| Two new games and a new version of a BBC
emulator are being showcased at the Acorn World show in Yorkshire on
September 12-13, despite its being part of a retro event. |
|
|
| Resurrecting the Acorn World name was a
last-minute inspiration, said Dave Moore, the enthusiastic man behind it.
“Hey, a lot of Acorn people are coming; let’s call it that!”
He hired the adjacent hall at the hotel where Retro Reunited (retroreunited.info)
was already booked and with the help of a few friends covered the cost of
upgrading the hall’s meagre power supply. |
|
|
| “Bringing classic games back to the
future” is Retro Reunited’s slogan. Events like this sometimes
bring 3,000 people. They are not commercial but rather for enthusiasts, and the
age range is a complete mix from about 14. |
|
|
| “Many people behind the organization of
this are writing new games for old 8-bit machines – and also for
RISC OS,” Dave said. Most of their testing is on
A3000s and the like. “Pretty much all of them have used
RISC OS and have written music demos and games for
RISC OS in the past.” |
|
|
| New Release |
| The Krystal Connection is one of the
new-old games to be launched at Acorn World. Stephen Smith wrote this platform
game 25 years ago for Melbourne House, which never released it though it was
95% complete. Out of the blue, Stephen sent it from Australia. Despite the lack
of source code, Tom Walker (author of RPCemu) and team managed to patch the
machine code to finish it. |
|
|
| It will be for sale online after the show
through Retro Software (www.retrosoftware.co.uk) – whose logo is a
tribute to good ol’ Superior Software. The not-for-profit label’s
first release, last May, was Zap!, a classic shoot-em-up for the BBC
Micro never released by Superior; Jamie Woodhouse finished it for Retro. Coming
soon is Mountain Panic, an altogether new arcade adventure for the Beeb
by Dave Footitt. Retro Software prices are between £1.50 and £5
. |
|
|
| The Wakefield and London user groups and
RISC OS Open have taken stands at Acorn World to bring
up-to-date RISC OS to the attention of the retro attendees.
ROOL is scheduled to give a theatre talk about how the operating
system has developed. |
|
|
| Among the Attractions |
| • Professor Steve Furber gives a talk
on the heritage of the BBC Micro (Sunday afternoon). He was one of
Acorn’s principal designers of the Beeb and of the Arm processor. |
|
|
| • Mark Hayman (retroclinic.com) designs
USB interfaces for the BBC Micro – “a fantastically talented guy
giving really professional service to BBCs,” said Dave. “He buys in
old machines, rebuilds, cleans each key, tests, then puts a Compact Flash
interface into it like a harddrive. He can’t get enough old BBCs. He
lists one at £120 on Ebay and it’s immediately gone. He brings a
lot more users back into the BBC fold.” |
|
|
| • Original peripherals for the BBC
Micro: the Hybrid 5000 music system, the Arm evaluation system, the R260 and
the Domesday system. |
|
|
| • Econet Island is “a complete
Econet nerd-out” linking a mixture of more than 30 machines of all types
and eras using Acorn’s pioneering low-cost network system. Users from
anywhere on the internet might even be able to log in during the show. |
|
|
| • Robots controlled by an Iyonix and
a BBC Master. Beebcontrol, headed by Neil Fazakerley, specializes in any
electromechanical gadget than an Acorn computer can interact with. |
|
|
| • A hacked version of BeebEm will be
released, adding AUN (Acorn Universal Networking) support for the Linux and
Windows emulators of the BBC Micro. |
|
|
| • The Ringworld bulletin-board system will
come out of retirement. Rob O’Donnell has added new content to that from
20 years ago. |
|
|
| • Acorn Atoms fitted with flash memory by
Charlie Robson, and a clone of the Atom by Phill Harvey-Smith. |
|
|
| • Robert Sprowson’s dozens of BBC
add-ons and accessories, such as an ethernet upgrade and Arm7 coprocessor. |
|
|
| • Talks by several authors of games: Jamie
Woodhouse (Qwak and Zap!), Kenton Price (Ripton,
Starquake), Matthew Atkinson (Repton 3). |
|
|
| Next Door, Lots More |
| The adjacent hall, four times the size of Acorn
World’s, will be full of every other format under the sun, including
Nintendo, Sega, Spectrum, Amstrad, Amibay (the big Amiga community also has
RISC OS-like arguments over its operating system) and
Atari. |
|
|
| The Homebrew Coding Association will hold its
second gathering during the weekend – independent programmers from across
the UK interested in developing new software for commercially obsolete systems.
The workshop is open to all showgoers. |
|
|
| “There are so many extraordinary hardware
designers and software programmers all doing their own thing in
isolation,” said Dave Moore. “How beneficial it can be when you put
the great minds together.” That’s his main motivation in helping
organize the show. |
|
|
| For the past 10 years Dave has run a couple of
archive sites, preserving old tapes and discs:
www.acornpreservation.org and
www.stairwaytohell.com. He isn’t a current
RISC OS user but has Archimedes and RiscPCs to bring to
shows. He lives in Leicester and as a day job trains people at Rolls-Royce to
use their in-house software. |
|
|
| Venue and Tickets |
| The venue is the Cedar Court Hotel at
Huddersfield, at M62 junction 24 – just around the corner, in motorway
terms, from the sister hotel that hosts the Wakefield
RISC OS show in spring. |
|
|
| Tickets at £13 each cover both Acorn
World and Retro Reunited for both the Saturday (11am to 11pm) and Sunday (11am
to 5pm) and can be bought online: www.acornworld.co.uk. Any profits from
the show will go to the Shelter charity. |
|
|
| Call for a Report |
| Any Archive member who’d be interested
in attending the show and writing up some aspect of it as an article for the
magazine, please contact me. —Ed. |