Over 50 Acorn Electron Games In Under 30 Minutes

Рет қаралды 2,216

Күн бұрын

This video features gameplay footage from over 50 different games for the classic 8-bit Acorn Electron computer in less than half an hour.
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@grinbrothers Ай бұрын

Never played or owned an Acorn Electron, but for some reason, my brain decided it was curious about the Acorn machines. Guess because Acorn's computers went on surprisingly longer than all of it's competition, despite (what I'm led to believe) them being 4th place against the Amstrad, ZX Spectrum and C64. 1:28 - Nice of Balloon Buster and Barbarian to have their titles on screen... just to make sure you don't forget what game you're playing (jokes aside, real handy for these video compilations of yours). 4:04 - Love how distinctive the colour palettes of these old computers could be. Each one had their own personality that you could often tell from a glance. That hooded figure here may be flickering a lot but the sprite is smooth, almost a ghost like transparency going on as well. 6:55 - Well, this is rather obviously Mario Bros. Love their victory animation here though. 10:14 - I'm noticing that the Electron really liked the colour green. 12:21 - Superior Software once again. They really liked the Electron here. 14:26 - How strange; I'd never have suspected that tiny gap would spell your doom for failing to make the jump. Love said jumping sound effect though. 17:50 - I green is the Electron's favourite colour, then purple is likely second. 22:28 - It's a little hard from a gameplay perspective, but the fact that the soldier blends super well with the grassy green ground makes perfect sense. 25:27 - Like a moving Asteroids. Strange, the machine has shown to be able to display quite a lot of colours and plenty at the same time (though typically as a solid colour without much variation of shades) and yet there has still been quite a few ZX Spectrum styled black-and-white games. It works in this case with the space and vector look but still a little odd. 29:39 - Seems the strategy against Buchu here is to trap him in the corner and just wail on him. Can't do that flying tackle when you're right up to him. To conclude, of games that intrigued me here, they include: Balloon Buster, Barbarian, Bone Cruncher, Bumble Bee, Citadel, Dunjunz, E Type, Firebug, Firetrack, Frak, Galaforce, Joey, Shark, Spy vs Spy, Starship Command, Yie Ar Kung Fu.

@DavidSThomas77 26 күн бұрын

Some fantastic reminders of my family getting the Acorn electronic in 1985 when I was 8.. particularly Thrust, Starship Command and Yie ar kung fu..! Not included here, but I remember being driven up the walls trying to type relevant commands for the Acornsoft text adventure Sphinx Adventure 😂

@andyf4292 Ай бұрын

I had an electron.. blast from the past!

@andyf4292 Ай бұрын

the guy in the art for barbarian was Wolf off gladiators

@StevenA76 23 күн бұрын

nd the woman is Maria Whittacker

@andrewcampbell9926 28 күн бұрын

I like how the Ravenskull snippet was from the very start of the game. I don't I ever found a way into the castle either.

@TheWhatnought Ай бұрын

Oh man. I'm a Californian so I never saw all these games or these computers which is why videos of this sort fascinate me. And give me flashbacks to my Apple 2eee days and Pinball Construction Set, Montezuma's Revenge and such in CGA and/or VGA. Question to the Universe: Why in all f*cks sake would you make a display that only does Cyan, Magenta and White? I've always been baffled by this since my CRT was shades of green.

@celynjones4958 Ай бұрын

So close yet... that sound chip though. I had a BBC B plus a disc drive in late '89. It was still worthwhile compared to the Electron. Sold it in early 90 for a small profit to a guy with an Archy help fund my Amiga. Sad to see Acorn not keep building its own home computers ❤

@Zekium Ай бұрын

I've never heard of this machine but this really remind me the Amstrad CPC computers with a different color palette.

@daishi5571 Ай бұрын

The Electron is nothing like the CPC. Its basically a chip reduced Acorn BBC Model B (which was an incredibly complex system)

@paul_boddie Ай бұрын

@@daishi5571 The CPC does, however, borrow from the Beeb's specifications and make reasonable refinements. Meanwhile, the Electron is effectively trying to deliver the core features of the Beeb in a cost-reduced form. So, all of them support the same horizontal resolutions (160, 320 and 640 pixels), but the CPC uses a vertical resolution of 200 pixels, presumably to have a nice 16K screen size. Of course, the CPC uses a broadly comparable sound chip to the Beeb, whereas the Electron has a sound/noise generator in the ULA. Acorn could have (and probably should have) used the SN76489 in the Electron, but that would have required a somewhat different design and for Acorn to be prioritising things differently. The CPC also uses the 6845, which the Electron does not, although that is perhaps a lesser concern. The CPC is arguably a different approach to cost reduction of a Beeb-like design, undertaken about a year later than the Electron by people very familiar with the Beeb, with updated market awareness (64K of RAM being seen as a necessity), and with a degree of flexibility. That meant not needing to be kept out of competition with the Beeb, and also committing to the Z80 when the designers were more familiar with it.

@garysmith7286 28 күн бұрын

I had one because I couldn't afford the BBC micro and was using one at work to program......oh those were the days lol

@allanmailer4540 Ай бұрын

I know there are all kinds of reasons why the Electron ultimately ended up in bargain bins but the most obvious one here is that solitary sound channel. Really shit decision by Acorn, especially when you consider that all the relevant BASIC instructions for multiple channels were included in the system. Other than that the quality of build on the Electron was fantastic, sturdy case and great keyboard. It was also a decent assembly platform right out of the box, no additional software needed.

@pascalharris1 Ай бұрын

I had an Elk when I was a kid (I wanted a Speccy, but parents said no!) I didn’t notice at the time how bad the sound was - better graphics than the spectrum, worse sound. But I think that, for games at least, the spectrum was the better computer.

@Aevilbeast Ай бұрын

@@pascalharris1 Any paritcular reason the parents weren't so keen on the Spectrum? Was it because it was considered a games machine, and they wanted something more educational and/or at least something similar to what was used in schools? (BBC Micro) Just asking as someone over here in the states some of the nuances go right over my head but I love learning more about anything/everything micro related. Plus, IIRC the spectrum would've been a quite a bit cheaper wouldn't it?

@talideon Ай бұрын

@@pascalharris1It's actually kind of funny that the 1-bit beeper gave more opportunities for audio generation than an actual tone generator! Given how relatively cheap the SN76489 was, omitting it and pushing audio generation onto the ULA was an odd cost saving measure.

@daishi5571 Ай бұрын

@@Aevilbeast Have you ever looked an the original 16/48K Spectrum? it screams cheap toy and its priced like that too! Thing is It was so cheap it sucked up all the sales.

@Edudux 22 күн бұрын

So many Chuckie Egg Look-alikes...

@DavidDatura Ай бұрын

The graphics quality of this 8 bit micro is pretty decent (when using a solid black background anyway) but the sound! Yikes 😬 is there only one sound channel?

@thelairdslair Ай бұрын

Doesn't even have a sound chip, just a beeper built into the ULA.

@GCSoundArtifacts Ай бұрын

Let me ask a question, coming from my perspective as a researcher from Brazil: whenever I look at these Acorn Electron games, am I also looking at BBC Micro games? (Probably not, since I don't think "Barbarian" wouldn't be educational in British schools...) Are they with the same hardware specs?

@thelairdslair Ай бұрын

The Electron was a cost reduced version of the BBC Micro and not fully compatible. It was a lot slower, lacked many of the Beeb's graphics modes and only had a rubbish 1 channel sound chip. A lot of companies made games that could detect which hardware was present (a bit like Spectrum 48k or 128K) and then adjust the code to run. So the Electron doesn't have any real exclusives of its own, just lots of downgraded BBC Micro ports.

@GCSoundArtifacts Ай бұрын

@TheLairdsLair I see. Understood. Thank you!

@xXTheoLinuxXx Ай бұрын

@@thelairdslair I thought only mode 7 (teletext) was missing in terms of available graphics modes. And yes it has only 1 channel sound and was slower (due the memory). Due the slower memory, some games uses less graphical action to keep it playable (Frak in this video is an example).

@talideon Ай бұрын

Also, Barbarian definitely had a Beeb port. It wasn't exclusively used at schools and had a decent contingent of home users, albeit of a higher income bracket than the typical Spectrum user at the time.

@paul_boddie Ай бұрын

@@xXTheoLinuxXx Frak doesn't have moving monsters on the other contemporary ports, either. Only recent remakes of the game by its author have introduced such features that were originally desired but not really possible even on the Beeb. Frak is actually an interesting case because it apparently has better collision detection on the Electron, as well as more levels, and a built-in screen designer, due to it using a screen mode requiring less memory. Apparently, some Beeb owners prefer to run the Electron version, so it is hardly "downgraded". You're right about the graphics modes. The Electron dutifully replicated modes 0 to 6, even though one could have imagined the ULA just exposing various display properties (colour depth, bytes per line, and so on) and having the software translate the mode numbers to the appropriate properties. Instead, the ULA actually supports the mode numbers in hardware.