Great list. As an old school Beeb gamer (still have my beloved original B+ and a couple of Bs), I know all too well how the machine received woeful amounts of official ports; and many of those which did get ported were often lazy/rushed "just get it on the shelf" jobs (ie. very poor). The Beeb was always more at home with it's own often excellent home-brew titles. I saved my pocket money for 'Paperboy' as a lad; I loved the concept (had never seen the arcade game) but it was let down by very dull graphics and sluggish speed, the Beeb could've done the game much better than this. 'Commando' as a boy I never actually minded TOO much (was never really an arcade kid so think naivety helped in this case) but when I saw other ports years later realised how shoddy it was. I had 'Robotron 2084' on a (ahem) "borrowed" compilation disk. Was always too frantic for my puzzle/strategy tastes to hold my attention for very long, but handled well enough. I had 'Tempest' on a similar "borrowed" compilation, again never really a favourite but that played pretty well too. Oh, and the cover at 06:11 always made me laugh as I could never see much connection between the illustration and the actual game! A shame 'Bubble Bobble' was never officially released as it's a fair bit better than some of the tat sadly seen late on in the Beeb's original life. 'Hunchback', though lacking some of arcade features do to it's history, handles and plays well as it's own "thing", I used to while away some time on a Saturday afternoon playing this one. Whilst I never (obviously) encountered 'Donkey Kong Jr.' back then, I did have the very similar clone 'Killa Gorilla 2' - originally 'Zany Kong Junior', on one of the many 'Play It Again, Sam' compilations (which I wonder is the one you also recollect), and it actually a really good play (the original 'Killa Gorilla', also by Adrian Stephens, being one of the first computer games I EVER played, and one of the Beeb's best IMO). 'Pole Position' was another early game I played. There were several equal/better Beeb-own clones, and again it's not an all-time favourite but a decent enough play. 'Tapper' was a game I used to see advertised in Acorn User (once again naive to it's arcade origins) and always wanted, never got hold of it back then. In more recent times have played it via emulator and I find it a really fun game, still often give it a go. BUT... I'm AMAZED you didn't include 'Spy Hunter' on the list. Not only one of the best arcade conversions for the BBC in my opinion, but possibly among the best-ish games on the system full stop. I used to spend hours playing this one, pretending it was 'Knight Rider' (one of the influences of the original game, along with James Bond). My arcade-nativity likely did again help me warm to it, but to this day I find it a great port.
Wowo, that was a big comment. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I did play Spy Hunter when compiling this list but I've never been a fan of the game due to the over-complicated controls. It could've sneaked in near the bottom but I have more love for Star Wars 😊 It was definitely DK Jr I played when I was a kid - I assume the completed game made it out into the wild somehow and into the hands of disk traders.
Well worth noting that the version of Chariots of Fire on Hyper Sports on the BBC was done by no less than Martin Galway, hence it sounding spot on. Richard Kay who programmed the game went on to form Software Creations later on. The version of Green Beret is almost as bad as as the C16 version, but not quite. Arkanoid on the BBC is a hugely under-rated version - it plays pretty well and has all the features of the arcade original. An interesting look at the conversions on a machine that didn't get as much attention as maybe it should have.
@@witchfinder1976 Hmm, not sure about that - 4 stages and quite dull really, repetitive blasting and not much else. No variation and even the sounds are quite weak. Galway's music can't save it. To top it all - the beret is grey and not green! 😂
I don't think it was finished, not to the standard of being released at retail anyway. It does look great but is way too hard and is missing a lot of the aracde game's features.
A good list, must admit I had never played Arkanoid on the Beeb. It's also worth noting that none of the home ports of Hyper Sports by Imagine/Ocean had the pole vault event. It was originally left out of the Spectrum version because they were running out of memory and was considered too complex for other machines to handle.
At least it did not have a lot of terrible late 80s/early 90s ports like the zx spectrum those games really make the platform look bad to people who are not familiar with it the first games they would try are probably games like outrun and we know how bad that was.
It was always going to be a hard job to get those late 80s classics into a humble 8-bit machine in a playable form, but good developers did manage it with a lot of them. Of course there were probably twice as many terrible ones that sold way more than they deserved due to the games being so well known!
Great list. As an old school Beeb gamer (still have my beloved original B+ and a couple of Bs), I know all too well how the machine received woeful amounts of official ports; and many of those which did get ported were often lazy/rushed "just get it on the shelf" jobs (ie. very poor). The Beeb was always more at home with it's own often excellent home-brew titles.
I saved my pocket money for 'Paperboy' as a lad; I loved the concept (had never seen the arcade game) but it was let down by very dull graphics and sluggish speed, the Beeb could've done the game much better than this. 'Commando' as a boy I never actually minded TOO much (was never really an arcade kid so think naivety helped in this case) but when I saw other ports years later realised how shoddy it was.
I had 'Robotron 2084' on a (ahem) "borrowed" compilation disk. Was always too frantic for my puzzle/strategy tastes to hold my attention for very long, but handled well enough. I had 'Tempest' on a similar "borrowed" compilation, again never really a favourite but that played pretty well too. Oh, and the cover at 06:11 always made me laugh as I could never see much connection between the illustration and the actual game!
A shame 'Bubble Bobble' was never officially released as it's a fair bit better than some of the tat sadly seen late on in the Beeb's original life. 'Hunchback', though lacking some of arcade features do to it's history, handles and plays well as it's own "thing", I used to while away some time on a Saturday afternoon playing this one.
Whilst I never (obviously) encountered 'Donkey Kong Jr.' back then, I did have the very similar clone 'Killa Gorilla 2' - originally 'Zany Kong Junior', on one of the many 'Play It Again, Sam' compilations (which I wonder is the one you also recollect), and it actually a really good play (the original 'Killa Gorilla', also by Adrian Stephens, being one of the first computer games I EVER played, and one of the Beeb's best IMO).
'Pole Position' was another early game I played. There were several equal/better Beeb-own clones, and again it's not an all-time favourite but a decent enough play.
'Tapper' was a game I used to see advertised in Acorn User (once again naive to it's arcade origins) and always wanted, never got hold of it back then. In more recent times have played it via emulator and I find it a really fun game, still often give it a go.
BUT... I'm AMAZED you didn't include 'Spy Hunter' on the list. Not only one of the best arcade conversions for the BBC in my opinion, but possibly among the best-ish games on the system full stop. I used to spend hours playing this one, pretending it was 'Knight Rider' (one of the influences of the original game, along with James Bond). My arcade-nativity likely did again help me warm to it, but to this day I find it a great port.
Wowo, that was a big comment. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I did play Spy Hunter when compiling this list but I've never been a fan of the game due to the over-complicated controls. It could've sneaked in near the bottom but I have more love for Star Wars 😊
It was definitely DK Jr I played when I was a kid - I assume the completed game made it out into the wild somehow and into the hands of disk traders.
I was a huge fan of Planetoids, and almost arcade-perfect version of defender.
Yeah it was a good clone, one of several I mentioned in a video about the best BBC Micro arcade clones some time ago.
@@witchfinder1976 I've just watched it, and it was an excellent trip back on time, thank you.
Well worth noting that the version of Chariots of Fire on Hyper Sports on the BBC was done by no less than Martin Galway, hence it sounding spot on. Richard Kay who programmed the game went on to form Software Creations later on. The version of Green Beret is almost as bad as as the C16 version, but not quite. Arkanoid on the BBC is a hugely under-rated version - it plays pretty well and has all the features of the arcade original. An interesting look at the conversions on a machine that didn't get as much attention as maybe it should have.
Green Beret on the C64 is quite bad, let alone C16!
@@rwxdesigns Green Beret is ace on the C64!
I didn't know Martin Galway did the tune on the Beeb, but it makes sense that it's so good now 🙂
@@witchfinder1976 Hmm, not sure about that - 4 stages and quite dull really, repetitive blasting and not much else. No variation and even the sounds are quite weak. Galway's music can't save it. To top it all - the beret is grey and not green! 😂
Arkanoid is a big winner here, and i didn't think it was possible to do a bad port of Bubble Bobble but here it is... maybe it was unfinished.
I don't think it was finished, not to the standard of being released at retail anyway. It does look great but is way too hard and is missing a lot of the aracde game's features.
Cool games! Great video!
Thanks for watching!
@@witchfinder1976 your welcome!
A good list, must admit I had never played Arkanoid on the Beeb. It's also worth noting that none of the home ports of Hyper Sports by Imagine/Ocean had the pole vault event. It was originally left out of the Spectrum version because they were running out of memory and was considered too complex for other machines to handle.
Yeah I suppose that is one of the more tricky events to implement. I never get that far anyway so it didn't matter to me! 😂
At least it did not have a lot of terrible late 80s/early 90s ports like the zx spectrum those games really make the platform look bad to people who are not familiar with it the first games they would try are probably games like outrun and we know how bad that was.
It was always going to be a hard job to get those late 80s classics into a humble 8-bit machine in a playable form, but good developers did manage it with a lot of them. Of course there were probably twice as many terrible ones that sold way more than they deserved due to the games being so well known!
Your continued misuse of the term "Rock hard" combined with your robotic voice made me unsubscribe with great rapidity. Cheerio.
@meh3247 Well I'm devastated, you'll be missed 👋