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I agree that Elite is a technical tour de force, but perhaps a more impressive game is Exile, also on the BBC computer. It could run in 32K RAM and used a procedurally generated landscape, had a decent physics engine, a "realistic" form of AI for the creatures and was absolutely huge.

The most amazing thing (to me) is that problems in the game were solved not by following some pre-programmed rule (put "key A" into "door C"), but by manipulating the environment. So "key A" did fit "door C", but you could also use a sufficiently powerful weapon to blow the door open, or throw an imp through a hole so it goes down and presses a button to open the door. Totally amazing sense of freedom.

There is a play through on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLndV_f_vo

And some technical details here: http://exile.acornarcade.com/devel.html

If you've never seen Exile, you owe it to yourself to spend some time just marvelling at what could be achieved in 32K RAM.

If the games industry had managed to put the 16bit and 32bit machines as hard as Elite and Exile pushed the 8bit BBC, games would be far more advanced today.

Surely, one of the finest games ever, in gameplay, longevity and use of the hardware:

http://www.exile.acornarcade.com/

The game ran on the 32k BBC B (although you only got speech on the 128k Master) *without* doing any multi-loading. Once the game was loaded, it was loaded and never touched the disk again.

Because of the limitation of the hardware, Exile had no in-game menus. If you wanted to save your game, you hit a weird combination of keys, which wrote the save game into a weird part of memory, then hard-booted the BBC. When you reloaded the pre-game menu, it found the save game (probably stored in the printer buffer or something) and you could save to disk. Mental.

In fact, the game even overwrote the video buffer with game data during loading, thus corrupting the screen as it booted, but giving the developers a few extra bytes to use :-)

Nothing has ever come close.

Daern

Have a read of the development page here - the game used self-modifying code to protect itself based on the code itself, the program counter and the 1MHz timer. The code couldn't be moved, stopped or altered. If anything affected any of those systems then the game would fail to decrypt itself and run. I'm amazed that more hardware add-ons didn't break it (although Solidisk's RAM wasn't the only thing that broke it).

Exile is a sideways-scrolling action/puzzle/adventure game which pushed the 8-bit micros and 32K of memory further than anything had ever done and possible has done since. It has great physics, tons of particle effects, great (and varied) graphics, neat sounds, a plot that didn't suck, smooth framerates, trick NPC AI and more. I only recently discovered that every graphic in the game came from a 128 x 113 pixel block in memory - absolutely staggering when you look at screenshots or play the game. The like above has a game development section that is worth a read.

Exile was also squeezed onto the Acorn Electron (the BBC's smaller cousin). This version played inside a window on the screen where the border looked like noise, but was actually game data or code!

Exile II? Hmmm, are you talking about the topdown RPG Exile? It's new to me, I only knew there was a version of Myst called Exile. Apparently Exile II has a teleportation plot aswell, that might confuse my post further.

The Exile I'm talking about never had a sequel, just a lot of ports. Some fan page:
http://exile.acornarcade.com/index.html

My own Exile project page:
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/exile/exile-ish.htm

Actually, thanks to the fact that the game could be bought in stores we had it. I purchased Elite in a computer store in the US. It was available.

Fair enough, I stand corrected. (i presume you're talking about 1984, when the original came out, and not e.g. the PC version from '91...)

Elite was a fun game from a piracy pov; iirc, there were several easter egg ASCII strings in the decrypted binary, e.g. "Does your mother know you're doing this?" and "You are in a maze of twisty little Acronsfot adventures, all alike" (a reference to text adventures by Acornsoft; actually this might have been in another game by the Cambridge crew)

i also have to randomly mention exile here for no particular reason, other than it was the best 8-bit game ever

Are you serious?!

Discover Elite now!! Check out this page, maintained by one of the original creators Ian Bell and this Elite resource

it allows you to steal any
car you want, run over people (without consequences), shoot hookers, set
people on fire with a flame thrower, blow people's heads off (resulting in a
Kill-Bill style fountain of blood), cut people to ribbons with a chainsaw,
and much much worse.

That was EXACTLY the reason why I liked Syndicate so much as a kid. (Well, except the hookers. And I'm not sure about the chainsaw.) The best part? the statistics at the end of the level showing the number of cops, guard, criminals and civilians you shot.

Then again, I became one twisted bastard in the process :P

Dr. David Carpenter obviously hasn't played SimCity 2000, otherwise he would realize that Microwave Power is the safest kind. Duh.

I can see it now...

BBC Computer 32k

BASIC

> *RUN kontiki
Searching..
Loading kontiki 00
;)

Given the wealth of ports available and the fact it is also a 6502 based system, it should be possible. Hey if Superior Software managed to squeeze Exile in there, well.. nuff said.

How about a dodecahedral computer, floating in the air, and rotating with a floppy or DVD drive at the front?

Watch the rate of roll on that Cobra III, Commander Jameson...

Yes, I too had a mis-spent youth.

P.S.: I wonder how many Merkins will understand any of this?