Have you ever played a BBC Micro game?

[Tailzo]

The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro was a popular microcomputer in the 80s that sold 1,5 million units. I never saw one myself, and I was born in 1984, and I live in Norway. But I've seen it mentioned on this forum several times in my "Have you ever played" threads. From what I've been reading, it was biug in british schools. Most schools as some point had these machines. I have seen screens of some of the games, but I do not know much about them, and have never played a BBC micro game myself.

What are your memories of games from this Microcomputer? Did you install games at school? Did you have one at home? Did you make games in Basic?

 

[IDreamOfHime]

Yes, I went to school in 1980s UK.

We spent several weeks playing through dread dragon droom as a project. After every chapter in the game, we'd write short stories, draw art, and do other creative activities linked to what we'd just played.

 

[Gaz]

Yup at school in the UK

 

[Thekeats]

A friend had the BBC Micro, I had the smaller and cheaper Electron.

At the time loved the games Superior Software used to release.

 

[MonsterJail]

Unlike most people I played one at home rather than school

Spoiler

because my dad was a teacher and he borrowed it during the holidays

Chuckie egg, Stryker's run, Volcano and granny's garden were the highlights

 

[IDreamOfHime]

Unlike most people I played one at home rather than school

Spoiler

because my dad was a teacher and he borrowed it during the holidays

Chuckie egg, Stryker's run, Volcano and granny's garden were the highlights

Click to shrink...

My friends dad was also a teacher who had one at home, but he wouldn't let kids play it 🙄

 

[ClivePwned]

there were BBC machines in the computer lab in high school but we used them for word processing. I probably played a BBC game that was ported to the Atari home computers but I couldn't say. I never played a C64 game, but I played a lot of games on the Atari 400/800 that started on other platforms.

 

[CandySTX]

Another UK school kid here.

It was during the early 90s, but there were enough Micros going about in the Primary School scene.

 

[MrKlaw]

Had an Electron as it was the more affordable version but still ran most games the same. Some differences like Elite was B&W as the electron didn't have Mode 7 so couldn't switch modes halfway down the screen like the BBC version. And no thargoids.

from my memory I liked it a lot - both being able to program in BBC Basic which was amazing to use, and the games (Chuckie Egg a classic). I do remember it having a *lot* of 'homage' versions of big games like defender etc. But I think that was pretty common back then generally

 

[Orbis]

Yeah around 95/96 we had one at school still. My only encounter with 5.25" floppy disks. The only game I can remember was one where you dress someone if I recall? Not really a game and certainly not impressive given what other platforms were doing by this point, but I guess my school just hadn't got around to replacing them.

 

[Rassilon]

When my older brother was teaching himself to code instead of going to uni in the early 2000s he was tinkering with a port of Chuckie Egg and let me play his version

 

[Justsomeguy]

Yup. Had an electron, then a BBC maste compact, then an archimedes. loved them all. Superior software, acornsoft. Those were the days!

 

[Dan Thunder]

Yup. School. UK. 80's. Pretty much a given you'd have seen one!

 

[Red Liquorice]

I remember my dad bringing one home from work and we had it for a few months, I think they were being trained to use them. Chuckie Egg is the only game I remember playing on it. Up to that point I'd only had an Atari 2600, so using a keyboard was totally new to me, this was even before I had a Spectrum so I'd guess 1984-6?

We also had them in school a little later on, but it was literally like half a dozen of them in the whole school - for everybody, lol. Even in a class you had 3 or 4 kids huddled around each one. I assume things are a little different these days!

 

[Gelf]

Yep, I'm another who went to school in the UK in the 80s. First system I was ever exposed to, our teacher would let those who finished any classwork early to play games on it.

Sadly I have little memory of what the games we played were. I mostly recall there where a few text based adventure games with some basic graphical elements. One that stands out had you managing fuel and travelling to different planets, and on those planets there would be typical text adventure type gameplay. To get through the game required a lot of trial and error but we kept trying. I've never worked out what that game was even called though, nothing seems familiar when scanning through classic games.

 

[Wallers]

My friend had one, they used to rent computers and had many weird things like the Oric Atmos. They stuck with the BBC because of being able to do 'school work'.

We did do that, I wrote my GCSE program on it. Though we played games more often, Repton, Revs, Elite. They had a thing which would dump the games to floppy disk. It was easier than tape to tape on a Spectrum...

 

[eXistor]

I think this is the first one of these polls where I have to answer "no".

 

[SanTheSly]

I feel like I almost certainly have during my reception/Year 1 time at school in the mid-late 90s. I was super young and I distinctly remember playing some games on what I assumed were PCs but were almost certainly more likely to be BBC Micros.

I guess there is a chance they could have been Win98 PCs but my memory is so fuzzy about it I'd never be able to remember, or what games I even played.

 

[sir_crocodile]

Grannies garden and dinosaur discovery gang represent!

As mentioned in the OP many people my age in the UK have used one since tons of our schools bought them, though most of us have probably mostly or only played edutainment games like above.

 

[Dasnap]

I actually played around on one the other week at the Science Museum! They had games loaded up on a few old computers but I managed to back out to the command prompt and write some Basic with a staff member instead.

 

[basic_text]

We had one at school!
Mainly used for Dread Dragon Droom and Geordie Racer.

Its where I first learnt programming too!

 

[Headman Rum]

Yep. My grandad had one. Many happy hours spent round his playing elite, repton and some snooker game whose title I don't remember.

 

[Betamaxbandit]

Yup, I distinctly remember this bad boy being wheeled in to our classroom in the late 80s (man alive im old as hell)

Only ever "played" education games but still have the vivid memories of how the keyboard sounded and felt

 

[Polk]

Nope, I'm not sure if I tried even emulation.

 

[TechnicPuppet]

Yes, these were standard in our schools. I loved the stock market game. I learned how stocks worked from it so I guess that's why schools had it. I did play other games but mainly used for programming.


View: https://youtu.be/4mCL4Q4E7MI?si=HFlSt8gqPVlor26A

 

[Grue]

UK school crew, anyone remember The Turtle?

It was a robot which would move in line with simple commands you input into the Micro.

We had a pen on ours and instead of drawing a lovely house or whatever, someone went nuts with the zeros and drew a permanent straight line down the middle of the classroom carpet.

Good times.

 

[PaulloDEC]

There's an outside chance I've emulated something at some point, but nothing I can remember. Confident in voting no.

 

[Polk]

UK school crew, anyone remember The Turtle?

It was a robot which would move in line with simple commands you input into the Micro.

We had a pen on ours and instead of drawing a lovely house or whatever, someone went nuts with the zeros and drew a permanent straight line down the middle of the classroom carpet.

Good times.

Click to shrink...

You had physical turtle from Logo? I'm jealous..

 

[mclem]

My dad was an early joiner on the bandwagon of pushing and working with computers in schools from the early 1980s, as a college lecturer he worked on a number of teacher training courses. As such, I had fairly ready access to Beebs and a ton of edutainment and a few games, and when they finally got around to moving their hardware on to PC he salvaged an awful lot of the outdated software and a system, which is now in my garage. I think I might even have a Concept Keyboard there, which I always found a fascinatingly fun device.

Yes, I went to school in 1980s UK.

We spent several weeks playing through dread dragon droom as a project. After every chapter in the game, we'd write short stories, draw art, and do other creative activities linked to what we'd just played.

Click to shrink...

There is a lesser-known sequel (in a very loose sense!) called Dust: A Space Adventure, which reused many characters in a different light.

It's pretty wild.

I keep promising myself that at some point I'll do some sort of Let's Play-esque exploration of that era of edutainment software, 'cause I find it fascinating, particularly how they predate the National Curriculum so many pieces of software are basically unique to one Local Education Authority and any others who might buy into it.


In terms of actual games, I have one thing that absolutely must be said, even though it goes against my very being to do so:

Definitive version of Chuckie Egg.

I love the Spectrum dearly, it's what I grew up with, but Chuckie Egg on the Beeb is *ingrained* into my soul.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

Granny's Garden.

 

[Masterspeed]

I still miss the random Sky games from back in the day, especially the bumblebee one

 

[Grue]

You had physical turtle from Logo? I'm jealous..

Click to shrink...

We did

Look at this little guy pooping out his geometry


View: https://youtu.be/XIdOR9n398c?si=XvQWFCRI4Qz3JG4W

 

[mclem]

I still miss the random Sky games from back in the day, especially the bumblebee one

Click to shrink...

Not that sort of BBC.

Well, *named after* that sort of BBC, but not in that sense.

(But Beehive Bedlam was a great little Puzzle Bobble clone)

 

[mclem]

The essential accompaniment to the BBC is, of course, the reason it's *called* that.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMWEiCdsfc

And arguably, the BBC Micro was a key middle step that led to the starting up of a little company called arm.

 

[Kinketsu]

Probably every single person who was a kid in the UK at a certain time played a BBC.

 

[AndyVirus]

Not sure how or why but my dad had one, and in the summer/Easter holidays we'd set it up at the dining table.

 

[Turnabout Sisters]

This is a blind spot for me. I've only heard the name of this thing. Despite being in retro gaming circles forever, I'm pretty sure this is the first time the words "Chuckie Egg" are reaching my eyeballs in that specific combination

 

[Bulby]

We had these at my primary school. We made games on them using aligator clips, I didnt understand a thing that was going on.

 

[Vince Death]

I went to school in the 80s and I remember them. They also had them at our youth club lol. I don't really remember the games though. Fuck getting old lol

 

[pswii60]

Yeah. I was a C64 kid but aside from UK schools being full of BBC Micros (and later Archimedes/RISC PCs), we had a BBC Micro at home too as my dad had it as his work computer.

So I spent quite a bit of time on the BBC Micro, programming it, playing games like Chuckie Egg etc, and "Tim Paint" which was a drawing program of which I can find no reference to on the internet whatsoever bizarrely.

It was a really quirky machine, with different "modes" for graphics/resolution etc. Programming it via its BASIC interpretation was really simple compared to other machines of the day. But also very limited compared to the POKEs and PEEKs you could do on a C64 to really get low level. The sound chip was also total shite. And of course BBC Micro was the powerhouse behind.. teletext. And the ideal machine for schools and office work etc at the time.

But it was also pretty boring. And no patch on a C64 for gaming of course.

Also obligatory:

Also don't forget the Turtle for LOGO!!

Probably every single person who was a kid in the UK at a certain time played a BBC.

Click to shrink...

Indeed, pretty sure every school had one at the very least. Before replacing them with Archimedes, then RISC PCs and finally the Windows PCs of today.

The tech world before globalisation was very interesting for sure.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Yeah I tried these at school

 

[Stop It]

Yes, my second primary school had them. Good times!

 

[Stop It]

Yeah. I was a C64 kid but aside from UK schools being full of BBC Micros (and later Archimedes/RISC PCs), we had a BBC Micro at home too as my dad had it as his work computer.

So I spent quite a bit of time on the BBC Micro, programming it, playing games like Chuckie Egg etc, and "Tim Paint" which was a drawing program of which I can find no reference to on the internet whatsoever bizarrely.

It was a really quirky machine, with different "modes" for graphics/resolution etc. Programming it via its BASIC interpretation was really simple compared to other machines of the day. But also very limited compared to the POKEs and PEEKs you could do on a C64 to really get low level. The sound chip was also total shite. And of course BBC Micro was the powerhouse behind.. teletext. And the ideal machine for schools and office work etc at the time.

But it was also pretty boring. And no patch on a C64 for gaming of course.

Also obligatory:

Also don't forget the Turtle for LOGO!!

Indeed, pretty sure every school had one at the very least. Before replacing them with Archimedes, then RISC PCs and finally the Windows PCs of today.

The tech world before globalisation was very interesting for sure.

Click to shrink...

Ah the programming turtle, loved that.

Yep my primary school had BBC ones and then the Acorn Archimedes.

 

[Orfax]

At school, in the 80s, in Australia. We too had BBC Micros. I remember Turtle and Dinosaur Discovery.

 

[Springy]

Had one at home. First game I remember playing on it was Free Fall, shortly followed by Starship Command. Lots of space games for me, I guess! Good preparation for Elite soon after. Also distinctly remember being amazed by Bone Cruncher a few years later because of the digitized voice that crackled out of its title screen.

 

[mclem]

It was a really quirky machine, with different "modes" for graphics/resolution etc. Programming it via its BASIC interpretation was really simple compared to other machines of the day. But also very limited compared to the POKEs and PEEKs you could do on a C64 to really get low level.

Click to shrink...

BBC Basic, LIMITED?

YOU COULD WRITE IN ASSEMBLER IN-LINE!

BBC Micro User Guide: Assembly Language

Edit: Oh, that snippet (from the BBC manual) reminded me of the Tube. The BBC was a fascinating computer from an architecture standpoint too.

 

[Titantodd]

Yep, primary school in the UK in the mid/late 90s here. Probably a bit later than most but my school was in the North and it didn't get a proper IT suite until I reached year 6. Instead, it had a BBC Micro kept away fully operational in a cupboard/closet between two classrooms. I've definitely played Chuckie Egg and Granny's Garden, plus a bit more that I can't remember.

Incredibly, my school had a CD-i Player too. Had Hotel Mario and some educational game based in a paint factory I can't remember the name of, but no Zelda, unfortunately. I have NEVER seen one since.

 

[Lowrys]

Yep, went to UK school. I remember a 3D game where you controlled a spaceship, but it wasn't Elite. It had vector graphics and you controlled the thrust with a mouse button and the direction with a mouse. Can't remember the name though.

 

[Drayco21]

I clicked on this thread expecting it to be about flash games on the BBC website and that we'd all be talking about how much that Walking With Dinosaurs Big Al game slapped, so I guess my answer is a very definitive no, but I enjoy learning about new things in gaming I never knew existed

 

[DeciderVT]

Not only did I use one at school in the 80s but the school actually lent their Micro to me for a week when I was about five or six because I showed such an interest in it. This was basically unheard of in a borough as poor as ours but my teachers trusted my parents.

Unfortunately it took my dad until Thursday evening to work out how to hook it up and get it running, so I only had it to myself for a couple of days.