The 20 Greatest BBC Micro Games of All-Time

In this video I countdown the 20 greatest BBC Micro games of all-time as voted for by you, the retro gaming community!
Video Links:
10 Amazing BBC Micro Exclusives: • 10 Amazing BBC Micro E...
Acorn Electron Review: • Acorn Electron - Revie...
10 Amazing BBC Micro Facts: • 10 Amazing BBC Micro F...
Acorn: A World In Pixels: • Acorn: A World In Pixe...
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#retrogaming #bbcmicro #acornelectron

[@TheLairdsLair]

Given how popular this video has been I thought I'd add the full Top 50 for you in a pinned post: 50 - Bonecruncher 49 - E-Type 48 - Arkanoid 47 - Sabre Wulf 46 - Dunjunz 45 - Commando 44 - Sphinx Adventure 43 - The Hobbit 42 - Boffin 41 - Jetpac 40 - Codename Droid 39 - The Last Ninja 38 - Wizardore 37 - Castle of Magic 36 - Jet Boot Jack 35 - Football Manager 34 - Hopper 33 - Snowball 32 - Knightlore 31 - Stunt Car Racer 30 - Aviator 29 - Rocket Raid 28 - Manic Miner 27 - Firetrack 26 - Arcadians 25 - Daredevil Dennis 24 - XOR 23 - The Sentinel 22 - Twin Kingdom Valley 21 - Jet Set Willy 20 - Starship Command 19 - Killer Gorilla 18 - Ravenskull 17 - Stryker's Run 16 - Granny's Garden 15 - Zalaga 14 - Thrust 13 - Imogen 12 - Mr. Ee! 11 - Planetoid 10 - Snapper 9 - Castle Quest 8 - Frak! 7 - Repton 3 6 - Citadel 5 - Revs 4 - Exile 3 - Repton 2 - Chuckie Egg 1 - Elite PHEW!

[@gklinger]

No Palace of Magic?! :( Other than being sad that game isn't on the list, I think this is a great video.

[@mattmecham]

This was my childhood. It got me hooked on programming which became my career. I recently bought a BBC Micro for the nostalgia.

[@timonsolus]

One of my favourite games on the BBC was a UK government simulator, in which you would pick a party (Conservative, Labour or Liberals), choose policies, and produce a Budget. If you chose wisely, you would win the general election. Got me interested in politics.

[@Brandlin]

GB Ltd.

[@space_is_ace]

I remember this game ,if my memory is correct ,it had to be typed in from a magazine ?

[@fatblokediets9648]

I loved this game! Bribing voters with massive tax cuts to win elections, then crashing the economy!

[@Darren-gy2pz]

Sad

[@chriswoods562]

My dad and I would play this and see who did best

[@papalaz4444244]

"Defender" was superb on BBC Micro. Really authentic.

[@doughnutdoney997]

I had an Acorn Electron at home and used a BBC Micro B at school so plenty of memories here. My all time favourite game was Chuckie Egg but did play Elite, Repton 1-3 and especially Ravernskull plenty of fond memories.

[@shanetheundertaker8474]

Chuckie egg was so much fun in the early 80's.

[@timbrownhill7272]

I liked repton, there was a game called 'citadel' that I liked too.

[@timbrownhill7272]

Oh, and 'Strikers Run'

[@DingusBatus]

I still have my Acorn Electron, it doesn’t work properly nor does a lot of the games/software load/run😭😭. But I still have it.

[@uncomfortabletruth8976]

Chuckie egg and Elite 😊

[@sahhull]

I still have my original BBC B and assorted kit still works. Burned a huge amount of hours on Starship command and the side scroller Scramble. I still get my Atari 2600 console out of the box every year for the tank battle game. Horrendously fun when adult beverages have been consumed

[@barryfrost6211]

Gosh, this takes me back a bit. I was writing software and teaching computing during those golden years and the Acorn computers were just amazing. The coding would have been pretty simple for all these games bar one - Zalaga. I never saw this and can’t believe they managed it on a Beeb! Hats off to whoever did the coding! 🎉

[@jaysmith2858]

Even if you weren't a big fan of Elite, you have to admit that its impact on gaming and how ahead of its time it was is undeniable. Elite is only one of three 8bit games to get a retrospective 10/10 from Edge magazine. The other two games were Exile (another original BBC Micro title) and Super Mario Bros.

[@crashoverride328]

Elite marked a paradigm shift in gaming, 8 galaxies, no defined path, save games - all new concepts. On the BBC it even shipped with a Novella providing the back story - The Dark Wheel. It even continues today in MMORPG form with Elite Dangerous.

[@Calilasseia]

Elite was more than a mere game. It packed an entire open world universe into just 22K. Apart from being a tour de force of programming genius, it demonstrated for the first time what computers were really capable of, if programmers put their minds to the task properly. Think about that - 22K of code and data running on a 6502 became the first true "universe game".

[@paulmitchell2801]

I was lucky enough to get a BBC model B in 1983 and still have it to this day along with the 5.25" floppy drive and tape drive. I keep meaning to try and get it running again :)

[@philipjacques2272]

One of my favourites was Codename: Droid - Strykers run part 2. Great game

[@andyhall7032]

^^ this. brilliant game. I had it for my electron. loved it.

[@shanetheundertaker8474]

10 print " my teacher is a prat ! " 20 goto 10 😂 Aghhhh. . . The good old days of innocence

[@Echo30Mike]

LMFAO. I think we all did that in our first lesson in computers back in 1982.

[@barryfrost6211]

As a former teacher, you might have set this for your students: 10 PRINT “FOCUS” 20 GOTO 10 (Your homework is to try to work out what FOCUS stands for)

[@Umski]

I remember playing “Granny’s Garden” at primary school 😂 Then used a BBC to cut parts on a CNC at secondary 😮school

[@nathanbutcher7720]

Can't believe Geoff Crammond's "Sentinel" didn't get a mention. It's #2 to Elite in my personal list, but I guess a lot of people didn't "get it" at the time.

[@TheLairdsLair]

It got some votes, but not enough to break the top 20

[@endoflevelboss]

Yes and no. Yes Sentinel should definitely be on the list right up there no Elite shouldn't be number 1 it was overrated.

[@oldboy5001]

Sentinel was great. One of the first procedurally generated games I think?

[@thepenultimateninja5797]

We had a BBC Model B when I was a kid. We were by no means well off, but my dad was an engineer, and he recognized the importance of the new microcomputers. I was only little at the time, but I remember him agonizing over the decision to buy one. It was almost like an illness, I guess he must have been losing sleep over the decision. Eventually, my Mom talked him into just going for it, and he brought it home one evening after work. Many years later, my parents were watching Cash in the Attic, which was a TV show in which people would gather together all the junk in their house, and sell it to finance a vacation or something. In one episode, the family had a BBC Micro, and the 'expert' on the show told them it wasn't worth anything, and to not even bother trying to sell it. My parents happened to be having a clear-out at around the same time, and hearing this advice, they threw the mint condition Beeb and the 5.25" floppy drive in a skip. I was absolutely gutted, and I am still sore about it to this day lol.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Oh no! I'd be gutted too!

[@milquetoastmotorcyclist9800]

That hurt to read :/

[@Mucus1972]

Elite, Revs and Chuckie Egg were my favourites. Me and my brother also enjoyed Sabre Wolf, for its ace maze and Knightlore, which was 3D isometric fantastic.I preferred Arcadians as a shooting aliens game. I’m 52 now, and race iRacing in VR, my journey started with Revs, through the F1GP Crammond games.

[@stevewithington1787]

My dad owned a BBC model B (issue 4) and I had an Acorn Electron which meant I was the de facto computer guy at primary school. Then my dad got an Archimedes 310 which gave me a leg up at secondary school. They were amazing systems for the time, and the quality of the games were excellent. I’m surprised Bumble Bee, Frenzy, Psycastria, Swoop and Tempest didn’t make the list. The top three was no surprise though. I also loved Thrust. Regarding the educational games the one that sticks in my mind most was Suburban Fox. There was also one I can’t remember the name of where you were building a settlement that included a moat, and you had a set time to get everything done. You had to allocate workers to the building, defenders against attacks from other groups, and foragers to go and get enough food for everyone. Good times.

[@Echo30Mike]

Elite is/was one of the best games of it's era. Way ahead of the curve. When I was a kid, I always dreamed that one day, someone would make a game to expand it and use modern computing power to really push at what could become possible. I had to wait until 2003 for that to happen. that is when I discovered Eve Online. I've not played it in a while because it is super easy to completely lose you RL to the game. It is one of those games that just sucks you in and consumes you.

[@morsmagne]

I agree with a lot of what you’ve written. I played Eve Online for years but I stopped playing because the core combat gameplay isn’t exciting enough and the game is 'emotionally monotone', e.g. - there's no humour. Personally, I think the future generally is generative AI - in games and in everything else. The future belongs to people who can utilise it the most effectively.

[@skirmisherssouthport5056]

Honarable mentions Manic Miner, Adventure, Jet Pack, Twin Kingdom Valley, Commando, Harvey Headbanger, Sabre Wolfe.

[@ultimatetechsite]

I remember playing elite and being blown away by how "next level" it was. The 3d graphics and the scope of the game felt like nothing I had ever played before. Probably in terms of sheer fun I would have to put it in my top 10 games of all time. Sure, these days its primitive, but at the time it was unprecedentedly good.

[@MattTerrell]

Brilliant. I played loads of those games. Brought back so many memories.

[@GreatAwakeningE]

Born in '67 its great to see the games I used to play as a child, thankyou. Remember some of them well. Did my A'Level Computer Science at School with one of these; wrote a BASIC version of Space Invaders for my O'level project. LOL

[@blatherskite3009]

The BBC Micro was incredibly well-served with unofficial arcade clones - easily the best versions on any 8-bit micro of early arcade classics like Pac-Man, Defender, Space Panic, Frogger, Asteroids, Lunar Rescue, Zaxxon, etc. And it's all the more impressive when you bear in mind that the machine only had about 16K of RAM available once you were in any graphics mode other than Teletext.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I'd slightly push against that, as I'd say that in most cases the Atari 8-bit had the best version. Of the British Micros certainly, the BBC has so many superb arcade clones.

[@endoflevelboss]

Mr Ee! smashed it for an arcade copy

[@thedarkknight1971]

I wanted either a Spectrum or C64, but my Dad said "Nope, you'll get what the schools are using", then we bought the Viglen PC Kit (made it look somewhat like a PC XT/AT, and installed 2 5.25 floppy drives). I also bought every copy of 'Input' magazine and thus the 4 binders to contain them, and lol, semi successfully programed and got working most of the 'input' programs. Games wise? MANY were played... - Thrust: HELL YEAH... excellent game. - Elite: Yeah I did ok, until a friend of mine managed to get the cheat disk that allowed FULL weapons/armour/credits and such, and then spent hundreds of hours exploring, 'Kickin ass' and such... Good times! - Chuckie egg: Hahaha you surely are bringing out the classics here! - Mission Impossible: I played this on a mates C64... I THINK there was creepy speech in it too, "You'll stay foreverrrrr" (or something like that) - Arkanoid: Oh God yeah, MANY hours on that one too! What about Galaga? I chewed through MANY levels on that brilliant game! 😏🤣🤣 🦇😎🦇 🇬🇧

[@kerbal666]

My school had one that had a three button mouse. Had this isometric 3D game where you flew some green triangle aircraft. The left button fired white dots middle button slow boost and right button for fast boost. You flew over random generated islands had no sound and no clue what to do but was fun learning to fly the ship and shoot a tree accurately :) EDIT It was the acorn Archimedes and the game was LANDER

[@crashoverride328]

Or ZARCH

[@FatNorthernBigot]

Old fart nerds such as myself are very impressed by this video. 👍

[@iandavenport2550]

I worked at Micro power in Leeds. Selling BBC machines.

[@shanetheundertaker8474]

I used to play ' Elite ' and ' Chuckie egg ' on the BBC Electron. 😊👍 And ' joust '

[@pj_naylor]

Those sound effects brought back some happy memories of times I should'vebeen studying. 😊 One of my fellow students at Jodrell Bank spent most of an afternoon rolling over the score on Chuckie Egg - having discovered that the levels just repeated after a certain point, without getting any harder. My favourite was Knight Lore (with a personal high score of 3, after weeks of playing and making a huge paper map of the dungeon) - disappointed not to see it on the list.

[@Cazak69]

I remember castle quest with fond memories. Micropower had one of there main offices in Leeds with a big showroom, and of course they had castle quest running on every machine. When you completed the game it showed your finish time on the end screen. Me and 2 friends could complete the game in less than 10 minutes which they said was impossible so we went around and did it on all there display computers :)

[@NickDDDD]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Am 53 yo & ad a BeeB in 1984. Great to find this channel!

[@NickDDDD]

I still have it boxed up! Along with disc/disk drive (Mitsubishi?) & Watford Electronics DFS. Still works. So no one remembers "Felix in the Factory" best Ladders & Levels Game ever (along with CE. KG & F**K.)? Basil's Disc/Disk coper? Rip-Off 9 anyone?

[@TheLairdsLair]

I know Felix in the Factory! In fact I reviewed it in a book I wrote some years ago.

[@NickDDDD]

@@TheLairdsLair Book? What book? FITF Rules all!

[@gedgicat2063]

Glad to see Citadel, snapper & Chuckie Egg here. I always loved Magic mushrooms & tarzan, spyhunter, jetpack can't believe they're not on the list

[@JonathanReynolds1]

I remember “Imogen”, “Jetpack”, “Banjax”, “Thrust”, and “Podd”. I also remember “Mr E” being on an arcade machine in the 80s and “Planetoid” was known as “Guardian” on the Commodore 64.

[@mikepanchaud1]

The trick with Castle Quest was to trap all 4 of the little red men and squash them into one man, then I think it was possible to finish the game. Anyone else remember this?

[@apollo12002]

Elite was by far its best game absolutely ground breaking for that time. Still have my bbc micro b in the loft, it has a side way eprom expansion board so it can run games and programs from eproms. It has a teletext adapter, music 500 and a floppy disk drive. I learnt to program on it and wrote two simple games. Good times.

[@Eidolonian]

Hunchback was epic!!! ❤ Granny’s Garden!!

[@derekmcallister947]

Genuinely surprised that Codename Droid didn't make it onto the list. Lot of nostalgia looking back through those - though I now have a temptation to see if I can find a Twin Kingdom Valley emulator out there somewhere - I never did beat that game.

[@TheLairdsLair]

It was in 40th place, if you want to play Twin Kingdom Valley online you can do so here: bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=89

[@CoLD.SToRAGE]

Castle Quest was one of my faves! 🤩

[@Rorschach.]

Still playing ELITE on my PC (as Oolite) some 40 years later.

[@endoflevelboss]

"some" 40 years lol

[@paulleach3612]

As much as I loved my ZX Spectrum (and still do) I was always slightly envious of friends who had a BBC Micro and a copy of Elite. It was just so damn good on that machine.

[@BenjWarrant]

_Chuckie Egg_ at no. 2 and _Elite_ at no. 1 - that's correct. _Defender_ was good too, and I also enjoyed... was it _Missile base?_ Where missiles were raining from the sky and you had to fire interceptor missiles to keep your bases intact. Something like that.

[@yeknommonkey]

Fortress was a real game changer with 3D looking play. Played it endlessly and thought it was impossible. Tried again a few years ago in an emulator and completed the whole game (basically two long runs) on my second attempt. Was amazed at how difficult it seemed when the idea of what was on screen was so new. And how easy and slow it all was coming from a PS4 etc like 35 years later..

[@ceejay744]

Frak!....Such a beautiful game. So difficult to play, but so so beautiful.

[@caeserromero3013]

We had a C64 at home since 1983. I started school that year but didn't encounter a computer at school until middle school, and even then it was a vic 20 that sat in a corridor unused. There was a BBC in the library at secondary school and we used one ONCE in maths class playing a snooker game about angles, but mostly we played blockbusters on the library BBC if it was raining and couldn't play footy. By then we had business studies GCSE with RM Nimbus 286s running win 3.1 which we mostly used for copyingsuper pixelated soft porn bitmaps of Pamela Anderson and other lingerie models. ..

[@recklessroges]

I loved Ravenskull. Many years later I went back with BeebEm and scum-saved my way through all of it.

[@edbrown2998]

Chuckie Egg is the game I have fondest memories of, but I’m surprised that Codename Droid (the follow up to Stryker’s Run) doesn’t get more love here, that was an amazing game for the time. And The Last Ninja too, all of the kids were playing that back in the day. Shout out to the amazing Play It Again Sam series where you got 4 games for the price of 1, that was my childhood!

[@TheLairdsLair]

Codename Droid was 40th and Last Ninja was 39th.

[@bobcaruthers4427]

I remember The Last Ninja! I got stuck in the sewer with a giant crocodile. Never did figure it out :)

[@bobcaruthers4427]

I too had an Acorn Electron, got it Christmas 1985. I remember my mum looking at it in the shop window saying she was checking the price for my Uncle Kevin. £99.99. Repton2 will forever be my favourite game.

[@jasoncampbell6222]

I remember this being called BBC Model B when I was at school, I personally owned the original Spectrum 48K and Aquarius, loved them and spent countless hours typing in programmes from magazines then spending even more hours copying hex code.

[@TheLairdsLair]

The BBC B was just a model in the BBC Micro range along with the Model A, Master, Compact, Econet etc.

[@nickharvey7233]

Didn't really play much Elite on my friend's BBC (though Frontier, the sequel, was a firm favourite when i was lucky enough to get an Amiga). I enjoyed Chuckie Egg, but the games I spent the most time on were Tanks and Canyon Battle (a vertical scroller arcade). I still occaisonaly play Tanks with my kids on a BBC Emulator - that game never grows old!

[@DingusBatus]

A lot of fond memories in there. I loved Chuckie Egg. I’m slightly surprised Danger UXB wasn’t mentioned.

[@johnbradshaw7525]

I used to use the BBC computer when I was at school. A friend had a BBC computer and we used to play Elite on his machine. I'm still playing Elite now.

[@flurm7573]

I have huge nostalgia for the Beeb, my dad worked for the council going round schools fixing these and "aquired" one somehow (a B, then a Master). We had loads of bootleg compilation disks with around 20 games on each, I still have them (along with our original Master & CUB monitor) although the disk drives no longer work (I bought a USB drive a few years ago though). My fave games were Elite (of course), Killer Gorilla, Monsters, Arcadians, Jet Pak, Snapper, Canyon Battle, Hunchback, Daredevil Dennis, Labyrinth, Maze (Acornsoft), Eagle's Wing, Rocket Raid, Pole Position, Road Runner and loads more. Also, some educational games which were fun and also played them at school: Granny's Garden, The Lost Frog, Merlin's Castle, L, Table Worms. Will need to get them all set up again, this video and typing this comment has got me right in the mood, lol. Cheers! :)

[@prscrystalized3706]

We had the Master 128. I loved Cyborg Warriors. Graphically great feeling of thundering across an alien landscape. Anything Acornsoft or Micro Power was guaranteed to be good. Glad to see Imogen there as well.

[@michaelhill6453]

Exile. My favourite 8-bit game.

[@bobmcbob4399]

Same, I played the shit out of that. No guides, so never completed it. The fun was (as in metroidvanias) getting new items and figuring out how best to use them and exploring + working out the numerous environmental puzzles. I even managed to glitch into a sharp hollow corner and "sequence break" through the ground into a new area where a new electric arc weapon was waiting for me.

[@almor2445]

Revs was impossible to play! Still seeing it lights up some memberberries!

[@sahhull]

It was brilliant if you had the real BBC analoge joysticks

[@space_is_ace]

I remember giving up on revs fairly quickly ,it wasn't easy to master

[@TertiaryBrewing]

It was really hard to master but really satisfying when you did. It was one of the few games that claimed some level of realism.

[@MrFuzzyGreen]

What no Yellow River Kingdom?! Sure it came free with the Welcome cassette but I sure as hell played it a lot. I think my dad played Repton more than I did!

[@ahudspith]

I was a bit addicted as a kid. Had a C64, BBC B and a Speccy in my 8 bit collection. BY FAR the best version of Elite was on the BBC. But you missed one exceptional game. "The Sentinal". Never played it on the Speccy - but did on the BBC and C64. And OMG how that could be missed amazes me.

[@TheLairdsLair]

The Sentinel only just missed out on the top 20 but made the top 40.

[@davidknoll]

Nice to see Granny's Garden, I played it at school on the Nimbus in the early 90s. I can play through it in a few minutes now I've memorised most of the answers. The Witch hits different on a 34" widescreen. Several years ago I collected together (copies of) all the ports I could find- Amiga, BBC, C64, CPC, Nimbus and Spectrum. I've paid for the more modern iOS one though.

[@LewesMint]

Planetoid was originally called Defender before someone thought they'd better change it to avoid litigation. There was a bug in the original version whereby if you collected all the little men without depositing them, and then killed all the aliens the new level would have 256 men and no aliens. It was fun do do this and then just kill all the men.

[@kevinhanley6462]

I loved going on the BBC at primary school, then got to use BBC Basic again at secondary school on the RM Nimbus; I was unaware it was an emulator and had programs to select.

[@actuallyusingmyrealnameher5061]

We usually had some time during IT before the teacher got in to furtively copy games amongst ourselves and play them for a couple of minutes. I remember playing a time pilot knockoff and resetting it just before getting caught 🙂

[@Magnumaniac]

There really was no competition for the number one slot - Elite was orders of magnitude ahead of the closest competition. I got through so many Quickshot leaf spring joysticks on my journey to Elite rank. They just weren't built well enough to survive the rigors of a Thargoid attack in witch-space :)

[@seany84uk]

I remember playing pip's island adventure on the bbc in primary school. I also briefly owned one in the late 90s and had the teletext adapter

[@Stu2be2]

Loved using it back in the day

[@MarkHewitt1978]

The only one I am sad didn't make the list is Magic Mushrooms. An ok game by itself but the level editor made it one to keep coming back to. Also a mention for a much later release Repton Infinity; which included a rudimentary scripting language you could do some interesting stuff with.

[@camelcase811]

I'm surprised not to see Scramble on there!!

[@JimbobSonOfRiber]

Yay! The thing i said was on the video! Thanks for making me a part of this. And Starship Command is still ace. Although a confession: i didn't have a Beeb as a kid, but the much cheaper Electron (although the best game lists will basically be the same) Granny's Garden is nonsense though, and i never understood what made it educational.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Thanks for your contribution!

[@peteslinn482]

"May I use your sideways RAM?" 😀

[@Mellow_Wood_Hill]

Granny’s Garden was the BOMB.

[@davefb]

Ooh nice, Revs, that was fab especially when you got the expansion tracks. snettertons bombhole was pretty amazing to see. There was also a flight sim called Aviator by Geoff Crammond. . . You can also change gear btw....

[@davefb]

Oh and... Strykers Run was designed by Chris Roberts and Philip Meller... Yes.. THAT Chris Roberts of wing commander and now Star Citizen fame/infamy...

[@MarkHewitt1978]

To see Aviator today, where the challenge was to fly under a wireframe bridge, and then compare to today's Microsoft Flight Simulator, it isn't that long between the two, the progress is mind blowing. I never had Revs but did have Grand Prix Construction Set and put countless hours into it.

[@stuartsinclair6269]

I think you have got it so right, the order of the games, I was a Speccy owner but referred to the bbc use to play all Speccy games and bbc games via an emulator app which are both free today, brought a cheap android tablet and the games are all on there absolutely hundreds of them👍🏻

[@talideon]

I think Granny's Garden ending up on the list was a pure nostalgia vote. It's not really much of a game so much as a pretty linear set of screens. That said, the one for if you're caught by the witch is probably the biggest reason it's burned into so many people's memories!

[@blatherskite3009]

I suppose "Granny's Garden" was for UK kids what "Oregon Trail" was to US kids - something everyone played because it was "educational" and which people of a certain age have fond memories of because it was more fun than normal lessons :)

[@TheLairdsLair]

Correct!

[@dcarbs2979]

Never completed it, to this day I still want to! I always thought the dragon riddle round should be easy.

[@MarkHewitt1978]

Most kids at school really loved it. Myself I had a BBC B at home and compared with the gameplay and graphics of the games I had there Grannies Garden looked awful, so I never actually played it!

[@paulfloyd6790]

My very first exposure to computers, it was 1985 and I was in year 6 at primary school. My teacher didn't have a clue how to use it. If I remember correctly I think it used 8 inch floppy disks.

[@RltchieI]

Funny to think as a child schools would have one BBC Micro in the whole school bar my last school which had a couple. Near the end of my final year they got about three PCs if I recall & they had a demo of Magic Carpet. I was lucky in the mid 80s as a child as my father bought a BBC Master and although we only had the cassette player, it was my first computer. My first game was Revs & the only game my mum was ever able to beat me at was Aqua Attack on the Cassette that came with the computer, we also had Killer Gorilla, Airwolf & few others that slip my mind. If I recall Aqua was at 107 on the tape counter. My father even had a cartridge that plugged into it, but I never knew exactly what it was or what it did. I do know it had spaces for four chips and his had three plugged in it & there was two switches on the top. In the next decade or so I progressed to a C64, Amiga 1200 & then into the world of PCs. Used to love playing Chuckie Egg at school on the old Micros, I have a port of it on PC and still play it. Also played Citadel, a game with a hunchback & Granny’s Garden.

[@paulthomas-vo5vf]

I remember making an OS fiddle, so when playing defender you could hold the return key to get continuous shots rather than having to keep hitting the key. Inspired by my friend, who I thought was going to break the keyboard!

[@richardlloyd2589]

Defender is why my dad bought joysticks!

[@Drew-Dastardly]

Before I even watch this video, the early Acornsoft arcade clones were excellent. Snapper (Pac Man), Planetoid (Defender), Arcadians (Galaxians) and Meteors (Asteroids). They were the games I played at the arcade (or kebab shops) at that time. Starship Command was innovative and what I consider the predecessor to Elite which was the best game of all time. eta: I really liked Super Invaders too - a then modern 80's version of 70's Space Invaders.

[@pweddy1]

I am shocked they didn’t get sued! Some of these look like straight ports not clones!

[@jimcook1161]

One thing you got wrong Acornsoft's PacMan clone was always called Snapper. Atari made them change the graphics into cartoon figures

[@TertiaryBrewing]

Aviator is the one that is missing for me, first attempt at something vaguely like a realistic flight sim. As a kid I had a massive challenge picking which game to buy first, Aviator, which I already knew about, or Elite, which had just been released.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Aviator missed out on the Top 20 buy just one point!

[@NickDDDD]

WOW! Aviator! My Beeb came with free Acornsoft games....Planetoid, Aviator & other stuff!

[@craigwalker3194]

I remember playing Chuckie Egg for the BBC Micro at school, and then I Decided there & Then I wanted one but it was Too Expensive. So I Eventuly settled on A 48k Speccy which turned out a Really Smart Move.

[@PhilipNorton42]

Solid list. Couple of games that missed out are Deathstar, Labyrinth and Space pilot.

[@TheLairdsLair]

One of my own votes went to Death Star, but didn't seem to be so fondly remembered by everyone else.

[@PhilipNorton42]

@@TheLairdsLair I can understand that Death Star was a little frustrating. Being killed by a sinlge pixel bullet wasnt fair. Still, I would have put it higher than, say, Ravenskull. I played that a few times and could never get very far or figure out what I was meant to be doing. Maybe I just didn't "get" it :)

[@dale3852]

Elite was elite. Just amazing

[@foulplay99]

It’s funny, I had a BBC Micro and completely missed out on Oregon Trail and Elite. I played the hell out of the Repton games though, and Citadel. Starship Command was really cool. I remember some other games but not the titles coz it’s been so long!

[@h-leath6339]

I'm a Californian. So, Commodores, Apple IIEs and 8086s. After 40 years you could put me in front of Pango, 3Daemon or Montezuma's Revenge and after 5 minutes my muscle memory alone would be playing them through. Why I love vids on early UK computer gaming is we never had Those computers over here. Though I do remember running into a ZX once when I was a kid. And let's not forget Pinball Construction Set, though you never really "won" that game. And let's not get started on BASIC. And especially (shiver) assembly code... These kids these days and their HTML. Pretty sure none of them even know how many compiler layers their code is going through. Always remember, we speak human language, digital computers speak 0 and 1. We've made a lot of translators to manage the language gap. 10 rem rant over

[@Gazmonster1]

I would have had Dare Devil Denis on there!

[@shaunbowen]

Daredevil Dennis really brings back memories! I was shocked that Codename Droid wasn't on the list!

[@TheLairdsLair]

Both made the wider Top 40

[@donny121able]

At school, we played BBC's 'Chukky Egg,' which was a good game. At home, we had the Tatung Einstein, which, in my opinion, was the best version, I believe the two computers had a similar architecture. I can understand why the BBC was the educational choice, though; it was a robust computer and had a good version of BASIC to learn programming. I think they also struck a deal for reduced cost. The daddy of the computer room was a single Archimedes a5000, which I was lucky enough to dominate due to being computer literate. Have to mention the version of Virus on the Acorn, my dinnertime was well spent. Ah, the good old days. Loving your work, thanks for giving us your time.. Just got to the end of you're vid and good to see Chukie Egg there, and how its spelt.

[@micb3rd]

Yes the Acorn Archimedes were fantastic. Btw the Acorn version of Virus was called Zarch. I still remember being blown away with its graphics.

[@marcraygun6290]

Like you played them in school , my tiny welsh school(25 pupils) had one, fond memories of planetoid and zaxxon , i had commodore plus 4 then spectrum plus 2 as my das was truck driver my other equally humble friends had spectrums ( a 48 and a 228 ) but my posher friends with tory dads had beebs

[@blatherskite3009]

Oi! My dad bought us a Beeb and he was Labour through and through :) He just happened to have a well-paid job at IBM... Anyway, surely a Welsh school should've had a Dragon 32? 🤨

[@pitmatix1457]

Planetoid is still the best Defender game I have played.... Better than Defender in fact!

[@gdparry2727]

Had a BBC computer in school, and even a games disk with Frak and Blagger. It's only recently i finally made it to L3 of Frak - those flying daggers were evil

[@edjack1993]

Nostalgia off the chart!

[@Carlb328]

Seeing these I'm glad I had a Commodore.

[@meropealcyone]

If you'd asked me when I was 16 I'd have said Elite was best. But it was a big time commitment and it helped if you were a nerd. Right now I'd much rather just fire up Chuckie Egg--the perfect platformer.

[@rectify2003]

I still have Elite here on my Win 10 machine, the old version of Elite, that was on floppy

[@IIJOSEPHXII]

I couldn't remember the name of my favourite game from computer studies class on the BBC Micro back in the early 80s, so I googled *jump game "bbc micro"* and eventually found it. It was called Daredevil Dennis. You had to go across the screen four times starting at the top and working your way to the bottom to clear each screen. The controls were just accelerate, jump and brake. It was a very simple concept but I remember it being crazy difficult.

[@TheLairdsLair]

It was a rip-off of the Atari arcade game Stunt Cycle, finished in 24th place.

[@97channel]

The only game I think I ever played on the BBC Micro was Dragon World. It was by 4Mation, and had very similar gameplay to Granny's Garden. I believe it was actually a direct sequel, as it featured very similar, if not exactly the same, artwork of dragons which appeared in Granny's Garden. Dragon World seems to be the far lesser known of the two. It was a sequence of logic puzzles. We used to play it occasionally in school, usually in small groups of three or four. We could never work out the logic behind the puzzles, our progression through the game was pure trial and error, and simply repeating what worked before. As you'd expect from a BBC Micro educational game, the graphics and sound were very basic. But something about it just captivated me. I guess it was the mystery of where it might lead next, where the story might go. It is one of my fondest computer game memories, also one of my earliest. Like reading a book, the scenes in the story took imagination to bring it to life. But at junior school age, I certainly had enough imagination to get totally absorbed by it. Through that blocky BBC Micro artwork, I saw in HD mental imagery the entire world that the game was set in. And from that sensation, I foresaw where games and the whole computing experience would lead to. I was in no doubt that we would eventually see the amazing lifelike virtual worlds which we now have, when the technology progressed. For me, this simple BBC Micro game was the moment that the door to another world first opened. I saw the full potential of computers. Dragon World and the BBC Micro have the fondest of places in my heart, and it feels kinda weird to be now expressing this on the very tech which I then imagined would one day exist, whilst playing that simple little game.

[@ProfessorH]

I got a BBC Master but not until the early 90s I think. The college my dad worked at were phasing them out for early X86s . Fast forward to the late 90s and I was at that same college mucking about with the 486s that were basically dumped on the computing department when the college upgraded to Pentiums. I spent many an hour basically being let lose on them. My favorite game on the BBC was Ricochet. I never even got passed the first stage but I spent hours playing that thing practically trying to brute force it my doing every conceivable jump form every possible spot. Probably was missing something obvious from not having had the manual Must try to see if I can get it working again, I never chucked it out it's way too classic,

[@bearcubd3900]

We had them in are primary school in Ireland during the 80s but I never seen them used and I believe they were thrown in a skip,If only I’d known could have saved one.

[@simonmcpartlin6547]

Remember the first time I saw it at school. Had a floppy disk with all of the Acornsoft virtually perfect arcade conversions and they had been renamed such as Planetiod as Defender etc. I was blown away, these looked and sounded arcade perfect. Was at the time well ahead of the competition but £400 was alot of money! Too much for me so I got the much lesser Acorn Electron. My journey into video games had begun, Playstation 5 now.

[@simonochana3189]

Back in the day, I was saving up for the Acorn Electron as a cheap alternative. By the time I got the money together, Acorn were no longer around.

[@chessoc7799]

Amazed starship comand never got ported to anything else. Been wanting to play it again since I was at school and I am over 50 now lol. got to sort out a emulator some day :)

[@randomxnp]

I had so many of these games ...

[@MarkHewitt1978]

Had a BBC B at home for 5 years before moving onto PC. I had most of these games but surprised that some of them, eg Chuckie Egg I've never heard of! Also, Exile, No. 4? That's insane!

[@TheLairdsLair]

I never met a BBC owner who isn't aware of Chuckie Egg!