Were there any Archimedes game demos that had things in that were different to the full version?

[Sophira]

Interesting! As an aside, !A5000demo was uploaded here to Stardot by iainfm if you want to try running it yourself, though as it's non-interactive, watching a YouTube video is probably just fine. (Though that particular video has a few issues - the speed of the non-desktop parts is much quicker than Arculator does it, and I suspect Arculator is more accurate in that regard. Also, the aspect ratio of that video is horribly stretched - a 4:3 screen should not be stretched to 16:9!)

By the way, I didn't upload that subscription disc from The Micro User, so no need to thank me. Thank flaxcottage instead! The image was already there when I found it.

[wmd]

Thanks to flaxcottage then!

Did Micro User only do sub-only discs, or did they do cover discs as well? Are the ones on the arcarc.nl archive cover discs or sub discs?

[Sophira]

While it was called The Micro User, it was subscription discs only, with only one exception that I know of - the December 1988 issue came with a free cover disc with a demo of the game Clogger, and some cheats for a few games.

There was actually a letter published in the September 1990 issue about this, funnily enough:

However, when they became Acorn Computing two years later (October 1992), they started including cover discs (known as MegaDisks).

[wmd]

Interesting. It looks like there are a lot of discs missing from the "Micro User" section on the arcarc archive then. They have nothing prior to 1990, and there doesn't seem to be a disc per month for 1990. It would be nice, although I guess incredibly tedious, to have a complete list of all Archimedes cover discs and their contents online.

[Sophira]

Something like this already exists! http://8bs.com/catalogue/tmu.htm has many of the earlier subscription discs that you're looking for, as well as a listing of their contents. Note that these are meant for the BBC Micro, so they're in SSD format, not ADF format.

That said, bear in mind that the discs were only available to subscribers! They weren't as widely available as cover discs were, which means less opportunity for them to get in the hands of people who can image them. Also, some people would have gotten tapes instead of discs for their BBC Micros, which of course require an entirely different imaging process.

And as it turns out, they weren't even covered in the same subscription as the magazine until 1989. I just did some more research. It seems that the timeline basically goes like this:

• 1983-03 (March): Issue #1, including an offer in the magazine of a cassette tape of all the programs printed in the issue (22 listings in total). This offer continues in subsequent issues, along with offers to obtain tapes from back issues.
• 1983-05 (May): An annual subscription for the tapes, separate from the magazine itself, is introduced. If you wanted both subscriptions, you would have to pay two different subscription rates.
• 1984-01 (January): The back issues offer for tapes, as well as the annual tape subscription, is expanded to allow ordering discs instead, which also includes a menu system for selecting what you want to load.
• 1988-10 (October): A new subscription option that combines the tape/disc sub with the magazine sub is introduced. The magazine pitches this as "get The Micro User free each month when you subscribe to our monthly tape or disc!", since the combined subscription is the same cost as the tape/disc-only subscription had cost - but really it was just a pricing change, since the tape/disc-only subscription had reduced in price too.
• 1989-01 (January): Only three months after the combined subscription is introduced, the tape/disc-only subscription offer is retired, leaving only the combined subscription.

So essentially, although the concept of a "subscription disc" did exist from 1984 onwards (with offers to get the previous issues on disc as well), it was only in 1989 that all subscribers to the magazine would have them.

[edit: Fixing typo! I meant to say "subscription discs" in the first paragraph, not "cover discs".]

[wmd]

Something like this already exists! http://8bs.com/catalogue/tmu.htm

Thanks, that's really useful, but I meant for all Archimedes cover / subscription discs, not just Micro User.

[wmd]

Found another one - the Archimedes World 'Aggressor' demo by Atomic Software has an exclusive level.

[wmd]

And another one - Cyborg by Alpine Software. The Acorn Computing cover disc version has 1 stage that was specially designed for Acorn Computing. The instructions state: "This level of Cyborg has been specially written for the Acorn Computing MegaDisk and is not available elsewhere". It's pretty terrible though, so not really worth hunting down unlike some of the other ones listed in this thread...

[wmd]

Interesting! As an aside, !A5000demo was uploaded here to Stardot by iainfm if you want to try running it yourself, though as it's non-interactive, watching a YouTube video is probably just fine.

This doesn't seem to want to work on my A5000. The Acorn logo briefly appears on the right hand side of the screen, then nothing!