32-bit Acorn Gaming
News
Earlier News

This page contains a selection of earlier news stories.

Brief news stories up to 4/6/98
In-depth news stories up to the end of June 1998
Acorn Southeast Show 1998 games and show round-up - 2/7/98
Acorn World 1997 games and show round-up - 1/1/98

Click here for the latest news stories


Earlier
[Headlines]

These are news headlines for the period from January 31st until the 4th of June 1998 -
newer stories are also available.

4/6/98
MESS, the "Multiple Emulation Super System", has finally been released - now you can play Megadrive, NES and other console games on your Acorn computer! Available for download now. It's disappointingly slow on my Risc PC 700, however - the NES emulator runs at about 2 frames per second, and the Megadrive one runs at between 1 and 3 seconds per frame!
4/6/98
Andreas Dehmel's excellent Doom It Yourself has been upgraded yet again! (See earlier stories below). The new version has various speed-ups and tidy-ups, as well as improved support for DeHackEd (which allows you to alter how the game behaves), extra cheats and also a few fixes for minor bugs
25/5/98
R-Comp now have Syndicate running successfully on A5000s
22/5/98
Screenshots and more news on R-Comp's port of Syndicate are now available - the demo I have plays smoothly on my Risc PC 700
22/5/98
TBA's Quake driver for R-Comp is nearing completion - the final optimisation stage is now almost complete, with a recent improvement making it 40% faster on complex scenes
22/5/98
An ARM710 version of TBA's Brutal Horse Power now looks more likely, with possible NetStation-related interest shown in the game. TBA are also working on the specification of an as-yet unnamed 3D game which will begin development soon
22/5/98
Robert Templeman's Destiny failed to make its promised release at the Wakefield Acorn Spring Show. Despite having a stand booked, Rob did not attend the show and his stand remained empty. Apparently he telephoned the show organisers to say that his car had broken down, but this does not explain his complete non-appearance and subsequent lack of announcement as to the reason for his absence
22/5/98
R-Comp have announced that there is a small bug in the ARM3 versions of Acorn Doom sold at the recent Wakefield show - to fix it simply uncomment the first line in the !Doom.!Boot file (delete the '|' character). Copies sold since do not have this problem
15/5/98
R-Comp have announced that they will be publishing an Acorn version of Syndicate, the well-known action and strategy game. If you can imagine Cannon Fodder viewed from a different angle and with lots of added complexity, then you're on the way to Syndicate. The game will be demoed at the Wakefield Acorn Spring Show this weekend, but won't be available for purchase
15/5/98
More news from R-Comp is the first public confirmation from them that they will be publishing the official Acorn version of iD software's seminal Quake, developed by TBA Software (see news of 23/4/98). R-Comp have also announced that they will be publishing the full version of Abuse. Both of these will preview at Wakefield but not be available other than to order
15/5/98
Some new screenshots of Kindred Software's forthcoming new game, Skirmish, are now available
15/5/98
Also from R-Comp comes the announcement that Wakefield will see the release of an A5000-compatible version of Acorn Doom, and that the price of Doom will be cut by £5 to £30 at the show
12/5/98
Andreas Dehmel's superb Doom It Yourself has been upgraded. A superb Acorn version of Doom which you must compile yourself, the upgrades add network support and high-colour screenmode support amongst other improvements and bug fixes. Unlike R-Comp's Acorn Doom, DIY also runs on A5000s
12/5/98
The fMSX and xNes emulators have been updated and can be downloaded. xNes now supports lots more games, and has various bug fixes as well as joypad support, whilst fMSX now has a fully integrated desktop front-end. The author of these ports, David McEwen, has also ported Stella, an Atari 2600 emulator, and AdamEm, which emulates the Coleco ADAM
12/5/98
A regular comp.sys.acorn.games poster, Nathan Atkinson, has announced that he has obtained Fednet's level designers for Stunt Racer 2000 and Star Fighter 3000 and will be releasing these 'soon'
12/5/98
Budget games company Generation Design have announced that their 'Generation Collections CD' has had another game added - 'The Gold Run'. Registered owners can get a free upgrade
12/5/98
Stephen Scott has upgraded his simple point'n'click firing game, Jaw Wars
12/5/98
The multiple arcade machine emulator, MAME is now on version 0.31 and supports lots more games - you can download it from the official Acorn MAME site
12/5/98
Acorn Bomberman-alike game, MarsQuake, is now on version 1.10, with stable support for multi-computer games connected via the serial port
12/5/98
The Datafile have massively cut the price of puzzle-game Wizard Apprentice to £14.95 - previously it had been hugely over-priced at a staggering £34.95
23/4/98
TBA Software and R-Comp Interactive are teaming up to release iD Software's seminal Quake for the Acorn platform. This will be a properly licensed full commercial release which will include the original level files for the game. It is very unlikely that it will be possible to purchase the player without the level files - indeed, there are obvious commercial reasons why this must be the case, as for Acorn Doom
23/4/98
Kindred Software have given permission for 32-bit Acorn Gaming to publish some exclusive screenshots of their forthcoming new game, Skirmish
17/4/98
Robert Templeman's Destiny will now definitely be released at the Wakefield Acorn Spring Show 1998. Rob has booked a stand, and it turned out that the only free space was next to the rival TBA Software stand. This will probably be rearranged by the show organisers, however.
17/4/98
Work on Kindred Software's forthcoming Worms-type game, Skirmish is coming along well. Some screenshots of the latest version will be available soon from these pages.
17/4/98
David McEwen is working on a new 3D engine - the Java release will be on his web site soon, but the Acorn version will be vastly superior. Planned demos include a Quake-style demo with portals, and a car racing demo. Features include dynamic coloured lighting and shadows. Apparently the Acorn version already runs at an impressively high frame-rate, despite the current lack of major optimisation.
17/4/98
New versions of the Colem, fMSX and Xnes emulators have recently been released. New features include pause/restart, reset, extra screen modes and speed increases. The author, David McEwen, is also working on a ports PC Dragon, VICE, Stella and AdamEm - more details on these soon. Work on porting the latest version of Macintosh emulator vMac has also been started.
21/3/98
A demo of Artex's brand new point'n'click adventure game, Ankh, is now downloadable from 32-bit Acorn Gaming
20/3/98
A brand new Sega Master System emulator, Miracle, has just been released by Richard Talbot-Watkins and Matthew Godbolt. This runs at full speed even on slower Acorn machines, and has full sound - download it now!
20/3/98
Destiny is in the final stages of production now - the desktop front-end has just been completed and the first batch of packaging has arrived (apparently in a 1m x 1.6m box!). The author, Robert Templeman, has not yet decided whether to take a stand at the Wakefield Acorn Spring Show 1998
20/3/98
Artex inform me that the demo of Ankh is now complete but still contains a few small bugs which they are in the process of ironing out - so keep an eye out for this next week!
18/3/98
R-Comp have announced the availability of an Acorn port of DeHackEd, freely available from their web site. This allows you to make changes to how their Acorn port of Doom runs, altering such things as weapon damage and monster attributes
18/3/98
R-Comp have also announced an upgrade to version 1.01 of their Acorn release of Doom. This fixes various sounds and graphics problems which apparently only affected first issue Risc PCs. Contact R-Comp to obtain the upgrade
18/3/98
The copyright-infringing game Bubble Impact is now available for purchase in the UK, despite some graphics and sounds lifted without modification from original Taito games. The game costs £4.50 from Owl-Art Un-Ltd
12/3/98
The demo of Ankh will shortly be downloadable from the Stuttgart University FTP site (Germany), which is mirrored at Imperial College (UK) - if it's not yet available try again in a day or two's time (still not available as of 18/2/98)
12/3/98
Anyone with the free C compiler GCC can download and compile their own Acorn version of Doom now, thanks to Andreas Dehmel, who has released an archive containing patches for the freely downloadable LinuxDoom 1.10 sourcecode for Doom. Installation is claimed to be almost fully automatic - all you need to do is download the requisite bits and pieces and then run them. The port claims to use lots of assembler optimisations to "speed things up enormously". It even works on A5000s, and will take advantage of a ColourCard if you have one. Have a look at http://www.forwiss.tu-muenchen.de/~dehmel/DIY.html for all the details
12/3/98
A demo of Artex's Exodus can be downloaded now from German dealer ACE's web pages, although it should be available from a UK site soon too (Artex are in the process of changing their web pages service provider)
10/3/98
The promised demo of Artex's eagerly-awaited graphical adventure game Ankh has just been confirmed for release within "the next few days"
6/3/98
With the latest round of casualties of the involuntary redundancies at Acorn including the driving force behind Acorn's recent interest in games development, Kevin Lingley, it is now unclear what the precise status of projects such as WipeOut 2097 is; it is also likely that some other games-based projects under development may now sever their direct connections with Acorn
4/3/98
Psygnosis's world-famous WipeOut 2097 is being ported to Acorns - this superb, futuristic 3D-racing game, in which the vehicles hover above the track, looks like being the first product of Acorn's new commitment to games
4/3/98
Original Acorn Doom-clone Destiny's revised release date puts it less than one month away, although it has resolutely failed to meet earlier release dates
1/3/98
The superb Exodus is now available in German as well as English - German distribution is by ACE. Also, if you bought the game at Acorn World then you should download a minor bug fix upgrade from Artex's web pages
26/2/98
Christopher Joseph recently mentioned the existance of a brand new Worms-type game called Skirmish in comp.sys.acorn.games - having seen a preview of this game, I can honestly say that it is graphically the most impressive game of its kind I have seen, so let's hope the final game lives up to its promise!
25/2/98
TBA have announced that their full commercial verion of Quake entitled, TBA-Quake, will be available to buy at the forthcoming Wakefield Show. A player-only release, current plans are to charge £14.99 to receive a copy by email or £19.99 on floppy disc. You will need to buy the original PC Quake separately in order to get the level files. See below
25/2/98
A classic 16-bit era game will be available "soon" in a superb, pixel-perfect Acorn port which is playable on all Acorn machines
23/2/98
Aleph One are progressing well on their implementation of VESA 2.0 and DirectDraw for Acorn PC cards, which when complete will allow newer PC games to run - and much faster than earlier games, too
23/2/98
Artex have announced that they have completed a large (3.5Mb!) demo version of Exodus
23/2/98
Psygnosis's WipeOut could be on the way from R-Comp Interactive - R-Comp have neither confirmed nor denied this story [also see story dated 4/3/98 superceding this]
23/2/98
Acorn MAME is now on release 0.30.1, with a beta 0.30.2 also available
14/2/98
A new emulator called MESS is in progress - this emulates various consoles, such as the NES and others
14/2/98
A full official Acorn release of Doom is now available, and R-Comp say they are now starting legal proceedings against the supplier of a free port of iD's public source code
13/2/98
A dedicated Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator is also under development - a port of xnes. As announced on these pages last year, Megadrive and SNES emulators are also on the way, but these last two are being developed for Acorn - the former will be freeware
13/2/98
All versions of Elite are now available for free, legal download, including the 32-bit Acorn version - go to http://people.netcom.co.uk/i.bell/elite/
13/2/98
A Macintosh emulator is under development, although whether it will be fast enough to play one of the (few) Mac games I wouldn't like to say!
13/2/98
New MSX emulator and new ColecoVision emulator released - play classic games from the 1980s
29/1/98
ArcQuake now supports multiplayer games via a direct machine-to-machine serial cable connection
29/1/98
Jack Parkinson is working on an Acorn port of the fully 3D (and therefore a bit confusing!) game Descent
23/1/98
Soft Rock Software have released their five previously commercial Acorn budget games as freeware, avilable for download from their web site - Escape from Exeria, Drop Rock, Floopy, Guardians of the Labyrinth and Switch
23/1/98
Artex Software, developers and publishers of Exodus, are working on a new realtime strategy game entitled TEK! and a new graphical adventure called Ankh
21/1/98
A classic 16-bit era game will be available "soon" in a superb, pixel-perfect Acorn port which is playable on all Acorn machines
21/1/98
TBA are finalising the details of their free add-on pack for Brutal Horse Power, giving extra tracks and other improvements - a bug-fix upgrade for the basic version has been available for some time
21/1/98
Paradise have confirmed that, despite various lifestyle changes for their members, development is continuing on Overload and Pocket Money, and another very exciting project is at an early stage

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Earlier Illustrated and In-depth News

Other News

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Earlier News Stories

TBA
TBA Software's Brutal Horse Power has been on sale since Acorn World 1997 - check out the TBA stand at Acorn World 1997 report - but a version playable on ARM710 machines is apparently under development, since it is likely to be released for NetStation use. An upgrade to version 1.02 of BHP can be downloaded for those who bought an early release of the game. A much better improvement has been promised for free download "soon" for the past half year...

Sheep Racing Deluxe
[Sheep Racing Deluxe (half size)]Werewolf Software's forthcoming game, the bizarre Sheep Racing Deluxe, was originally due for release at Acorn World 1997, with the screenshot available on Werewolf's web site (and shown here) make it appear rather basic, to say the least. It appears to be a game where you place "bets" on the result of races involving sheep. At £25.95 plus £1.50 carriage this would have to be something pretty special to be worth buying! However, at the show I discovered that the game is in fact nowhere near completion. The screenshot seems to be pretty much all that exists at the moment! See the Acorn World 1997 show report for more details. It doesn't seem unlikely that the game has now been abandoned.

The Chaos Engine
The big name 16-bit game The Chaos Engine from a good few years back exists in a version playable on 32-bit Acorn machines, but it now seems possible that licensing problems will prevent a full release ever taking place - it's such a fun game that I really hope the difficulties can be overcome!

£500,000 game from Insomnia Studios
Insomnia Studios, a part of the Oregan group, are currently developing a game with a total budget that is well in excess of £500,000. This may not be a particularly large budget on most other platforms, but for an Acorn game it is exceptionally high. The game is being developed under contract for use on large installations of StrongARM Network Computers within a corporate environment.

The game is a fully 3D racing game vaguely similar to WipeOut in style, but more freeform, and features stunning artwork and many 3D special effects. The company version of the game will have a networked multiplayer option. The head of the development team, Andrew Docking (author of The Fourth Dimension's Drifter), says that the game combines elements of Tomb Raider 2, MDK, Metal Gear Solid, G-Police, and "a number of other unique touches". So they're obviously not aiming high, then...

A PlayStation release of the game now looks likely, but Oregan have stated categorically that they will not be publishing a native RISC OS Acorn version themselves. They are very happy for it to be published by another company, however - Acorn are aware of the situation and perhaps they might even publish the game themself under their newly resurrected AcornSoft guise, or alternatively help find someone else who is willing to publish the game. Such a version, however, would certainly come on a CD and would probably require a StrongARM. If no native RISC OS version appears then you'll just have to go and stay in various hotels with suitable intranets to play the game - or buy a PlayStation and wait a bit...

Destiny (Now released)
After all the promises, Robert Templeman's Destiny didn't make even make the Wakefield show. Previous promised release dates have included Christmas 1997 and Acorn World 97. Two demos were released last year, so clearly a lot of the work is already done, but a lot is claimed to have been improved since these were release. Just how long will pass before the game actually sees a full release is being constantly revised - it was supposed to be available at Wakefield, but the booked stand was empty!

Destiny is an original Acorn Doom clone that has been under intensive development for two years. The first release will require a reasonably high-end machine, but a version suitable for lower-specification computers may become available soon after - see the Destiny web pages for more details. Early impressions based on the two demo versions released to date (one on an Acorn Clan CD and another with the December 1997 issue of Acorn User magazine) have been mixed, however.

Iron Dignity
Iron Dignity holds out the hope of an Acorn game with a genuinely stunning 3D graphics engine, with a development demo in the middle of last year impressing many observers with the high quality of its visuals, although some concerns were raised over the speed of its graphic engine. The stated lack of optimisation in thiat demo may explain this away, however. This same demo was on the cover CD of the December 1997 issue of Acorn User. Recent unconfirmed reports suggest that work is progressing well on the project.

Paradise
Paradise continue to work hard on their budget games, although they will have a hard act to follow their first release, a very impressive game called Inferno. All their games cost £10. Their new shoot'em'up, Overload is looking good, with the usual superb Paradise graphics and sound being in evidence, so this should be a really great game! More details of this and another forthcoming Paradise game are available. That makes two new horizontally-scrolling shoot'em'ups due out, with Oblivion being the other promised game.

Karma
There is even a possibility of Karma, the massive space adventure first announced almost ten years ago, finally being finished. The surviving author, Ian David Robinson, is working on it in his spare time along with help from at least one other competent Acorn games programmer. However, the web site hasn't been updated for absolutely ages, so this doesn't bode too well.

King and Country
King and Country, a strategy game announced in mid 1996, is apparently still in progress, although at this rate it will be the new millenium before it is anywhere near being finished! Fantasia have put MetalFighters 4000, a side-on beat-em-up also in development, on hold, and disappointing sales of Wizard Apprentice mean any further titles now look less likely.

To Be or Not To Be?
Martin Piper (a partner in TBA Software) has made various comments about 3D graphic cards in the Acorn newsgroup comp.sys.acorn.games - in particular a 3Dfx one, but there has been no announcement of official 3Dfx support. Martin says he will write a driver if necessary, however. See the Acorn World 97 show report for full details. However, and completely separately, I have heard that an American company called Tritech will be releasing a set of PCI drivers for the Acorn for their Pyramid 3D graphics accelerator card. Such a card would connect to the PCI bus on the forthcoming Risc PC 2 (see the Acorn Stand part of the Acorn World 97 report for details on Risc PC 2, and also see the TBA Stand report for 3D graphics card discussion). This is one of the latest, potentially best 3D graphics cards - the timescale of the possible Acorn release is not yet known. No official announcement has yet been made about an Acorn release, however.

Acorn's Involvement
Acorn have been encouraging the porting of various big name games to the platform, and it now looks likely that things will actually start to become of this. I am told that it is quite possible that Acorn might be willing to invest money in such a venture, although how much this financial aid might come to I don't know, and would probably depend upon the precise project in question. There is a precedent for this, of course - Acorn invested in the original Lander game which later became Zarch, and they were also the driving force behind the superb port of Flashback - involvement in other products has also been rumoured. It does seem that Acorn are putting a reasonable amount of effort into the production of some games for RISC OS, and their support seems to be the best it has been for many a long year. They are also interested in the development of emulators which can run games from other platforms, so providing a ready catalogue of back-issue games. Some (or all?) of this attention is inevitably directed at the Network Computer primarily, with RISC OS tagging along in second place. That said, emulators for the two best-selling 16-bit games machines, the Megadrive and SNES, are in development for Acorn and should be available for RISC OS fairly soon.

Acorn has been developing hardware and software for a new children's games/education machine to be sold by Samsung. See the Acorn World 1997 show report for more details.

From the Acorn Cybervillage comes a story about Acorn's investment of a "substantial" amount of money in a number of new games programmers in order to encourage the development of original games for the Risc PC. I haven't verified the truth of this story for myself, but it is known from several sources that Acorn are keen to encourage the development of entertainment software that could be used on the NetStation platform. Whether this has any relevance to this story remains to be seen. Acorn have in the past lent development hardware to certain Acorn games developers, such as TBA (allegedly), so perhaps they have simply decided to step up this campaign. They are also involved with Artex Software's (of Exodus fame) next game, TEK!.

Recent Releases from The Datafile
The Datafile recently published Fantasia's Wizard Apprentice (review on these pages), retailing at the rather excessive price of £34.95. However, they ran a special offer through until the end of January 1998 whereby they were selling the game for £24.95 plus £1 postage and packaging. (If you order now at £24.95 maybe they'd pretend the special offer was still on!)

Another recent Acorn games release by The Datafile was GEK's two game pack, Flying High, consisting of the games Euro Blaster and Joust, the latter being a 32-bit version of the classic arcade game of the same name. More details are on The Datafile's web pages. A review will follow on these web pages soon. Priced at £13.95 plus £1 P&P if the compilation was of the same quality as Emotions then this would be a bargain buy, but I wasn't too impressed with Euro Blaster, a demo of which can be downloaded from The Datafile's web pages. Joust also seems to have some severe problems, so I don't think I can really recommend this package. It is far too slow on my pre-StrongARM ARM710 machine, which seems to contribute to some of the problems.

Preceding these releases, also from GEK and The Datafile, came the superbly funny and well designed platform game Emotions, which must surely rank as one of the best original Acorn games ever - and not over-priced at £20, either. At the moment there is a special offer whereby if you buy Emotions you get Flying High free - well worth taking advantage of!

Acorn Gamers in the Industry
Certain well known ex-Acorn-games-programmers, such as Tom Cooper and David Jefferies, work at Psygnosis, publisher of top Playstation and PC games. Last year it looked likely that David Jefferies was going to be involved in porting a few Psygnosis games to Acorns, but sadly the brakes were put on the project when Psygnosis realised exactly how much time the conversion work would take. It isn't known whether this has any connection with the unconfirmed-but-not-denied story about R-Comp being involved in an Acorn port of WipeOut (see above).

Acorn users can be found throughout the gaming industry. Famously, Eidos has in the past developed video compression software for Acorns, and they now own and publish Core Design's work - including the world-famous Tomb Raider, but, in the balance of probability, it seems a pretty safe bet that no Acorn release will ever be made. The majority of Acorn users who would have bought the game probably own PlayStations by now, anyway, so any release would pretty much need to be targeted at the Network Computer. Krisalis, now no longer publishing but doing development work for others, also have one or two Risc PCs which are sometimes used for prototyping work due to their ease of use.

Werewolf Software Recruiting
Werewolf Software are also on the lookout for new products to publish - of any type, not just games. Email them at programs@werewlf.demon.co.uk if you're interested. They'll accept just about anything, by the look of it.

Other Things
For those who fancy something a little more cerebral, a demo version of Tiles, a desktop word game, is available from Brain Games's web pages. The game is now StrongARM compatible and includes eleven boards in five languages with four sprite sets.

Those interested in writing their own Acorn games but who aren't confident of their programming ability might consider checking out Grasshopper Software's Games Suite 2, a regularly updated development suite which claims to let you write fast arcade games with ease. The sprite plotters which come with it run up to 19 times faster than those built into the OS, and the core engine is 100% hand-written ARM code. The suite is regularly improved - reports on the current releases suggest that it may have some annoying limitations, however. The addition of 3D graphics capabilities is intended for future versions.

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©Gareth Moore
Last updated 19/8/98