Looking for an Acorn Archimedes game

[AlexJ]

I'm looking for a game that we used to play years ago on the old Acorn A3020's at school. Can't remember the title but perhaps someone else might from a description.

Basically you controlled this ball which rolled along this path and you had to move left and right and jump to avoid holes. The ball was constantly rolling and you rolled 'into the screen' (the path was coming towards you all the time). It might have been set in space but I can't remember.

Anyone got any ideas from that?

[Demon Cleaner]

Wasn't that Bounder from Gremlin? I liked that game on the C64.



Or perhaps Trailblazer, also by Gremlin, that one was also in space.

[AlexJ]

Trailblazer looks like it could be it. I'll have to have a look for the ROM.

EDIT: Just found an ADF for Trailblazer on the Amiga and that's definitely the game. I can't believe how bad I am at it though, I seem to remember us getting quite far in it at the time.

[Harrison]

I remember that game. I never knew it was available on the Archimedes though.

I do however have a complete collection of Archimedes software so if you wanted to play it on that version again I can see if that game is in the collection. And confusingly the Archimedes disk images used by Archimedes emulators are also called ADFs (Archimedes Disk Format).

It was definitely a great system at the time and one of the first true 32 bit systems. The RISC based ARM CPUs were far ahead of anything else, and the Risc OS was great at the time. It was also a pretty advanced system and actually walked all over the Amiga with 256 colours on screen at once and 8 channel stereo sound. And that was in 1987 when the A500 was just becoming the most popular home computer. It was quite a shame that Acorn ended up being mainly a schools based supplier and not a main stream competitor in the home computer market.

[AlexJ]

I do however have a complete collection of Archimedes software so if you wanted to play it on that version again I can see if that game is in the collection. And confusingly the Archimedes disk images used by Archimedes emulators are also called ADFs (Archimedes Disk Format).

Be great if you could find it. Been a while since I last tried emulating the Arc. Is Red Squirrel still the best emulator?

[Harrison]

As far as I know Red Squirrel is still the best one, but I've not looked to see myself for a while. I will have a check and see.

[Demon Cleaner]

Yes, definitely Red Squirrel. I also quite enjoyed Trailblazer, as it had a very fast gameplay for that time. Didn't know on what platforms it was released, as I only had the C64 version.

EDIT: According to Wikipedia, it was released on following platforms: Atari 8-bit, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Gizmondo, MSX, ZX Spectrum. As you can see, Acorn isn't mentioned. They also mention it is a single player game, but you can play it in 2 player mode with split screen, as seen on the screenshot.

[Harrison]

I'm sure I played it on the CPC. I will have a look though my Acorn games collection later and see if the game is there. If so we can definitely update that Wiki entry!

[AlexJ]

It might have been a clone perhaps. The Amiga version for example isn't an official version, it's PD by another author.

[Teho]

Trailblazer was brilliant! I used to play that a lot on the C64. Did you know it also had a sequel, called Cosmic Causeway? I never played that so don't know how it compares to the original game. Not sure what systems had it either, but it was on the C64 at least.