Electron Games on a BBC

[melchett]

Was wondering the other day (as I've never tried this) but is it possible to run all Electron games on a BBC Micro? Not sure what the all differences were between the two machines but I seem to remember:<br>
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1) The Electron was half the speed of the BBC Micro<br>
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2) There was no Mode 7 as the teletext chip wasn't present in the Electron<br>
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3) All the major chips (I think) were all contained in in sngle ULA chip - not sure if that meant reduced functionality though?<br>
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I'm sure a million people have tried this before and I was just wondering what happened? Do they run and if so do they run twice as fast as they were supposed to? Also, were many/any games specifically written for the Electron?<br>
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Do some games also work the other way round i.e. BBC Games on the Electron without modification? <br>
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I never had access to an Electron so would be interested to hear if anyone's tried this (I'm sure you have).<br>
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[Moist Mog]

I'm pretty sure you can't run Electron games on a BBC Micro... what makes me think that is that I remember when you typed in games from magazines there were often differences between the BBC and Electron versions... but then some early ones might work.<br>
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I remember a fair few of my games had the BBC version on one side of the tape and the Electron on the other.<br>
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The other way round... very much doubt it. As you say the BBC was much more powerful.

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[Jeremy Grayson]

Hiya,<br>
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Those Electron games that work fine on a Beeb would either do so, I suggest, (i) by accident, or (ii) by virtue of being very simply (BASIC?)-written. I can play the Elk version of Superior's Draughts and Mastertronic's Spectipede without any obvious impairment, and IJK's Five a Side Socca plays only a little bit faster, but pretty much everything else either spits out the dummy or loads but with the screen sliced in half.<br>
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You'll notice the total absence of any even halfway decent games listed above.<br>
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Jeremy<br>


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[Fraser]

Games using interrupts to synchronise should run at the same speed. Games using the RTC interrupt are presumably the ones with a half screen. I don't know if the BBC has an equivalent interrupt but it looks like it doesn't. It would have to be used exactly the same. Chuckie Egg on the BBC is no different to on an Electron. Ocean's Hunchback runs faster and has better sound. Many games have the same sound codes as the BBC version so will sound better on a BBC or an Electron with a sound cartridge. The Electron's sound hardware is different to the BBC but nearly all games treat it as a 1 channel equivalent of the BBC's chip without amplitude control. More complicated changes in pitch would make better sound on the Electron.

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