Games That Push the Limits of the BBC Micro

The BBC Micro, the computer from the British Broadcasting Corporation that helped bring Britain into the computer age. As well as worthy educational stuff it of course had lots of lovely games too, let's see some that pushed it to the limits.

Colid Hoad's Channel:
and website:

Alexander the OK on Elite:

Timberwolf on Revs

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[ColinHoad]

Tremendous video, and thanks for the lovely shout-out - you did the Beeb proud there 💪 For the programmatically minded, Mark Moxon's annotated source codes for Elite, Revs etc. are a goldmine, great to hear him get a namecheck 😀

[Interference]

Extra credit to Geoff Crammond's sense of humour: the race drivers in Revs are called things like Roland Slide, Wilma Cargo (will my car go), Rick Shaw, Hugh Jengine, Slim Chance, Gloria Slap (glorious lap) etc.

[TimberwolfK]

Thanks for the shout-out! I love the way half of "games that pushed the limits of the BBC" is basically "so you know that Geoff Crammond, right?" - absolute genius at getting the most out of the early 8 and 16 bit systems.

[fattomandeibu]

Exile was my granda's favourite game. He had it on C64, but seeing it in action instantly made me smile and think of a old Scottish bloke muttering obscenities to himself in front of the TV with a Woodbine hanging out his gob.

[TheUAoB]

The flickeriness of the OG Elite was due to a deficiency in the line removal code which was improved in the Master version. There's a version now avaiable for the model B with the improved rendering.

[simonm]

In the early 8 bit days, my mum's employer had a staff computer scheme that would allow employees to take home and borrow a computer for a week. I LOVED Starship Command...

[davy_K]

The Beeb was interrupt driven so you didn't have to poll the keyboard which was a super efficient way to operate. It ran like greased lightning. You were able to embed assembly inside BASIC programs if you wanted. Chuckie Egg was magnificent on it.

[AnthonyFlack]

15:58: "Space dude marooned on a hostile alien planet is the basic THRUST of the plot..." - I see what you did there.

[simonochana]

From what I remember of Elite, by 1985, it had sold over 120, 000 copies for the BBC Micro alone. At the time, that was over 25% of BBC Micro owners!

[noneofyourbusiness]

15:13 "...kind of like two BBCs strapped together..." I think I saw a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of that once.

[fredsmith]

I understand that the original prototype/ concept of the ARM (Acorn RISC Machines) processor was written in software on a BBC micro.

[AFourEyedGeek]

Like many middle aged Brits, we had BBC computers at primary school. They had a couple of computers, but nobody could use them because they were too expensive and they didn't want to risk breaking them.

[belstar]

the 80s are so fascinating how you could have a different type of computer designed mostly for schools but still getting decent 3rd party support .but its quite strange because when i went to school in the late 90s we had no computers at all in school i had one at home that quite modern. but our school didn't have any until the year 2000 and then they kept the same computers until i graduated so i am not sure what to think about that era .

[AnthonyFlack]

You mention that it's appropriate to have a version of BBC Elite with a Raspberry Pi co-processor, because of the Acorn connection, but you forgot to mention that David Braben, one of the co-authors of Elite, also created the Raspberry Pi...!

[cruxinc]

No way! ive been wanting this video for ages, thank you so much!

[StreborKram]

Brilliant thank you so much. Appreciate the links to other sources too. Such a mind blowing piece of history

[pauldine]

I love my BBC B. Probably more than any other computer I’ve ever owned. I learned to program on it - I owe my IT career to it in some respects. I also loved the games - both Geoff Crammond and David Braben were gods to me for their pioneering 3d games.

[faenethlorhalien]

Sometimes looking at the micro computer panorama in the 80s in the UK feels like a parallel universe / Mandela effect version of what we got in southern Europe... Mostly the same computers, some of them just by name (Dragon, Oric, etc... the ones that failed), but then you got the Acorn computers. NEVER EVER I heard of the BBC micro or even the Acorn Electron where I lived. I am amazed that it managed to stay pretty much in the UK.

[sinkorswim-duxi]

24:30 YESSS finally some PODD on youtube lol . respect, that's like an 11/10 on the nostalgia scale

[PigDogBay]

Great video, and as you say Colin’s channel is a must for any Beeb/Electron fans