What was your favourite BBC Micro game?

Granny's Garden.

elite. acornsoft arcade buyins - the scramble and asteroids were perfect. also the adventure games.

Chuckie Egg was OK. But Elite, yes.

TS: spectrum chuckie and BBC chuckie, wrt to the bouncing/gravity behaviour of the sprite ;)

citadel, dudes. citadel.

elite, natch.

frac (although it got dull and silly).

that one where you changed between shapes ... imogen, that was it.

blagger.

My dad brought his home from work (school) on the weekends. Good times.

Arcadians (Galaxians clone, http://www.xgd.com/id/27404)

And a puzzler where you could be a wizard, a monkey and something else. Anyone have any idea what this was?

caek, that was Imogen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_%28video_game%29
...the third animal you could be was a cat.

Ah yes, cheers, should have read the thread rather than admired my own typing.

I hated Elite. You had to try to dock in a slit in a constantly rotating space station, but when you got up really close to it you could no longer see the sides of the slit so you couldn't tell whether you were lined up properly. I NEVER managed to dock. Not once. Sometimes I would get shot down, but generally I just crashed into space stations while trying to dock. So the whole buying and selling goods, making a profit, pimping up your spaceship stuff - that was just a fantasy for me.

frac (although it got dull and silly).

Maybe not the greatest game, but possibly the best music. I still have the theme tunes to the first two screens stuck in my head more than 20 years later (obviously I never got beyond the second screen).

The games I played the most were the same ones I would play in arcades, except with different names because they were the BBC ripoff versions: Arcadians (Galaxians), Snapper (Pacman), Defender (was that the real name or the BBC name?), Pole Position...

oh yeh, REVS.

Repton.

The Acornsoft clone of Defender started off being called that, but they had to change it to Planetoid when Williams complained. And those games were hard, the BBC Micro version being very nearly as difficult as the arcade verison.

Exile was the game that I couldn't get the hang of. I'd always get stuck because the small block of pixels that was a radiation pill/gun/key/whatever would get stuck the other side of a killer laser turret.

Oh, and a primitive version of Football Manager in which there were only about 18 players in the universe.

Chucky Egg

Here is how much of a bastard I was to my little brother: when I got Elite for my birthday he was very excited and said, can we share it? And I said yes, I will do the fighting bits and you can do the docking.

Repton

A text-only train-driving simulator, that I could never get to work, because we didn't have instructions and I couldn't work out which key was "AWS Acknowledge" before the AWS tripped.

i've been playing this free modern port of elite recently http://oolite.aegidian.org/
its like playing the original but with the graphics from the hitchhikers tv series! its got addon packs of new ships & missions too.

one game i can't remember the name of : you played a little astronaut guy, and moved around rooms that were the size of the screen - one of the rooms had bouncing channel 4 signs that you had to avoid???

How many people on this thread had a BBC whose parents weren't teachers? At my school BBC owners were looked down upon by Spectrum & C64 owners. My school had masses of copied games for their BBCs. Not a v good example.

I'll admit the arcade adaptions were really good though, and I was v glad when the Elite adaption for C64 came out.

Anyone here have an Archimedes?

i didn't have a BBC, i played on the kid down the streets, whose dad was a doctor.

zappi, that game sounds like Manic Miner. Along with Chuckie Egg it was one of several Spectrum ports that were better than the originals.

We had one: my dad was a nuclear power inspector. I don't think he used it for work.

It was definitely the least cool of the big computers though I was so uncool myself I don't think I even realised that at the time.

after some lucky googling i found out that the game was called SIM, and not only that but someone has remade it! there goes my afternoon... http://www.spraydough.co.uk/downloads.htm

I've played Oolite. As someone who was raised on Elite II (with Defender-like Newtonian physics rather than stop-start) I found it a bit dull. Elite was just before my time.

Which computing system played host to such delights as 'Tea Shop', and those 'Make Your Own Adventure' games?

Here is how much of a bastard I was to my little brother: when I got Elite for my birthday he was very excited and said, can we share it? And I said yes, I will do the fighting bits and you can do the docking.

i made my brother sit in a chair behind me and pretend he was my first mate. i am worse.

docking was tricky, that's why you bought a docking computer as soon as you could afford it!

chuckie egg was genius, as was Repton in all its incarnations, and Castle Quest (?), tho i never got too far on that. the doctor who video game sucked a little.

I always hated Elite. Just white lines and way too many buttons. It was impossible to dock the stupid plane as someone said upthread.

I always liked Repton, especially Reptons 3 & 4 which you could programme yourself in quite a lot of detail so practically reinventing the game.

and also jet pak. loved that one.

and football manager, by that odd-looking bloke called kevin.

YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!
YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!
YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!
YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!
YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!
YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!

My favourite game after Elite was Sabre Wulf - tho that was on another machine first I think, Elite and the Acornsoft games and Repton were the main actual 'jewels' in the BBC's crown.

Welcome Tape - poem by Roger McGough.

We had an Electron, which played 90% of BBC games.

I found a tricked out Master System dumped in a park a few years back -- Cub monitor, cumana(?) double disk drives, comal rom, write, the lot. It still works.

A whole load of videos of BBC Micro games here:

http://youtube.com/user/cpmisalive

and football manager, by that odd-looking bloke called kevin

... of whom there's a pic on the spectrum thread.

we had a spectrum; i desperately wanted a BBC more than anything. round about 1986-87 i almost convinced my parents that my schooling and future would suffer if we didn't get one (qv spectrum thread and their fears back in 1983) ... surprisingly, they were on-the-ball enough to say: "son, eight-bit computers will be obsolete in a couple of years."

the archimedes was beautiful and clever, and a good friend of mine used one throughout his CS degree at edinburgh. tragedy that it never caught on.

i remember getting a slim volume from blackpool library called "BBC micro networking explained", or similar. that was how i learned about *REMOTE. cue fun and games in the computer room on monday.

sadly, i couldn't remember how to turn it off. the maths teacher locked me in during breaktime until i worked it out. IIRC rebooting both machines didn't actually work (although i can't see why it wouldn't); *ROFF was the answer.

i can't be remembering this right ... surely the remote-access stuff wasn't held at server level? (ah, the BBC server: what a magic piece of kit that was. we had a really cool slimline one with 3.5" disk drives towards the end, i think.)

surely the remote-access stuff wasn't held at server level?

Possibly. The station IDs were set in hardware, so it wouldn't have been too difficult for the server to keep track of which station was remoting which. There's a whole pile of documentation here: http://members.aon.at/~musher/bbc/econet.htm
Econet had practically zero security - you could even poke the memory of remote stations!

COO UR, that is a great link. thank you.

stet: we need to get yr rescued master up and running.

Sabre Wulf was wicked, but I never managed to get anywhere in it. There was a hyena-like creature that was impossible to kill.

Frak was really hard too. And Killer Gorilla.

my first comp was an amiga, so the micros at school seemed really dated...still enjoyed that world war 2 game tho, what was it called?

The Repton you could make your own levels on was so awesome.

Also Junior Kickstart or whatever it was called.

the only people at my school who had the BBC were the middle class kids who wanted spectrums to play games but their parents got them a BBC for educational reasons.
Of course they all just played games anyway.

Econet had practically zero security - you could even poke the memory of remote stations!
Yes! That allowed for top japery. We even had a superuser account, made when a 6th-year accidently left his terminal logged in.

It went unnoticed when the "server" was a BBC B+ hooked up to a *massive* 30MB drive, but when it was replaced by an Archimedes there were tough questions asked about this 'MRBIG' user with the crown icon.

We got quite elaborate when it came to cracking our school's RM Nimbus network. Installing keyloggers, doing rudimentary packet sniffing, even making lock picks and skeleton keys to get into the storeroom where the server was located. Although because the locks hadn't been replaced since the 1950's, just jiggling a paperclip in the lock was usually enough.
We nearly all got busted when one of the teachers discovered our folder full of games and other stuff - which I remember vividly because of the outraged tone in his voice when he said "half a meg of unauthorised files" were "wasting space" on the server's drive.

IT wasn't too hard to see what was going on, with ours -- the Econet file server display showed a scrolling list of what terminal was accessing what file. The damn thing sat on the head of department's desk, which resulted in a lot of "SUMS.COM" files moving around.

I am interested in Britishes networks!

I grew up on NETWARE HAX lol

the Econet file server display showed a scrolling list of what terminal was accessing what file. The damn thing sat on the head of department's desk, which resulted in a lot of "SUMS.COM" files moving around

yep: the original version with ... christ, almost a rudimentary RAID set-up made of 5.25" drives, i guess ... had a wee b/w monitor showing a scrolling list of files.

which was bad news for the hapless school psycho who, aged 11, decided to call a file "FUCK" right as the deputy head of maths was standing in front of it.

hahaha rich American schools. We had one wheezy IBM PC, it sat in the corner with a huge pile of red netware manuals and got covered in dust because nobody knew what to do with it. I think it was a donation.

Econet was actually pretty nice. You could *TALK to other terminals, or write to their screens. For 32K 8-bit machines it ruled. It even had login scripts (!BOOT) which you could cause complete chaos with, if some victim left themselves logged in.

xpost

!BOOT ... so much more fun than AUTOEXEC.BAT

a lot of "SUMS.COM" files moving around

Thrust was a favourite game as it was only one file and therefore could easily be renamed and hidden among legitimate stuff. !BOOT was also essential for loading up your custom game menu with *FXwhatever to automatically turn off the sound.
There were two teachers at my school who were "in charge" of the computers. One was the deputy maths teacher - it always seems to be the deputy maths teacher whatever school you went to - and he was fanatical about "keeping games off the computers". Luckily the more senior of the two was Head of Lower School and basically didn't give a shit, so we got away with a hell of a lot.

We played a shitload of snake, because it was installed in some demo folder somewhere. Was weird seeing it come back again with early Nokias.

Only time I got in real trouble was for running something like

10 PRINT "BBC COMPUTER 32K"

20 PRINT ""

30 PRINT "Econet xx.x"

40 PRINT ""

50 PRINT "READY >";

60 INPUT login$

70 PRINT "PASSWORD:";

80 INPUT pass$

90 *SEND HIGHER.stet login$, pass$

100 PRINT "Error"

(I can't remember the exact syntax of line 90, but you get the idea)

CHDISK? CHDSK?

OSCLI("SEND HIGHER.stet "+login$+", "+pass$)

And there needs to be a bit to remove the "I AM" from login$
*KEY10 ties this to the BREAK key, I think.
I know this because I nearly got in trouble for something very similar...

!BOOT and BBC Basic made it as far as RISCOS in the mid to late 90s.

as an actual going concern i mean - i'm sure there is still a hobbyist scene

Yeh, it is KEY10 for break! I just left the I AMs in, cos it was funny reading

I AM CSYS.clot nadg3rs
I AM standard.MokeJr rangers
I AM higher.MokeSr rangers
I AM standard.julie rangers
etc etc

xp

HAHAHAHAH i can well believe it ;)

docking was tricky, that's why you bought a docking computer as soon as you could afford it!

Yes, I would have done, but I could never fucking afford it because I never made any money because I never managed to trade anything because I could never fucking dock in the first place! Stupid bastard game.

also jet pak. loved that one

Seconded.

We had an Archimedes! I think my dad originally wanted to get a PC but I persuaded him otherwise. I also remember getting our first hard drive for it - 10Mb, I think?

Before that he used to bring a BBC Micro home in the school holidays, which I loved. I think I was a better programmer aged 7 than I ever will be again (seriously).

because my girlfriend and i are almost weeping with frustration - what was the bbc micro game where you were in charge of a village (i think there was a yellow river involved) and you selected how many of your villagers would work in the fields, how many would defend the village etc... does this ring ANY bells whatsoever??

okay...
it was yellow river kingdom.

lol
It was on the Welcome tape/disc. In Computer Studies class at school I figured out the proportions of crops/food/villagers to ensure success for each season, then re-wrote the program so those figures were input automatically.

Our welcome tape was buggered. Hard remembering a time when that meant you were really stuck; couldn't just google and dl.

jet set willy II

I couldn't play Elite - too many lines, too many buttons for me. But our family kept our Micro as our sole computer well into the '90s and my mum still does all her business accounts in Beebcalc(!!)

I had great fun with the 'beep' command on my Spectrum. I input the Granny's Garden theme tune as some kind of misplaced homage.

On the BBC there was some game like hangman? Where you had to get a stickman to climb up ladders? Maybe I'm confusing two separate games.

and I've just remembered this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_%E2%80%93_A_Mathemagical_Adventure

which I played in "maths club". And I liked it.

haha, that is awesome! my girlfriend is desperate to play it again, though i have suggested, from experience, that such pleasures are best left in the past, where they can't disappoint you with their simplicity or, as you suggest, ease of cheating... (xp to snoball)

desperately trying to remember, for nostalgia's sake, the other programmes on welcome tape... was there, like, a kaleidoscope programme?

galaga

and that kids game where you typed commands to make the big red blobby creature perform your actions

How many people on this thread had a BBC whose parents weren't teachers?

Hahaha guilty - both parents. Yellow River Kingdom was based on rural China and the yellow river was the actual Yellow River iirc. There were bandits who were pound signs or similar and used to wreck your villages by oscillating really fast. It's weird how that image of China is now even more obsolete than the BBC Micro itself.

I never had a Beeb (Spectrum all the way), but the games I most looked forward to playing at my friends' houses were Repton (possibly actually Repton 3), Citadel, and Ricochet.

(my brain does not allow me to count anything I had my own Speccy copy of as a Beeb game, so that rules out JSW, Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, etc)

I also played "L" in Maths Club and liked it. Got a strange craving to play it again now, since I can't remember much about it, but that's probably a bad idea, right? And all those hundreds of Granny's Garden-ish games. If there's a website out there listing kids' adventure games that were deemed educational enough for mid-80s infants' schools to buy by the barrowload I'd have a nostalgia blast going through it, cz I'd never remember enough about the individual titles to find them on their own.

You can play Repton and a few others here

we had the beeb at school and i remember in class me and a mate found these simple games on the main server. and then everyone else wanted to access them so we ended up passwording them so only us could play them. then we got told off because it turned out that the games were there for the 'special' kids that came in after school and they now couldn't get access to them.

Why did the BBC stop making computers anyway? Unfair competition?

big red blobby creature perform your actions

I think this was called Podd or Pobb. It taught me how to spell words like "explode" etc. He hummmed and whistled "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", so prob programmed by a West Ham fan or Garry Bushell.

Pod does not know how to wank. Etc.

it didn't teach me how to spell "hummed"

Ah yes, friend had Repton 3 with the level editor and those 3 expansion packs (Around the World / Life of Repton / Repton Thru Time). Will probably play them online later, thanks! And probably get frustrated and give up after about 2 minutes, because I was pretty bad at them even then, and I'm way more impatient now.

Enjoyed this interview with Peter Scott, who programmed a bunch of BBC games: http://www.beebgames.com/psinterv.php
He says Ricochet wasn't a Beeb original after all. I'd be interested to see the ST version but I can't find anything about it so far.

what was ricochet again?

oh and there was the 2-d scroller where you were an army man and could get in helicopters and throw grenades, but you ALWAYS ALWAYS died at one point during a helicopter duel.

another one was a b/w 3d puzzle based on screwball scramble - really advanced physics-wise

I still get Frak level 2 music stuck in my head.

i only vaguely remember ricochet... what was that about?

get in helicopters and throw grenades

Stryker's Run

Ricochet was a later game from the software company who did Citadel, so similar pick-stuff-up drop-it-in-right-place find-keys-to-open-doors platform adventure gameplay, but much nicer graphics and an energy bar health system instead of lives iirc? You were a ball and could bounce off walls, squeeze yourself down, etc. A smiley red ball wearing sunglasses.

That's about all I remember, since I didn't have my own copy. Vaguely remember a puzzle where you had to take some lead to an alchemist to get it turned to gold, unless that was Citadel instead.

Citadel had an energy points system instead of lives - starting with 150 although you could get extra energy by picking up bottles marked "E" (lol), and by taking iron bars to Stonehenge (no alchemist though).
The alchemist guy might have been in Palace of Magic, a very Citadel-y type game.

yeah that was a great game. bloody difficult though. it was on "play it again sam" which had stryker, citadel, thrust and ravenskull on it.

I remember almost every BBC game being ridiculously difficult, but then I was very young back then. I wonder, maybe now I'm older and used to more advanced games, whether it might be possible to complete one? I don't remember ever completing a BBC game. The arcade-y type ones would generally just restart but make you play it again faster/harder.

xposts

I have completed several Speccy games I never managed at the time, but only because emulators let me save my game every 5 minutes. I assume BBC emulators also do this.

The idea of working through a game from beginning to end, restarting every time I die, is something I can't imagine having the time or patience any more. Slogging through the exact same levels time after time until yr reflexes are suitably honed to Bad Guy 12 appearing 30 pixels from the left after 0.4 seconds, can only jump over the pit on screen 63 by running until you're on the 5th block across and yr guy's legs are at THIS angle, etc.

The only one I remember completing at the time was Spycat- awesome awesome game.

other favourites were the early Peter Scott games like Last Of The Free also grebt. Codename: Droid... wow. Also Frak, Chuckie Egg, Galaforce, Thrust, the Acornsoft defender clone, Repton(s)