Beebug Magazine supplements/catalogues

[leenew]

Hi,
I am trying to pin down which software from Beebug was commercially released, and when it was released.
In issue 4 of Beebug, from July of 1982, page 35 mentions the software library, consisting of GAMES 1, GAMES 2, GAMES 3, GAMES 4, APPLICATIONS 1 and UTILITIES 1.
Issue 6 page 35 mentions they are bringing out 4 new cassettes.
Issue 8, page 43 lists GAMES 5 and GAMES 6 plus UTILITIES 2.
By issue 10 (page 44) says "For ordering information, see p.20 of this months supplement". The software library isn't mentioned any more in the magazines.

So the question is... Does anyone have any of these old supplements, from 1982 to 1987 ish??
I cannot find them scanned online.
Can anyone help?

Thanks,

Lee.

[Diminished]

Hm. I seem to have a minority of these, although I am prepared to bet that someone else probably has a full set.

Five from 1984, three from 1985, two from 1986, seven from 1987, and a couple from 1988.

I also have some of the other papers and pamphlets that BEEBUG would send along with the magazines, many of which do contain information about available software, but I don't remember whether these were in addition to the supplemental catalogues or whether they replaced them for some issues. Quite a few of them don't have any obvious dates associated with them.

Alas, my scanner self-destructed a few years back, and I'm not sure whether I want to part with them (they were my dad's). That's not very helpful, is it? :/

I'm sure we can come up with something, although I still reckon someone else will probably have all of them.

[leenew]

Cool!
Don't worry about scanning.
A decent photo from your phone will do.
Would you mind uploading pics of the 1984 and 1985 ones please.
You only need to show a pic if a new title is introduced.
I bet that many from the same year will be almost identical.
I am just wanting to see if they continued the "Games" series after "Games 4" and also see which titles were advertised for sale commercially and not just type - ins from the magazine.
Even if you don't have a phone, just tell me what titles they were offering for sale in 1984, and which new titles appeared in 1985.
Thank you
Lee.

[vanekp]

Are these the issues you are looking for ?
Peter.

[leenew]

Nope
I am not looking for the magazines, but the supplements that came with them detailing the software they had for sale.

Lee.

[vanekp]

Ahhh okay
this is what you needed then https://www.ebay.com/itm/BBC-MICRO-BEEB ... 7675.l2557
So someone out there has the full collection
and looks like it was not sold no bids, so maybe you can try contacting the guy via ebay.
looks like he even has the Supplements

[CMcDougall]

^£105 no wonder it never sold , £40 tops....

[leenew]

Yes! they are the ones.
They would really help me clarify some information on bbcmicro.co.uk
The early ones would be especially interesting.

Lee.

[vanekp]

Try email the person on ebay maybe they will help you out, you never know
Peter.

[Diminished]

These '84 price lists may be the most relevant thing I could find.

[leenew]

Thanks!
That is great.
If I could get a few like that, it would really help, but that is a good start.

Lee.

[Diminished]

I will keep looking.

[Diminished]

This may be everything relevant that I can find.

Sorry for the less-than-wonderful reproductions.

[Wouter Scholten]

Hi,
Does anyone have any of these old supplements, from 1982 to 1987 ish??
I cannot find them scanned online.
Can anyone help?

I'm also interested in seeing the supplements, but for another reason, the high score lists... These were in the supplements. See http://wouter.bbcmicro.net/bbc/spellen/ ... azines.txt

[Michael Brown]

Looking at the software list...

Snorter
Alien Destroyer
Astro Tracker
Fruit Machine/Honest Joe
Starfire
Moon Lander/3D Noughts and Crosses
Magic Eel
Swarmers' Revenge
Solitaire/Knockout

Does anyone have a copy of Knockout?
Does anyone have uef's of Alien Destroyer, Moon Lander/3D Noughts and Crosses and Swarmers' Revenge?
Does anyone have inlay info for Astro Tracker and Magic Eel?

regards.
Mick.

[richardtoohey]

I might have my BITD Swarmer's Revenge tape around ... somewhere ... and also a Beebug catalogue (will probably be one of the ones posted here already, though!)

[Diminished]

I'm also interested in seeing the supplements, but for another reason, the high score lists... These were in the supplements. See http://wouter.bbcmicro.net/bbc/spellen/ ... azines.txt

Hi Wouter,

I will get you these ... might take me a few days though.

Ali

[leenew]

These are great thanks.
Any more anyone?
Lee.

[Wouter Scholten]

I'm also interested in seeing the supplements, but for another reason, the high score lists... These were in the supplements. See http://wouter.bbcmicro.net/bbc/spellen/ ... azines.txt

Hi Wouter,

I will get you these ... might take me a few days though.

Ali

That would be very cool, pics or scans are all good, of any pages in the supplements that have high scores. I will convert that then to text and add it to that high score file. I'm not in a hurry I appreciate any help with this!

[billcarr2005]

Looking at the software list...

Snorter
Alien Destroyer
Astro Tracker
Fruit Machine/Honest Joe
Starfire
Moon Lander/3D Noughts and Crosses
Magic Eel
Swarmers' Revenge
Solitaire/Knockout

Is this a list of titles you require, ie. MIA or ones that are already archived?
I'd found Starfire yesterday, then realised it's already here
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=5250&p=48898#p48898

[leenew]

See here BillC
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14214
Lee.

[billcarr2005]

Still doesn't explain what the above list is?

[leenew]

Mick may correct me, but I think it's a case of thinking (typing) aloud

Lee

[lurkio]

Still doesn't explain what the above list is?

I think Mick was just making a factual statement: he was just reproducing a list of games that appeared in the Beebug advert which Diminished posted, above. Mick then went on to ask for inlays from -- and/or copies of -- some specific games from that list:

Does anyone have a copy of Knockout?
Does anyone have uef's of Alien Destroyer, Moon Lander/3D Noughts and Crosses and Swarmers' Revenge?
Does anyone have inlay info for Astro Tracker and Magic Eel?

That's my interpretation, anyway!

[Michael Brown]

Hi all,
Sorry for the confusion,
Yes this is a type up of the list of games but also a request list for the uef's of these titles.
I just need to check that my disc versions are the same.
I know Alien Destroyer will be slightly different as my version is a hack I did from the demo.
Also Knockout is a MIA game.

Mick.

[Diminished]

Sorry for co-opting this thread for high score purposes, Lee, but this won't take long. It turns out I missed out one issue, so Wouter, I still owe you one high score table from July 1985.

March/April 1984:

May/June 1984:

November 1984 / April 1985: This one is interesting, because it talks about an error with the high scores in the March 1985 supplement; however, despite the fact that the index on the front cover of the March 85 supplement says that there should be high scores on page 7, there are no high scores anywhere in that issue (I checked it three times). So I have no idea what happened there, unless they were moved at the last minute to the main BEEBUG magazine itself?

I checked the 1986 supplements, but they are much thinner, and it looks like they'd stopped doing high score tables by that point.

And here's a bonus, which amused me when my age was still in the single digits, and still amuses me now, for two reasons:

(a) the juxtaposition of printing YOU CAN'T CRACK IT in giant magenta letters while only offering £1 as a prize (I know it was more money in those days, but even at the time, to a child, it felt like a miserable amount -- the expression "put your money where your mouth is" springs to mind); and

(b) the fact that an awful lot of people probably did "crack it", although not in the way the advert intended.

It reminds me just a teensy bit of the infamous John Romero Daikatana print advert that came years later.

[Wouter Scholten]

Sorry for co-opting this thread for high score purposes, Lee, but this won't take long. It turns out I missed out one issue, so Wouter, I still owe you one high score table from July 1985.

March/April 1984:
beebug-high-scores-march-april-1984.jpg
May/June 1984:
beebug-high-scores-may-june-1984.jpg
November 1984 / April 1985: This one is interesting, because it talks about an error with the high scores in the March 1985 supplement; however, despite the fact that the index on the front cover of the March 85 supplement says that there should be high scores on page 7, there are no high scores anywhere in that issue (I checked it three times). So I have no idea what happened there, unless they were moved at the last minute to the main BEEBUG magazine itself?
beebug-high-scores-nov-1984-april-1985.jpg

I checked the 1986 supplements, but they are much thinner, and it looks like they'd stopped doing high score tables by that point.
.

I checked the beebug march 1985 (the scans from 8bs) but saw no highscores in that.

I found before your pictures, high-scores in the supplements (scans from 8bs) of oct. 1985 and nov. 1985 (not oct/nov 1984 as I mistakenly wrote in the text file), and then the supplements were at some point included in the magazine itself, and Dec. 1986 has high scores bu in the main mag. I checked all those so apart from July 1985, the score list is complete. I should have the editing of the OCR output done this evening.

It's interesting to see how many high scores from the magazines are beaten in the high score competitions the past few years, by many people, which shows that I don't see any sign that people get worse at playing computer games when they got older, which was something I was curious about when I started playing some games again this year. In my case, I'm much better than ever before, well, except where I don't try (e.g. Fortress), and the one game where I just can't seem to get past my 1996 score is Meteors. I don't know what running into a wall feels like, but it must be similar to trying to improve my Meteors high-score: You feel pain and the wall/high score is still there!

[Diminished]

I checked the beebug march 1985 (the scans from 8bs) but saw no highscores in that.

I found before your pictures, high-scores in the supplements (scans from 8bs) of oct. 1985 and nov. 1985 (not oct/nov 1984 as I mistakenly wrote in the text file), and then the supplements were at some point included in the magazine itself, and Dec. 1986 has high scores bu in the main mag. I checked all those so apart from July 1985, the score list is complete. I should have the editing of the OCR output done this evening.

It's interesting to see how many high scores from the magazines are beaten in the high score competitions the past few years, by many people, which shows that I don't see any sign that people get worse at playing computer games when they got older, which was something I was curious about when I started playing some games again this year. In my case, I'm much better than ever before, well, except where I don't try (e.g. Fortress), and the one game where I just can't seem to get past my 1996 score is Meteors. I don't know what running into a wall feels like, but it must be similar to trying to improve my Meteors high-score: You feel pain and the wall/high score is still there!

There's one other possibility which has just occurred to me -- since they were Electron scores, not BBC ones, they might have been in the March 1985 ELBUG instead.

[Wouter Scholten]

I checked the 1986 supplements, but they are much thinner, and it looks like they'd stopped doing high score tables by that point.

They are in the main magazine from some point in time in 1986. I found just 2 score lists, in Dec. 1986 and Mar. 1987. See my list here which includes the scores from your pictures:

http://wouter.bbcmicro.net/bbc/spellen/ ... beebug.txt

[Wouter Scholten]

I checked the beebug march 1985 (the scans from 8bs) but saw no highscores in that.

I found before your pictures, high-scores in the supplements (scans from 8bs) of oct. 1985 and nov. 1985 (not oct/nov 1984 as I mistakenly wrote in the text file), and then the supplements were at some point included in the magazine itself, and Dec. 1986 has high scores bu in the main mag. I checked all those so apart from July 1985, the score list is complete. I should have the editing of the OCR output done this evening.

It's interesting to see how many high scores from the magazines are beaten in the high score competitions the past few years, by many people, which shows that I don't see any sign that people get worse at playing computer games when they got older, which was something I was curious about when I started playing some games again this year. In my case, I'm much better than ever before, well, except where I don't try (e.g. Fortress), and the one game where I just can't seem to get past my 1996 score is Meteors. I don't know what running into a wall feels like, but it must be similar to trying to improve my Meteors high-score: You feel pain and the wall/high score is still there!

There's one other possibility which has just occurred to me -- since they were Electron scores, not BBC ones, they might have been in the March 1985 ELBUG instead.

I found the ELBUG supplements of March, April, May, June 1985 on archive.org, after I found there the Laserbugs that were originally on acornpreservation, with quite good OCR'ed text, so just slight editing needed. In the March 1985 issue nothing, April 1985 there is a score list:

https://archive.org/details/ELBUG_Volum ... cations_GB

Seems to be Electron scores, from the high scorers that I saw on the Elbug score list in the Beebug supplements, and Guardian is on that list which was released only for the Electron (though runs on the BBC), but, Zalaga is also on that list and that is a BBC only game...