Best Acorn Archimedes Game
Acorn Computers of the U.K released the Archimedes in June of 1987. For the purposes of my computer game commentary I refer to the Archimedes as a Western computer game machine. The Archimedes is also known as "The Archie."
The first Archimedes models were the BBC-badged A305/310 and the Acorn-badged A440. Both the A305/310 and the A440 were powered by 32-bit RISC-based (as opposed to CISC-based) ARM2 CPUs clocked at 8 MHz. The A305 had 512K of RAM, the A310 1 meg of RAM, and the A440 had 4 megs of RAM and 20 meg hard disk drive with ST-506 hard disk controller. The A305 and A310 had two expansion slots (podule backpane panels), the A440 four. Note that the original A410 was never released, only the subsequent A410/1 (see below).
Upon their release in late-1987 and early-1988, the A305 retailed in the U.K. for £1150, the A310 for £1250, and the A440 for £2880. These prices include color monitor.
As with the Amiga 1000 of 1985, both BBC- and Acorn-badged Archimedes models were housed in plastic injection-molded desktop form-factors with integrated 3.5" 800K double-sided double-density disk drive (DSDD), detachable (IBM PC/AT-style) keyboard, and 2-button mouse. However, the subsequent BBC A3000 and Acorn A410/1, 420/1 and 440/1 of mid-1989 were housed in compact plastic wedge-shaped form-factors, evoking the Commodore 128, Atari ST and Amiga 500.
Upon their release in mid-1989 the BBC A3000 with 1 meg of RAM retailed in the U.K. for £649 whereas the A410/1 with 1 meg of RAM retailed for £1999, the A420/1 retailed for £1699 with 2 megs of RAM and 20 meg hard disk drive, and the A440/1 retailed for £2499 with 4 megs of RAM and 50 meg hard disk drive.
The BBC 3000 and A4x0/1 were powered by 8 MHz ARM2 CPUs and featured RISC OS in 512K ROM, integrated 103-key keyboard, and integrated 3.5" 800K double-sided double-density disk drive (DSDD). The BBC 3000 featured one internal and one external expansion slot whereas the A4x0/1 featured four expansions slots. A4x0/1 RISC OS also featured MEMC1a memory protection.
The Archimedes typically displayed games in 256-from-4096-color 320x256 resolution on 14" Acorn RGB color monitor, 14" Philips CM8833 RGB color monitor, or 14" NEC Multisync hires color monitor.
The best Acorn Archimedes game is David Braben's Zarch of 1987.
The best Acorn Archimedes port is Elite of 1991 by Hybrid Technology of Cambridge, which runs on an unexpanded A310 or A3000. Archimedes Elite was programmed by Warren Burch and Clive Gringras.
The Archimedes' stock-standard ARM2 CPU was clocked at 8 MHz and came in at 4½ MIPS, which is five times the computational power of ST, Amiga and Mac Motorola 68Ks.
And when it came to polygon-pushing and sprite-scaling, this showed. Bigtime.
However, the Archimedes could handle 2D sprite- shifting and -scaling with ease as well; it could easily handle the best Amiga games, but not many Amiga games were ported to it. That said, Krisalis Software ported no fewer than 20 ST/Amiga games to the Archimedes from 1990 to 1993, which included the likes of Gods, Lotus 2 and Lemmings. The only thing the Archie had problems replicating was Amiga plasmas (e.g., Fire & Ice), but its 256-color Mode 13 generated impressive effects nonetheless.
Falcon was an amazing flight sim in 1987 on the bloody Atari ST! Imagine what a native Archimedes version would have been like... remember, five times the computational power of the 68000s. Probably more with Falcon.
Name any 3D computer game from 1987-90... it could have been better on the Archie. Carrier Command, M1 Tank Platoon, MechWarrior etc. The Archie could have hosted Doom of 1993 much earlier than it in fact did.
The Archimedes did not take off as a computer game machine. If it did we'd be looking at a different computer game landscape in the late 80s and early 90s; perhaps an even more inventive computer game industry during that period; perhaps without the overwhelming Doom / Quake FPS dominance of the North Americans. Not that Doom / Quake lacked inventiveness; they had that in spades: I'm talking about inventiveness as it pertains to different genre as well as new-genre birth.
The Acorn Archimedes: Polygon-pushing Powerhouse
Back in the late 80s and early 90s of Western computer game history, there existed a microcomputer that was quite a bit more powerful (and expensive) than other micros of the era, but the other micros were more popular and therefore had a more extensive computer game catalogue; that is, they got more exclusives and more ports.
Owners of these "lesser" micros kept an eagle eye on this more powerful micro, which astonished them with its raw processing power that allowed it to smoothly and quickly scale 2D images as well as push around polygons at high framerates, and in high fidelity.
This micro hosted David Braben's Zarch of 1987, which is one of the greatest computer games of all-time. About a year later Zarch was ported to ST/Amiga under the name of Virus. And while ST/Amiga Virus stand as great ports of the original, in comparison to Zarch they run like my Aunt May after she's had too much sherry to drink.
Thus did this powerful micro became legendary via Zarch alone, to say nothing of its other 3D games. [1]
This powerful micro, of course, was the RISC powerhouse known as the Acorn Archimedes.
It was a beast.
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