they were usually given different names to avoid licensing. All the classics were there, most of them near-perfect conversions: Hopper (Frogger), Meteors (Asteroids), Deathstar (Sinistar), Zalaga (guess), Arcadians (Galaxians), Snapper (Pac-Man), Missile Base (Missile Command), Planetoid (Defender), Killer Gorilla (Donkey Kong)…

Zalaga. “Oh, this? It’s just a very colourful representation of my maths homework, sir”.

The Beeb was rather unkind to software publishers. As I said before, crap games didn't stand much of a chance. And, since the Beeb was so familiar in schools, it only took one kid to buy a game, and everyone else would have made a copy of it by the end of the day. Obviously, the same happened to Speccy and C64 games, but at least you couldn't make a copy right there in the classroom.

Eventually, from over one-hundred software publishers, there were just three left producing Beeb games. But what fantastic games they were…

The big three were Superior Software, Acornsoft and Micro Power. The fierce competition saw them churn out plenty of great titles right up to the end, when all three were merged into Superior Software, which soon disappeared itself.

Repton. Beeb-only. Excellent educational value – for the offspring of
miners and Stig Of The Dump.

But it wasn’t only about conversions. There were some genuine innovations, too. Most obviously, Elite – one of the greatest games of all-time. There was also a whole batch of lesser-known titles that kept Beeb gaming alive - Frak!, Castle Quest, the Repton series, Imogen, Revs, JCB Digger, Starship Command, Stryker’s Run, Codename: Droid, Spellbinder, Ravenskull, Citadel, etc. All of these games were real classics, and I occasionally play them, today.

In many ways, of course, Elite started the gaming scene on the Beeb. But there was another game, beginning with ‘E’, that came right at the end, and really finished things off with a bang. Unfortunately, many Beeb enthusiasts had moved on by this time, and missed it. But, the faithful few weren’t disappointed.

It was called Exile, and it exploited the potential of the Beeb to the max. It was simply huge, and gave the impression of free-form open-ended exploration. The graphics were awesome, and the game took advantage of extra hardware providing speech and enhanced graphics for people who had the memory. But, it was still playable on a cassette-based 32K machine. It is difficult to describe the game [Looks a bit like Metroid to me – Ed], and I’ve still never come close to finishing it, but it deserves to be up there with the Beeb’s finest moments.

Exile. Blonde stuff. With green goo.

Eventually, all good things come to and end, and so it was with the Beeb. After a decade of minor upgrades (the Model B+ and the Master), the 8-bit version was eventually abandoned for the incompatible 32-bit Archimedes. Again, this machine was way ahead of its time, but the schools had moved on to the Mac by then, and it was never a great success. Despite this, the ARM chip at the heart of the Archimedes lives on, and can now be found powering the Gameboy Advance. So, next time you fire up Advance Wars 2, spare a thought for the unfashionable old Beeb…

CDW, May 2004.

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