What if... RISC OS part one

This is the first of three articles published in the Wakefield RISC OS Computing Club newsletter last year. The articles focussed on three key years for the Acorn Archimedes and its successors - their original launch (with the Arthur OS) in 1987, the introduction of the A3000 (and RISC OS) in 1989, and finally, the belated attempt at the wider UK home computer market with the A3010 in 1992. 

I have taken the opportunity to expand each piece, and all views that appear here are my own, as are any omissions. I hope you like the slightly tongue in cheek approach to questions that were answered decades ago. No slights or offence intended. Please, enjoy.

What ifs abound in the world of RISC OS. What if the Archimedes had launched with ARX rather than the rapidly put together Arthur operating system? What if Acorn had chased the mainstream home computer market rather than the self-proclaimed "serious home user" after the launch of the A3000? What if they had latched on to the interest generated by Zarch?

Zarch review from The Games Magazine.

Truly the title that defined the Archimedes when it first hit the streets, Zarch built upon Lander, the game bundled with the OS and was, for 1987, a stunning and groundbreaking experience in a world flooded by 8-bit micros. Mouse breaking too if you lacked patience... System sellers have long been a key driver in new computer and console sales, and there is no doubt that Zarch could have fulfilled that role for Acorn. To be fair, the Archimedes' basic price was an antidote for such hyperbole, but as example of what the ARM 2 could do, that was it, and it became a poster child for the Arc. 

September 87 show advert with Lander front and centre. 

Naturally, this garnered some attention, with the long established publication Computer and Video Games rating it a C+VG Hit in their January 1988 issue (albeit with screenshots for another game entirely), whilst ACE magazine gave it a whopping 979 out of 1000 (I know, a weird scoring system, but it remained their highest rated game for a couple of years) in its December 1987 issue. The Games Machine (another multi-format magazine similar to C+VG who would occasionally focus on the Archie, such as in their September 1988 issue), rated it at 81% but queried the price of the machine, and Acorn User was suitably impressed too. For the next six months, that was pretty much it until Conqueror took the base code of Zarch and made a tank game out of it. Again, this was covered in Acorn User and ACE, the latter bestowing a 931/1000 score alongside a comment about the game's complexity and 1MB RAM requirement - hefty for any 1988 format. Neither C+VG nor ACE were niche periodicals. The former boasted a circulation of over 100,000, the latter reached nearly half that, so when you think of the readership these two magazines held, never mind TGM, surely there was an opportunity here? 

TGM contents page September 1988.

ACE was very much the Edge of its day, and loved to cover exciting new technology as well as the more down to earth games market, and issue three featured a three-way comparison between the Archie, the ST and the Amiga. Archie came last, but only due to lack of software and, to be fair, it was just a few months out of the gate. It also featured Archie every month in the Pink Pages section, listed alongside every other common computer of the time, tech specs, prices and all. This, gentle reader, was a good thing, as there were no adverts for Acorn's range in the gaming press, and their initial ads in the likes of Personal Computer World were intellectually interesting but pretty drab.

For a 256-colour machine, the ads were a little... John Major-like.

The Pink Pages also began listing the best games on the market and, of course, both Archie titles were there too. Zarch appeared with the comment that it "could do for the Archimedes what the 'juggler' demo did for the Amiga." The context here is that when the Amiga was first demonstrated with an animated juggler, it was jaw dropping compared to the existing machines on the market. It was a vain hope for the Archimedes, as ACE always noted that both price (compared to the Amiga and ST), as well as software availability, would hinder Acorn's finest. Still, they would continue to cover the format well into 1990, with Clares' Interdictor grabbing 650/1000 early that year. 

In 1987, the ST was superb value. And relatively cheap. 

Could Acorn have shone the spotlight on the games that exemplified the sheer power of the computers it was supposed to be selling? Not really. With margins being so tight and the company neither regularly nor comfortably profitable, getting into the ST vs Amiga fight was not a sensible or realistic possibility. Even so, when Acorn User carried two page ads from Atari in 1988 (cheekily advertising the fact their ST Summer Pack contained £414 worth - at RRP - of games in a package selling for £399), you kind of get the impression advertising was not Acorn's strong point, although they did get one back in 1992 by advertising the A3010 in ST Format, but that was akin to whistling in the wind by that point... or was it? (You'll find out in part three).

The competition to the Arc in 1987.

That also ignores the state of the home computer market at the time. 8-bit machines ruled, with the Spectrum, CPC (both from Amstrad by this point), and the C64 surviving the cull of formats that wiped out many competitors between 1984 and 1987. Acorn's own BBC Master still sold in limited numbers outside of the educational market, and the Electron was still receiving a modicum of software support even then. The ST was the only reasonably priced 16-bitter at the time of Archie's launch. The DOS PC was epitomised at the time by the Amstrad PC1512/1640 (the latter was launched only a month of so prior to the Arc), and they started at £400-ish ex VAT for a mono single drive machine. Colour (CGA) took the price way above that of the 16-bitters, and add-ons such as hard drives or EGA placed the asking price of even Amstrad machines into Archimedes territory and beyond. Choose something other then Alan's kit and there was literally no limit. As for the Mac, that started at stratospheric and only went up; and Commodore were only just getting used to the idea that the Amiga 1000 was priced just a smidge over the odds for what people wanted. Even after the release of the A500 in the same year as the Archimedes, it would take a couple of years of plugging away to see sales tick up. The point here is that whilst Acorn had an immensely powerful desktop, you could get either cheaper machines with better software support and reasonably good graphical and audio capabilities, or equally priced/more expensive machines that delivered a greater overall capability. A hard drive wasn't yet an essential piece of kit in the DOS world, but the writing was on the platter...

The Mac in 1987. How much???

Maybe, if they had have noted the attention Zarch had garnered in those very early days, a few well placed ads might have picked up a handful of new users. Sales of both Zarch and Conqueror were considered disappointing (ACE issue 13, October 1988), not because of the reach of the games themselves in the Archimedes market, more that said market was still rather small. Cost of ownership was hugely important and, in any case, there was a looming two-way battle in the UK between Atari and Commodore, one that would demonstrate the need for huge developer support and corporate financial muscle (or canny juggling abilities) to compete in it - two characteristics Acorn was sorely lacking in. As it was, neither Commodore not Atari would survive the conflict anyway - Atari would concede after leaving the ST platform to wither for far too long, and Commodore would have a financial heart attack after years of "poor" corporate management. Even without such bullet/foot shenanigans, a combination of home consoles and the evolution of the DOS PC into a gaming powerhouse would likely have doomed both anyway. But I digress...

THIS IS A FUN COMPUTER!!! (sarcasm).

If Acorn had placed even a smidge more focus on the gaming potential of the hardware, it might have helped. A handful of ports (possibly paid for by the ever cash-strapped Acorn, perhaps, but extremely unlikely), and maybe a couple of bundled games, might have moved the needle, even slightly, anything to gain a little more traction in a market that, to be fair, wasn't ready to move on from the 8-bit era just yet. You didn't need mega-numbers of sales to be considered a successful title either - as late as 1993, Amiga Format reported that sales of 10k for a floppy game were enough for it to be considered a big hit. Even 5,000 was acceptable. Consider those figures in a 1987/88 context and you could have a valid financial reason to support the platform. 

Clares advert from October 87 with the first commercial game release, Minotaur.

So let's say that Acorn did push the A305 as a game machine, even though it was soon apparent that the A310 was the machine of choice due its greater memory spec. They sell another 5k machines to those gamers with deep pockets and/or understanding bank managers (no mean feat considering a) the early supply numbers, only 2000 A3xx series machines were expected in the first three months following launch, and b) the general UK economic climate as the 1980's drew to a close). What happens next?

ACE 3-way showdown page one December 1987.

First, it increases the reach of the machine. The estimated user base by the close of 1988 was something around 10k (according to ACE issue 13), where as of issue 7, they had the ST around 80-90k and the Amiga at 22-25k. Price cuts since that earlier edition had helped both American machines, so they were selling well for their price point. Even at 15k, though, that still created a market for games... providing those additional 5,000 sales were to home users. Sorry, Acorn fans, but school sales, whilst keeping the actual company afloat, didn't really count when it came to games. 

ACE 3-way showdown page 2 December 1987.

Even so, by the time the cost-reduced A3000 arrives, there are encouraging signs that low cost ports will sell on Acorn's machine, which could only benefit the newer machine, but it still wouldn't be enough. As far as the wider market was concerned, the Archie would never be the lead machine to develop on, so getting software that took real advantage of the extra power (especially the ability to display 256 colours) would have been difficult. It was also too early for the PC to help out, as until VGA took hold at prices approaching the sub-£1000 mark a couple of years later, there was little on offer to cross over. Yet as one of the UK supermarkets says, every little helps, and those extra users would have created a tail of sales support and awareness that certainly wouldn't have hurt the format. There would still, however, have been the issue of a relatively small installed user base compared to contemporaries and the educational stigma that would be hard to shift.

Less of a what if and more of a why not, the A3xx/4xx series were the trailblazers for Acorn. But could a cheaper machine, the A3000 have changed things around at a later date? With a more developed 16-bit market and the beginnings of the DOS PC's rise to ultimate glory, was there a chance for Acorn then?

That, gentle reader, is a what if for another time.