Zarch (1987) Gameplay for BBC Acorn Archimedes High Quality
Phoenix Risen2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2016–2020
demo · general · evergreen · 2016–2020 on HN
Gameplay footage of Zarch, the 1987 3D Defender-like game by David Braben for the Acorn Archimedes. It shows the 256-colour 3D landscape where you stop landers spreading a virus.
HN commenters recall it as a mind-blowing early 3D game that showed what the Archimedes hardware could do.
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5 comments from Hacker News
Check out Zarch on the Acorn Archimedes. ▶ this video It's an awesome 3D game from 1987 (with truly awful sound). That was made 6 years before Second Reality, on a RISC-based computer. It's incredible.
Got to add Zarch to the list, we had one in the 'computer lab' surrounded by BBC micro's, I only touched on a little of it's potential, but this game was mind blowing! ▶ this video
> they weren't particularly fast I remember them being amazingly fast. I was comparing them to Amigas in 1987 though. The Motorola 68000 in the Amiga 500 was less than 1.0 dhrystone MIPS, while the Archemedes A3000 was about 4.0. For reference, the machines cost about £499 and £599 respectively in 1987. As a result the frame rate, poly count and screen size in Zarch on the Archemedes was higher than Starglider II on the Amiga :-). Look ▶ this video , link
One of the benefits of growing up in the UK around that time (late 80's) is that there was a chance your school had an Acorn Archimedes or two and you could have you mind blown with Zarch: ▶ this video
The Archimedes' performance was astonishing at the time. It was amazing to see Zarch [1] in 1987, when games were mainly sprites [2] (with important exceptions like Elite). [1] ▶ this video [2] link