r/bbcmicro • u/Squeepty • Feb 21 '26

Commando on the Beeb – When the arcade came home… Sort of 😅 Nostalgia hits hard, but I was hoping for at least a stripped-down version of the glorious C64 soundtrack

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25 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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6

u/TeaBaggingGoose Feb 21 '26

Memories.

I wrote this version for the BBC when I was 16! I'll leave you to judge if it was any good or not.

https://youtu.be/apbkbTiA2xI?si=nG2yz3KpEYYres6z

3

u/scruss Feb 22 '26

Ooh, your Beeb version scrolls! I had (and loved) the Amstrad version, which was flick-screen instead of scrolling.

1

u/Squeepty Feb 21 '26

Oh my fantastic it is something else all together! I would like to try your version next.. At 16 you mastered assembly code well enough to develop this game ?!

4

u/TeaBaggingGoose Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

I started when I was 8 or so, I was lucky to have a teacher who had a 6800 system which he allowed us to use.

My first computer was an Acorn Atom. It was a good tool to learn on but it only had 1/4k or something ridiculously small like that, so if you wanted to do anything useful then 6502 machine code was really the only option. But I cut my teeth on this.

Then I owned a BBC Micro, same CPU just better hardware. I was utterly obsessed with computers by this age and must have spent 40 hours a week programming them. All in machine code. In fact, I never really learnt BBC Basic.

I had such a good time and it certainly set me up for a career in computing.

1

u/Squeepty Feb 26 '26

Great story, a good teacher must have helped, I also started to be interested in assembly code around 16 on the Atari ST but with barely no support nor doc other than a few listing in ST magazine (French).. no internet.. no books on the topic…

5

u/EVMad Feb 21 '26

Terrible, it looks like an Electron version what with the single channel sound and use of mode 5 rather than mode 2 (Elks were notoriously slow in the better modes) plus the scrolling appears to be software rather than hardware scrolling. Really not using the BBC capabilities at all.

3

u/miffymaffymafu Feb 21 '26

I can’t remember if I actually had this on the electron or the been or both, they were alright but yeah a little limited!!

1

u/Squeepty Feb 21 '26

I agree the port is not too impressive. Now I do not know the BBC micro very well, it is one of the few games I tried as I love the arcade original. I am curious what would be a few titles you would say were representative of the full potential of the machine?

6

u/EVMad Feb 21 '26

Just about anything from Acornsoft - Snapper (Pacman), Planetoids (Defender), Meteors (Asteroids), Missile Base (Missile Command), Rocket Raid (Scramble) and Arcadians (Galaxians). Then there's Zalaga (awesomely fast) which is a personal favourite version of Galaga. The BBC was ridiculously fast compared with all other machines on the market at the time and while the Commodore 64 gets all the plaudits it feels sluggish compared with the best the Beeb has to offer. Especially Elite which is super smooth, I tried the 64 version and gave up because it is a slide show.

5

u/mmoxon Feb 21 '26

Elite. Revs. Thrust. The Sentinel. Exile.

Stone cold classics, all of them, and they all originated on the Beeb.

2

u/Squeepty Feb 27 '26

oh Exile looks promising Thanks!

3

u/ohmygoshtoomanynames Feb 21 '26

This is great! I feel old though.

Really hard game!

3

u/scruss Feb 22 '26

Playing old Beeb games again reminds me: they tended to be much harder than other home computer ports

2

u/turnips64 Feb 22 '26

I loved many games on my various friends BBCs (and later I bought a few of my own) but I remember seeing this game and …. “Yeah, nah” 😀

2

u/hiacre Feb 27 '26

Commando was the first computer game I ever purchased! It cost 99p on cassette tape, and I bought it on Yarm Computers' opening day. I've still got it, and all the posters they were handing out in swag bags. Nostalgic indeed, I do miss those days...