Zarch Acorn Games Video Archive A3010/TV Card

[Oddman76]

was lander the demo name and zarch the full version?

[LordGeorgeRodney]

you can destroy everything & I mean everything in this game even a surface impact looks amazing

THIS FOR 1987!!

In 2011 - Call of Duty Black Ops there are only about 10% of 'chosen' objects that can be destroyed

PATHETIC!

[LordGeorgeRodney]

I remember playing this in 88-89 I spent hours & hours on it!

[unifiedreality]

David Braban was a programming genius.

[thelyniezian]

I was nearly going to get this as one of my first games, not sure what to get software-wise. I'd known about it as the full version of "Lander" on the RISCOS 2 Apps discs my aunt (a teacher) brought home from school. Sadly I went for some pointless collection of educational games called "Junior Essentials". Wish I'd gone for Zarch (or not, since it includes shooting stuff and aliens and I'm not big on that sort of thing these days with my beliefs being what they are).

[thelyniezian]

But then, I'm itching to play Space Invaders. A tad hypocritical...

[EmmaRW0]

Taught me good mouse co-ordination skills....

[mafia10til8]

My brother was a pro at this game, but I couldn't even make a kill without crashing. Still a good game.

[DevilMaster]

Wow, it has even better graphics than the Amiga version!

[FactualTruthProvider]

Well it has 256 colours and a CPU several times faster, so it should.

[Archimedes75009]

The ARM2 in the Archimedes is 5 times faster than the 68000 (both at 8 Mhz : 4 MIPS against 0.8) but well raw power is not the only thing to consider.

The video chip, its bus, the graphic mode (chunky for the Arc, bitplane for the Amiga), the 'colour line drawing' the Amiga could use with its copper, something which doesn't exist on the Archimedes, all this must be considered.

[Archimedes75009]

Let alone the %age of CPU power needed to deal with the sound.

On an ARM2 machine a 4 channel MOD player uses from 12 to 15% of the available cycles per VBL in a 320*256, 256 colour screen mode. (BTW the Archimedes had 8 channels).

I think it's less on the Amiga.

[JasperAbraxxious]

@Archimedes75009 : Yep, the Amiga only has 4 x 8bit channels (2 left and 2 right in stereo). However, this has full DMA via the Paula custom chip and so uses pretty much zero cpu to run. Also, using Ahi or other low level code, the Amiga can have up to 32 channels of sounds by pre mixing. This of course DOES use cpu time, but quite a few games had 8 channel stereo sound on a basic A500 using very little cpu time. Paula was a great chip. :)

[JasperAbraxxious]

@DevilMaster : Nope, identical graphics - read the reviews of Virus at the time, they actually just ported all the models etc to the Amiga. Runs faster and smoother than on a basic A500 though. On an A1200 it is faster and smoother again.

[Pectabyte]

Whats the goal of this game?

[Zarchimedes]

From the game manual:

"You are the pilot of the Zarch hoverplane; your orders are to defend the country against the waves of attacking alien spaceships. The alient race are intent on polluting the landscape by spraying it with a debilitating red virus."

(The typo 'alient' is in the manual. Maybe the writers got infected, too. Or is there such a word, alient?)

I'd put it this way: "In each attack wave, save as much of the area still uninfected as you can."

[borgirdummu]

WOW

It's LANDER, but with actual things to shoot at! I never knew this existed. I played lander millions of times.

[richardwild76]

Lander was a demo version of the game Zarch that they shipped with the Arc to showcase its graphics. Zarch was one of the first games for the Arc, and considering its age its graphics were mindblowing. This was the reason the Arc got a reputation for graphics. PCs caught up and surpassed the Arc, but at the time of Zarch there was nothing like this on the PC. In fact I don't think even Windows 3 was out yet.

[jicaley]

Nice shooting!

[Pablos544]

I was salivating when i saw this game. I could never afford an Archimedes. It was awesome :)

[didier864]

Incredible to see something like!

It is a game from 1987! amazing

[thelyniezian]

@didier864 For 1987, this must have seemed pretty amazing.

[dcikaruga]

I liked the game but the controls were awefull.

[zimant78]

well actually I do know it's pretty good but it's hard to remember how to load everything , you might have luck on dc++  emulator rooms

[zimant78]

there is an emulator called red squirrel that doees everything Archimedes, not sure how good it is or worth it!

[ghostface2006]

i played this during music lessons at school in about 1990. great game. anyone know about an emulator/rom etc?

[zimant78]

Archimedes with this and Ibix the Viking..Zarch is a very absorbing game ...I think the chances I am about to find Ibix the Viking on here are 100 to 1!

[peetvanpeebles]

I'll take that bet ;)

[Banzeken]

The best looking game ever, I think :P

Thanks for uploading this video! It's awesome ;)

[Clive0075]

To use the STM instruction, your destination address must be on an address mltiple of 4, that's why good coders should code a loop with STRB until they reach it and then use STM instruction ... an easy trick for fast filing routines or transfering graphics ...

[Clive0075]

Grreat machine the Arc believe me, so sad so few people had an in-depth view of its guts.

Do you know creating an overscan videomode only needs about 100 ARM instructions ?

And who used that ? Who used the only hard sprite (muse ponter), a 3 colour 32 pixels width, unlimited heigh, to plot high scores for example ? Nobody ! So sad ...

[Clive0075]

Braben admited he' only using the STRB (store byte) ARM instruction.. If he had usd the fast STM (store multiple bytes (4)) ARM instruction, the game could have been even faster.

[uggla03]

I had this on the atari st it looked great but looking back the actual game was boring

[peteosmith]

Wow Zarch - I Played this on my Archimedes 20 YEARS AGO!

[dreamcastII]

this came out in the Amiga called Virus. I wonder what was better technically Amiga vs Archimedes ?

[highfrontier]

well for some reason the sound was worse on archimedes version despite the better sound capabilities, the graphics were -much- better on the Arch though - on the amiga it was either 16 or 32 colours, whereas on the Arch, it was 256 with the landscape getting graduated into the distance, the arch version was also released before which made anyone (including me) viewing this 3d spectacle for the first time gawp in wonder. remember this was 1987!

[dreamcastII]

good reply here. You know your stuff. The game is really good isnt it. I loved it on my Amiga 1200 (wonder if it ran faster than the normal 500 or just the same and doesn't know the processor is faster ?).

The Archimedes is one machine I would like to have a go of. Does it 'feel' like a BBC in anyway ? THAT was one great micro.

[highfrontier]

I think the 1200 was pretty much the same wasn't it? beefed up memory I think. the archimedes really was the daddy! vs. the BBC, the command line interface was the same in most respects, but where it really scored was with the riscos gui - which was just stunning for its time, frankly. Redsquirrel emulator will give you a feel for it or could even buy one of the machines that are still in production.. have a look for machines like the A9.

[highfrontier]

I think the 1200 was pretty much the same wasn't it? beefed up memory I think. the archimedes really was the daddy! vs. the BBC, the command line was the same in most respects, but where it really scored was with the riscos gui - which was just stunning for its time, frankly. Redsquirrel emulator should give you a feel for this or could even buy one of the machines that are still in production.. machines like the A9.

[m1omg]

well, no, amiga 1200 had the then new 68020 fully 32 bit processor at 14 mhz and whole new architecture, and the 1st archie is about 4x faster than amiga 500 and about as fast as amiga 1200

[pinkerton05]

Windows remake is called Z-virus, do a google search for it.

[RABBIDGamfan]

There's a version of this game in Javascript somewhere online. I just wish I knew where...

[keeble909]

I played this for hours as a kid. then when i found the disk all through school! :-)

[HardcoreClassics]

I thought this game was called 'Lander'?

[keeble909]

Yea was called that when i had it too. Landerdemo :)

[dreamcastII]

Your right it started out as Lander:

Wikipidea says "Zarch started off as a demo called Lander and was bundled with almost all releases of the Acorn Archimedes.£

[RABBIDGamfan]

This looks really fun. I wish I had an Archimedes. Were they even released in the US?

[TeamAndromeda]

Is this from the genius that made Elite ?

[kth42]

David Braben, indeed. But he co-wrote Elite together with Ian Bell.