The 1980s console war between the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro is to be turned into a BBC4 comedy.
Alexander Armstrong and Martin Freeman are set to star in the "factual-based comedy drama", playing as Sir Clive Sinclair and his former work mate Chris Curry during the rise of the home computer market in the 1980s.
The show, which is currently in production and expected to be broadcast later this year, is described as an "affectionately comic account" of the race for home computer supremacy and carries a working title of 'Syntax Era'.
"Those of us who lived through the 1980s will remember the sense of excitement when gadgets and technology started to appear in our homes, but not many of us will know the fascinating stories behind their arrival," said BBC4 controller Richard Klein in The Guardian.
"Alexander Armstrong and Martin Freeman are excellent choices to portray Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry at a time when battling to have the UK's most-loved home computer was their number one priority."
what the f**k?...far as i was concerned it was Spectrum Vs Amstrad Vs Commodore64...BBC didnt even come into it,BBC was the s**te Computers you used at school
actually i may be thinking of the Speccy +2..when the 48k was out,i only had an Atari and a Commodore Vic 20...i wasn't aware of any battle with the BBC computer(i didn't even realise it was to be a home computer,i thought it was just for businesses)
Yeah the BBC was definitely a part of the 80's home computer battle although it was always a distant 4th in the race to be top-dog.
As you say, it was thought of as a "serious" educational computer rather than a games machine and had a price to match, but had many enjoyable hours playing Elite, Revs, Frak etc...the memories!
This sounds cool to watch. I have both these machines (actually the Acorn Electron, the cheaper version of the micro) and couple more around that time from my childhood and played them tons back then. Showing them to my nieces and nephew, they find it weird the machines, devices, trying to set the damn things up, load times etc. Ah the memories.
Every saturday in town we'd pop into WHSmiths (when they used to sell computers back in the day and let you load a game to try) and do the old fake loading trick.
print 'loading: latest game' and randomize usr 1234. Then watch as people hung around the machine thinking it was loading a game
what the f**k?...far as i was concerned it was Spectrum Vs Amstrad Vs Commodore64...BBC didnt even come into it,BBC was the s**te Computers you used at school
Right on the money! The C64 was the winner for me, though. Especially as it's still around with today's technology. An emulator has been developed for the iphone and, although at the moment rejected by Apple, has high hopes of being added to the app store after a couple of changes. Classics like IK+, Paradroid, the Monty games and tons more will never go away. You only need to look at the amount of fan-made remakes for proof of that. And I don't need to say anything about the music.
the spectrum 48K and the C64 were definately better for games as a whole, but the BBC did have some genre defining games, Elite, Revs, Exile etc. The BBC micros real strength came from its peripherals and hardware, ability to use a co-processor, its Tube bus sytem, its excellent version of Basic, and the the 6502 assembler that came as part of it's OS. It didn't have enough memory, and it was too pricey.
As for who remembers Acorn, well they produced one of the first RISC processors, and kind of evolved into ARM, the company that produces the processors for pretty much all your mobiles, including your snazzy iPhones, which you are getting excited about running your C64 emulators on.
The speccy and C64 won the gaming war, but the legacy of the BBC micro & acorn are still with us
May I be the first to congratulate CVG for their usual standards of journalistic accuracy in describing both the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum as "consoles".
Well done fellas. you're almost catching up with my dear old mother when it comes to actually knowing things about home computing.
ps.
BBC Micro rules! Superior versions of Chuckie Egg and Elite among many, many other games, much better hardware expansions and connectivity (games through Teletext!) and a much better built machine all round!
The Speccy, on the other hand, was a horrible cheaply made machine with colour-clash and barely any support for it's disc-drive.
Yeah, I'm bringing it all up again, it's on baby, it's on!
the speccy was king in my eyes but the C64 was pretty awesome to be honest. sh!t you could even listen to tunes whilst the rest of the game loaded.
ahem, anyway the BBC was super expensive at the time and that's probably why it didn't sell so much.
funny how history repeats itself huh?
still got my 48k rubber keyed badbou with compurter and videogame stickers on. i'm gonna send in a photo one of these days. they must be over 25 years old now
Wow, Acorn... haven't used one of those since primary school!
We used to play Granny's Garden on the BBC at primary school as well.
Well, now I feel really, really old!
We had them at my comprehensive. We also had one in my middle school along with the code books to write your own programs.
In my comprehensive though we had that Lander game on some of the machines. That was pretty sweet for a while. Other memories from my IT class include getting my fags confiscated and blowing up johnnies and sticking them to the underside of the desks so the next person to sit there got a surprise.
Sigh... sadly that level of immaturity has vanished. But then maybe if I hadn't blown up those johnnies I wouldn't be a daddy right now. (Not that I regret having the sprog... although she is throwing a wobbly right now!)
All they need to do now is crowbar a charlie brooker appearance in somehow (the man`s a gamer beleive it or not ,used to write for pczone)maybe as the narrator?
The two machines were wildly different in price and capacity and only shared a timeframe for a couple of years. The BBC never had the mass appeal of the Speccy, C64 or even the CPC464.
All they need to do now is crowbar a charlie brooker appearance in somehow (the man`s a gamer beleive it or not ,used to write for pczone)maybe as the narrator?
I still have a load of issues of PCZone from when Charlie Brooker was a reviewer for it.
I remember it's sister mag Games Zone used to have Jane Goldman as a staff writer also. (Jonathan Ross's wife. Wrote the screenplay to Stardust)
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(Not that I regret having the sprog... although she is throwing a wobbly right now!)
