This is where we nostalgise about the BBC Micro and the lovely games we used to play on it. (Do not read if you hate privileged children in the early 80s)

Wulf in Sabre Wulf to thread.

They were all shit.

will do

I don't recall the point of that game.

played Granny's Garden
played Repton (occasionally)
learned to program in Logo
used a word processor called Folio

play Chucky Egg
use some sensor-monitoring software to do chemistry and physics experiments. It rarely worked.

ah, the BBC. my introduction to networking. how did it go again?

>*remote 221

[beat]

"sir! sir! my computer's been taken over! it keeps typing 'you are a twat' and then deleting it again!"

of course, what i didn't know was how to turn the remote-takeover *off*. IIRC even a ctrl-break didn't work. i was locked in the computer room until i worked it out. (*roff, incidentally.)

i had a spectrum at home, and wanted a BBC more than life itself. repton is an all-time classic; i can't believe nobody's mentioned revs; frac looked lovely but was unplayable; there was a game by superior that involved being in space, running along the surface of a planet; and what was the blue game where you could morph into a wizard or a big ball thing? shit, i remember trying to get it to work on an emulator the other year and failing miserably.

happy fucking days!

imogen. that was it. when i was 11, i thought that was the coolest shit ever.

What kind of a message for a child is that?

(this was in first year of junior school, so I would have been ... um ...about 7, I think)

oh how i wasted my computer studies lessons

I did my GCSEs in Business and Information Studies on a BBC. It was easier to add up spreadsheets with a calculator and tap the answers in the boxes than it was to let the computer do it for you.

- Alphasort
- Bat and Ball (primitive breakout)
- Awful poem by Roger McGough
- BIORHYTHMS = totally unscientific theory accepted without question by Acornsoft! = best thing evar
- there were something like 15 programs but I can't remember any of the others.
- oh probably a typing tutor.

Hahaha I had the exact same problem with Elite Frontier on the PC. I was hopeless.

but it wasn't as annoying as the space battles, which were just impossible.

jesus, so there was. that's been buried (unsurprisingly) in the mists of my mind for many years.

as for elite/docking: it was a piece of piss when you got the hang of it. something to do with rotating slowly in the opposite direction to the space station ... or the same way ... and accelerating when it was at about 45 degrees ... hmm.

http://www.birdsanctuary.co.uk/virus/i.php

awesome machine. i loved it. a tragedy that it never took off.

The best thing about it was the Acorn Owl rendition at the beginning and it made a weird noise.

I Used to trick my little sister into hitting the space bar to make the witch from Granny's Garden appear. Muahahahah!

it's funny: despite having never owned a beeb or an archimedes, my nostalgia for them knows no bounds.

One of my favourites was a text adventure called Terrormolinos where you had to go on holiday and it was absolutely impossible. Also, Hampstead!

download melbourn.zip for:
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings (3 parts)
Shadows of Mordor
Hampstead
Terrormolinos
Dodgy Geezer (2 parts)
Sherlock
Mordon's Quest

YOU ARE IN A HOUSE. THE TAXI IS OUTSIDE, BEEPING ITS HORN. YOU HAVE TO FIND SEVERAL McGUFFINS AND GET YOUR FAMILY INTO THE TAXI TO THE AIRPORT BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN BEGIN THE FUCKING GAME. EXITS LEAD NORTH, WEST.
>west

YOU ARE IN THE LIVING ROOM. YOU CAN SEE THE CAMERA.
>pick up ca

TOO LATE, OUT OF TIME. YOU SCORED 0 OUT OF A POSSIBLE 1. PLAY AGAIN?
>no thanks, i think i'll go and smoke fags down by the chip shop.

YOU FINALLY MANAGED TO GET ALL THE NICKNACKS YOU NEEDED, CROSS THE ROAD WITHOUT GETTING RUN OVER, PUT YOUR RETARDED FAMILY IN THE CAR AND NOW YOU'RE ON THE PLANE. THERE IS A SICK BAG IN FRONT OF YOU AND AN AISLE RUNS TO THE NORTH AND SOUTH. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
>take sick bag
WHAT SICK BAG?
>go west
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND GO WEST
>west
TOO LATE! A CAN OF SHAVING FOAM EXPLODES IN YOUR LUGGAGE WHICH IN TURN COCKS UP THE FUSELAGE OF THE AEROPLANE CAUSING IT TO HURTLE TO THE GROUND WHILE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY SHRIEK AND SHIT THEMSELVES IN FATAL PANIC. THAT'S THE END OF YOUR HOLIDAY!
PLAY AGAIN?
>ch."arcadians"

I think you controlled a Kingdom, and had to decide how much crops to plant each year in order to feed the growing population. But a river kept bursting its banks causing floods which would drown people and/or wipe out crops leading to starvation the following year. At least that's how I remember it.

Then Granny's Garden at primary school, and fiendish-esque activities at Secondary with the networking. Teaching everyone to write !BOOT files that just happened to copy their passwords to a text file, while showing groovy menus with double-height text.

One day, a superuser account was left logged-in, and MRBIG was born.

Years later, I discovered an abandoned Master, complete with CUB monitor and disk drive, sitting in a field. Took home, cleaned it up, hurra hurra. Shift-Break, motherfuckers.

*I AM MRBIG

ah yes, there as a dyke in it i recall

Oooooooooooooh yes

Argh, Terrormolinos! What a horrible, horrible game. All I remember is the sense of triumph from finally getting to the holiday destination, followed by sheer agony when I got killed three moves later because I went on the beach without any suncream. Melbourne House >>> utter bastards.