1.
Superior Software
–
Superior Software Ltd is a video game publisher. It was one of the publishers for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in the 1980s. It currently releases games for Microsoft Windows, mostly updates of its original games, Superior Software was established in 1982 by Richard Hanson and John Dyson, two graduates of the University of Leeds, England. They had previously programmed software published by Micro Power, and they wrote Superiors first four-game releases for the BBC Micro, £100 was the most money that we would lose from the Superior Software venture if it had not worked out. Anyway we received a good response to our first advertisement. We started to place advertisements in a few magazines, and invited other programmers to send their software to us for evaluation. Superior mostly focused on the machines of Acorn Computers Ltd, but also attempts to enter the market of other platforms including the Oric-1. Key management personnel have included Steve Botterill, Chris Payne and Steve Hanson and their most well-known games are the Repton series of games, which sold over 125,000 units for the Acorn computers. They also published the seminal Zarch for the Acorn Archimedes, as well as follow-up games using the engine, Conqueror. Superior also published a number of educational and utility software including the speech synthesis program Speech. The Play It Again Sam series of compilations were used to re-release their old titles and they were also used to release new games that were thought not quite up to the standard of their full price games. The series eventually ran to 18 on the BBC Micro, though the latest ones were released on disc only, well into the demise of the 8-bit scene, and very few copies were sold. This includes the original three Repton games as well as Repton Spectacular, featuring new levels, and iRepton for the iPhone. As well as new versions of the Repton games, Superior Interactive has published re-releases called Galaforce Worlds, Ravenskull, Pipeline Plus, Ricochet, category, Superior Software games Acornsoft Superior Interactive website Superior Interactive profile from MobyGames
2.
Acornsoft
–
Acornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers, and a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. David Johnson-Davies was Managing Director and in early 1981 was joined by Tim Dobson, Programmer and Chris Jordan, Acornsoft ceased to operate as a separate company upon the departure of David Johnson-Davies in January 1986. Past this date, Acorn Computers used the Acornsoft name on office software it released in the VIEW family for the BBC Master series. In 1986 Superior Software was granted a licence to publish some Acornsoft games and rereleased many, individually and as such as the Play It Again Sam. By agreement, the Acornsoft name was used on the packaging of some of the subsequent Superior games. Superior chose not to take on Acornsofts text adventure games, most of which were released in updated versions by Topologika along with some sequels from the same authors, Acornsoft titles extended their consistent branding to the softwares loading screens. Acheton – A text adventure Arcadians – A Galaxian clone Aviator – A Spitfire flight simulator, all games were compatible with the BBC Micro Model B. Games followed by Model A & B were compatible with both machines. Games followed by Electron were also released separately for the Acorn Electron, Games are listed by their catalogue numbers which are roughly the order of release of the BBC versions. Acornsoft produced a range of educational titles aimed at many different age groups. These included Podd (find out which actions a red blobby character can perform, Squeeze and these titles were part of the Acornsoft catalogue but used a different code. They ran on both the BBC Micro Model B and Acorn Electron, the Ivan Berg Software range was also mainly educational but had its own distinct code. This included the 6 Grandmaster Quizzes, relationship aids. I Do Your Guide to a Happy Marriage and The Dating Game and GCE/CSE revision guides. Acornsoft also distributed other ranges of educational programs developed by such as ICL, Good Housekeeping and Bourne. Acornsoft produced a range of software for home and business use. View Professional was a combined wordprocessor, spreadsheet and database similar to PipeDream on the Z88, the X. code was then used for other types of software. Acornsoft information and list of games – At The BBC Games Archive
3.
Computing platform
–
Computing platform means in general sense, where any piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the system, even a web browser or other application. The term computing platform can refer to different abstraction levels, including a hardware architecture, an operating system. In total it can be said to be the stage on which programs can run. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware, platforms may also include, Hardware alone, in the case of small embedded systems. Embedded systems can access hardware directly, without an OS, this is referred to as running on bare metal, a browser in the case of web-based software. The browser itself runs on a platform, but this is not relevant to software running within the browser. An application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor, which hosts software written in a scripting language. This can be extended to writing fully-fledged applications with the Microsoft Office suite as a platform, software frameworks that provide ready-made functionality. Cloud computing and Platform as a Service, the social networking sites Twitter and facebook are also considered development platforms. A virtual machine such as the Java virtual machine, applications are compiled into a format similar to machine code, known as bytecode, which is then executed by the VM. A virtualized version of a system, including virtualized hardware, OS, software. These allow, for instance, a typical Windows program to run on what is physically a Mac, some architectures have multiple layers, with each layer acting as a platform to the one above it. In general, a component only has to be adapted to the layer immediately beneath it, however, the JVM, the layer beneath the application, does have to be built separately for each OS
4.
Acorn Electron
–
The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC v2 along with its operating system, the Electron was able to save and load programs onto audio cassette via a supplied converter cable that connected it to any standard tape recorder that had the correct sockets. It was capable of graphics, and could display onto either a television set. For a short period, the Electron was reportedly the best selling micro in the United Kingdom, after Acorn Computer released the BBC Micro, executives believed that the company needed a less-expensive computer for the mass market. In June 1982, cofounder Hermann Hauser was asked about the recently announced £175 Sinclair ZX Spectrums potential to hurt sales of the BBC Micro, Acorns Chris Curry stated that the Electron is designed to compete with the Spectrum. The idea is to get the price very low. The company reduced the number of chips in the Electron by 90% from the BBC Micros about 100, problems with the ULA delayed the Electron, however, and Acorn repeatedly missed deadlines to ship the computer. The company expected to ship the Electron before Christmas, and sell 100,000 by February 1984, reviews were generally favorable, noting its excellent graphics compared to the Commodore 64. The reduced processor speed was attributable to the use of a 4 bit wide memory system instead of the 8 bit wide memory system of the BBC Micro to reduce cost. The Electron used just 4 64kbit RAM devices instead of the 16 16kbit RAM devices deployed on the BBC Model B, in the BBC Micro, the RAM ran at 2x the speed of the CPU allowing the video and CPU memory access to be cleverly interleaved. On the Electron two accesses had to be made to get an 8 bit word, meaning that the CPU was unable to access its RAM while screen refresh accesses were happening and this reduced the effective CPU speed by as much as a factor of 6. At the same time the BBC Micro B+ was being developed just metres away in the same Laboratory and this model used 8 64kbit RAMs enabling the screen memory to be overlayed with the BASIC and OS ROMs in the processor memory map. This allowed the full 32k byte program RAM to be used in addition to using a 20kbyte memory mapped screen, had this memory topology also been used in the Electron it is likely that it would have been the Spectrum Killer that it set out to be. The ULA continued to cause problems, delaying large-scale manufacturing, by October 1983 Acorn had received orders for more than 150,000 units, and expected to produce 25,000 a month before Christmas, the existing backlog would take more than six months to fulfill. Demand for the Electron was high but only two of WH Smiths London branches had inventory, Acorns Christmas 1984 sales were greatly below expectations and in January 1985 the company reduced the Electrons price to £129. In conjunction with an expansion into the United States, by February Acorns market capitalization declined 85% from the previous year. Olivetti acquired the company later that year and Dixons Retail acquired the remaining Electron inventory for less than manufacturing cost, with hindsight, the machine lacked the RAM and processing power to take on the prevailing Spectrum and Commodore 64. While it may not have been as popular as the Spectrum, Commodore 64 or Amstrad CPC and this meant the Electron had a lifespan not much shorter than those more popular micros and much longer than competitors such as the Oric-1 and Dragon 32
5.
BBC Micro
–
Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability, and the quality of its operating system. An accompanying 1982 television series The Computer Programme featuring Chris Serle learning to use the machine was also broadcast on BBC2, renamed the BBC Micro, the system was adopted by most schools in the United Kingdom, changing Acorns fortunes. It was also successful as a home computer in the UK despite its high cost. Acorn also employed the machine to simulate and develop the ARM architecture which, many later, has become hugely successful for embedded systems, including tablets. In 2013 ARM was the most widely used 32-bit instruction set architecture, during the early 1980s, the BBC started what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The BBC wanted to base its project on a microcomputer capable of performing tasks which they could then demonstrate in the TV series The Computer Programme. The list of topics included programming, graphics, sound and music, teletext, controlling external hardware, the Acorn team had already been working on a successor to their existing Atom microcomputer. Known as the Proton, it included better graphics and a faster 2 MHz MOS Technology 6502 central processing unit. The machine was only at the stage at the time. The team worked through the night to get a working Proton together to show the BBC, not only was the Acorn Proton the only machine to match the BBCs specification, it also exceeded it in nearly every parameter. Based on the Proton prototype the BBC signed a contract with Acorn as early as February 1981, by June the BBC Micros specifications and pricing were decided. The machine was released as the BBC Microcomputer on 1 December 1981, BYTE called the BBC Micro Model B a no-compromise computer that has many uses beyond self-instruction in computer technology. In terms of versatility and expansion capability, as with Sinclairs ZX Spectrum and Commodores Commodore 64, both released later in 1982, demand greatly exceeded supply. For some months, there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered, efforts were made to market the machine in the United States and West Germany. By October 1983, the US operation reported that American schools had placed orders with it totalling $21 million. In October 1984, while preparing a major expansion of its US dealer network, Acorn claimed sales of 85 per cent of the computers in British schools and that December, Acorn stated its intention to become the market leader in US educational computing. The New York Times considered the inclusion of local area networking to be of importance to teachers. The operation resulted in advertisements by at least one dealer in Interface Age magazine, Acorn became more known for its model B computer than for its other products
6.
Europe
–
Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
7.
Racing video game
–
They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings. In general, they can be distributed along a spectrum anywhere between hardcore simulations, and simpler arcade racing games, Racing games may also fall under the category of sports games. In 1973, Ataris Space Race was an arcade video game where players controlled spaceships that race against opposing ships, while avoiding comets. It was a competitive two-player game controlled using a two-way joystick, the same year, Taito released a similar space-themed racing video game Astro Race, which used an early four-way joystick. The following year, Taito released Speed Race, an early driving racing game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and it also featured an early racing wheel controller interface with an accelerator, gear shift, speedometer and tachometer. It could be played in either single-player or alternating two-player, where each player attempts to beat the others score, the game was re-branded as Wheels by Midway Games for release in the United States and was influential on later racing games. That same year, Sega released Moto-Cross, an early motorbike racing game, based on the motocross competition. Also known as Man T. T. Sega re-branded the game as Fonz, the game also introduced the use of haptic feedback, which caused the motorcycle handlebars to vibrate during a collision with another vehicle. Road Champion, released by Taito in 1978, was an overhead-view timed car racing game where players try to race ahead of the opposing cars and cross the finish line first to become the winner. In 1979, Segas Head On was a game that played like a maze chase game and is thus considered a precursor to the 1980 hit Pac-Man. Monaco GP, released by Sega in 1979, improved upon previous overhead-view racing games with a scrolling view. It also featured an early example of a radar, to show the cars location on the map. Turbo, released by Sega in 1981, was the first racing game to feature a third-person perspective and it was also the first racing game to use sprite scaling with full-color graphics. The most influential racing game was released in 1982, Pole Position, developed by Namco and published by Atari in North America. It was the first game to be based on a racing circuit, and the first to feature a qualifying lap. While not the first third-person racing game, Pole Position established the conventions of the genre, tX-1, developed by Tatsumi in 1983, was licensed to Namco, who in turn licensed it to Atari in America, thus the game is considered a successor to Pole Position II. It also introduced nonlinear gameplay by allowing players to choose which path to drive through after each checkpoint, if the fuel runs out, the game would end. An early attempt at creating a driving simulator was Tomys Turnin Turbo Dashboard
