What a way to re-launch a classic! October 1992 saw the long-running BBC Micro publication The Micro User transition to Acorn Computing, a new approach to mirror the changing nature of the Acorn market. And whether by good fortune or good planning, the debut issue put Acorn's latest 32-bit wonder front and centre.
The editorial, a new addition, brings up the good old "Acorn is the Rolls Royce of UK computing" and the "Acorn's marketing is pants" stereotypes, then attempting to dispel those ideas by pointing out that Rolls had been successful for years, Acorn were making amends by getting Olympic athletes involved in advertising, and were also launching five new machines. Commenting that: "In this recession, it's a big risk releasing a whole range of new machines into a market glutted with PC's and games consoles." the editorial believes that Acorn could succeed, as you can tell from the title, but was this new found optimism warranted or would it turn out to be a misguided change of direction? I mean, no spoilers, like, but... yeah... jet engines and cars are very different to home computers.
The news pages are a varied bag of goodies, with updates on hardware, software, and rather a lot of games-related action. There's an interesting "Meet the team" boxout, where the Acorn Computing lot would be tagging along to some of the Acorn road shows across the country to show off their latest kit. Some of the destinations make perfect sense, others... less so. Why 'Boro, for pity's sake? I would have thought Durham or maybe Newcastle would have been a better option given the geography of the north east. Maybe the answer lies in the authorised dealer pages at the back of the magazine? Yarm was blessed with a dealer, but sadly there seems little else twixt Tees and Tweed.
It should be noted that with four entries, games get a fair amount of coverage, suggesting that at this point of RISC OS' life, it wasn't exactly the gaming desert that seems to have become the accepted "truth" as time has passed. Sure, it wasn't the leisure platform the Amiga, ST or PC were/are, but neither was it devoid of fun. It just needed a greater market percentage.
As to how Acorn would grab that percentage, well, here's where the hardware special comes in, giving readers the full deets on the A3010, A3020, A4000 and the Pocketbook - just don't mention Psion too much... Oh, and an upgrade for the year-old A5000 too. It's all pretty decent stuff, and you can't fault Acorn for thinking they were in with a chance. Certainly, that A3010 package is respectable value, if fatally undermined by the existing 16-bit competition being better established and, given there was a recession on, much, much cheaper. However, we'll get to that bit in the ads section below.
There's a box out for upgrading your 8-bit micro and whilst I can't fault their enthusiasm, the comparison suggested to readers is more than open to criticism. The A3010 offers everything the existing A3xx/A4xx series have except expansion. Faster, a better operating system (the eternal RISC OS 3.1), and that price. Here's where I always cast a gimlet eye at Acorn magazines of the early 1990's though: the £499 that you need for an A3010 then was equivalent to only £250 in 1982, so why not treat yourself! Erm, no, that's not how that works. It doesn't matter that £500 in 1992 was only £250 in 1982. Five hundred quid is five hundred quid, and even in the year of fuckwittery 2025, that's still folding money!
The A4000 receives the merest of mentions as part of the Schools solution box out, RISC OS 3.1 fares little better, but the Pocket Book gets most of a page. There's commentary of the background to the new ARM250 chip, as well as a statement that Acorn would admit that the original reliance on the built-in VIDC chip was a mistake and that the PC's approach encompassing dedicated (and replaceable) graphics cards is better. That's complete bollocks because the system-on-a-chip that was the ARM250 baked the VIDC into the mix - hence the term SoC. Anyhoo, there's positivity abound, extending to the possibility. that emulation would replace downward compatibility. Another gimlet eye is due, me thinks. It's the final note, italicised in the original text that raises eyebrows the most:
It was a departure. They may have received a message but it was the wrong one - the 1992 range would have been better suited against its 1989 competitors (I know, what-iffery abounds!), and even then the Amiga was rapidly building up momentum in the UK, so no, the future would not be rosy... unless you like fancy shades of red on your balance sheets...
Proving the magazine was keen on keeping both Beeb and RISC OS users happy, the cover disk pages are split into two, and advertising a one-time offer of a 50p cost of replacement from the 3.5" RISC OS versions to the 3.5" or 5.25" BBC flavours. And to show that, here's the disks that came with this copy of the magazine via the eBay seller. Subscribers to the mag could choose a BBC disk option as per standard, so kudos to the Acorn Computing team at the time.
Next up we have education updates and a quartet of reviews of educational titles. Saving the trees was one thing, but to my then Geography GCSE self, I'd have tried my best with Modelling Coasts. Shame the product itself received a poor review. As to the other two releases, punctuation and spelling were the order of the day.
The Games section has reviews of Populous (via porting powerhouse Krisalis), and Oh No! More Lemmings (Krisalis again). Car fans would be satiated by a drive off between Lotus Turbo Esprit (guess who? Begins with a K...) and Saloon Cars Deluxe (4th Dimension), with the latter pipping Lotus to first place by offering a longer tail of play despite being almost a tenner more expensive. 4D returns with Cyber Chess which receives high praise, but £50??? In 1992??? Even at the time, that was an extortionate price, and more akin to top tier cartridge games. CIS finish the fun (if you wish to call it that), with Microdrive Designer for those budding golf course planners. As noted in the review, it's highly recommended, but would you spend £40 on this and extra on the necessary Microdrive World Edition to actually play the courses? Not getting into the subject of port pricing versus native title development, nor about age of ports and all that jazz - just that the cost of software on a particular format can have a huge effect on the attraction of said format. This kind of thing did not favour Acorn at all when it came to tempting new users from the existing 16-bitters.
Essential Spreadsheets (flashback to my years in a finance department incoming!) gives readers a dose of joy with macros(!), Essential Music does the same for those creating tunes with Maestro, and Essential Paint does... look, you get the gist. All worthy articles and informative to boot.
A clutch of quick reviews targets system improvement packages, ergonomic androids (honest, look at the image!), some clip-art disks, and a few system utilities.
An investigation in to the Master 512 offers a couple of pages of add-on options and improvements you could make to your existing system. I have a great admiration of the original Master since it was the first true computer I used at Tanfield Comp before they had the A3000-toting computing suites installed, and if your particular Master still met your needs in 1992, then great, carry on. Not everything had to be shiny and new. And trust me, I work with an "long established" IBMi system on a daily basis and it does its work marvellously!
A two page review of Prophet, an accounts package for all of your small business accounting needs for £170 receives high praise, but did you know that it is still available now? Elesar will happily supply you with an up to date version for current RISC OS machines for £94.80 inclusive of VAT, £79.00 ex. Relative to it's original 1992 price, that's quite the discount! Speaking of Elesar, also check out their keyboard offering. I picked mine up at 2024's Wakefield Show, with my good lady ordering herself one later that day (they'd sold out by the time we went back to pick up a second one - that's how good they are), and we both highly recommend it!
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| This is very much worth the money! |
The DeskEdit text editor is up next, gaining plaudits if you wanted something a bit more customisable in your code, before the fairly typical of the time Public Domain software round up.
Final pieces for the magazine include the Mad Hatter with his introduction to Mapping, ROM and RAM detailing different ways to write to a screen (as well as comic strip Duck's Dungeon - yeah, no idea either), CyberDoc's program on population explosions and collapse (a bit serious, don't you think?), and Mike Cook showing us how to build a very slow game called Sneak Thief. Variety and all that jazz.
Now if you scoffed, or were thinking of scoffing about the optimism about Acorn's machines nearly thirty-three years ago (bloody hell, I feel old!), a perusal of the various adverts in the inaugural issue of Acorn Computing should put a stop to such thoughts.
Morley Electronics take the inside cover with their storage and other expansion options - £379 ex VAT for an external 52MB SCSI drive ain't exactly cheap, but you do need to consider the inclusion of the SCSI interface itself in that price. Removable storage is pricier still - a 42MB cartridge hard disc kit starts at £575 ex, with additional 42MB carts for £69 ex, so if you had a need for multiple drives, it ended up not that stupidly priced. For fans of really funky removable storage, the long-forgotten 21MB "Floptical" drives were £425/£499 for internal/external options respectively, and extra discs were £25 a pop.
Dabhand Computing is the first of the many general Acorn dealers, offering a full range of machines, associated hardware, software, and accessories for your every RISC OS need. Prices don't include VAT, but it should be noted that although the new range of machines were good value, once you got into the mid/top-tier options like the A4000 and A5000, you were very much intruding into decent Windows PC spec territory, and even respectable Apple Mac alternatives. OK, I maybe jest a little at that, but you wouldn't disgrace yourself with a Mac LC II in late 1992, and for less than any A5000 model, In fairness the A4000 offers a much better comparison. That being said, you could still but a Master 128 for £349 ex VAT. You'd be right to raise an eyebrow. Existing users, carry on, but as a new machine purchase? No, just no.
Orion Computers are another dealer, and again, there's a ton of stuff to buy, but their Master 128 is £395 ex, so if it was a "no" for Dabhand, it's a "Hell, no!" for Orion. As you can see from the second page, though, there's quite an array of games listed for the Arc/A3000, and I think better organised than Dabhand's, who have chosen to list their software by company, whereas Orion go by genre/type - the latter a much more sensible display in my humble opinion.
Yet another dealer in ICS, who decided on an alphabetical list of all of their software titles. Why? Just why??? As a handy note though, they've dated their ad, so you know the prices were valid on the 19th of August, 1992.
BEEBUG have a lovely advert showing off the full Acorn range, and given the clear pricing and succinct descriptions, it's one of the best ads you could peruse if you fancied jumping (or staying on) the Acorn wagon. It helped that BEEBUG (as a user group and newsletter/magazine supplier) had been supporting Acorn since the very earliest days of the BBC, and their efforts were still worthy in 1992.
Silicon Vision have some impressive looking serious software, and is that an early model of the Saab Gripen I see in SolidCAD Release 5.0?
The Fourth Dimension have a full page dedicated to Black Angel, which looks like an interesting 3D space adventure in the same vein as Elite. One cannot help but smile at the cheeky note at the bottom regards the release date "...hopefully August '92". Obviously using the waterfall development process...
It's the Krisalis lot next with their recents efforts: the aforementioned Populous and Lous Turbo Challenge 2/Lotus Turbo Esprit, alongside the more sedate Omar Sharif's Bridge.
Remember the golf course designer? Cambridge International Software won't let you forget as their ad is right next to that particular review.
And back once again, (without the Renegade Master, sadly) are Krisalis with a page inviting you to save more Lemmings. Only £20 and great fun to boot.
ARM Tech (UK) Ltd have a single page but seem to by trying to cram in as much kit as Orion and Dabhand. Software is divided simply into games and applications, and at least the hardware gets some room to breathe.
Clares have a full page of their wares, and I distinctly recall using ProArtisan at school. The results were crap, but the package itself was highly capable - definitely the user and not the tool..
Watford Electronics, before delving deeply into the PC compatible world, were prominent dealers of Acorn kit and accessories, a fair chunk of it of their own design or at least sourcing. With twelve pages of goodies, it's kind of hard to think of anything you couldn't get from them. And check out that Z88 section!
What's this? Silica trying to flog Amiga's to Archie fans??? To be fair to them, they've picked the right subjects - get an Amiga for £299. Makes the Master looked over-priced, never mind the A3010. There's a whole kettle of fish here but got to admire their effort, although marks are deducted due to the shady CDTV pricing - that £399 is after you've traded in your existing A500 - a bad deal in my humble opinion.
Guile, a 3D shooter from Dream Ltd takes the inside back cover, and outside, Superior Software were telling everyone about their first compilation for the Archimedes, Play It Again Sam 1. There were numerous volumes for the BBC, but it took a while for the Arc library to reach a point where there were sufficient titles. Still, for £24.95, there's plenty to enjoy with Hostages and Conqueror alone.
As "first" issues go, this is a good start, cleanly laid out and easy to read, informative and with excellent imagery. In hindsight, you could question the sanity of the editor and his team for being so bloody optimistic. Yet from their point of view, Acorn "seemed" to be doing all of the right things, at least compared to past efforts. Going back to the editorial - you might have considered Acorn's products as the Rolls Royce's of the computing world, but this was the time of mass market home computing, and no matter how good your £499 offering was, a £299 competitor with an already huge user base, well, it's not a flattering comparison.
This, of course, ignores the fact that Acorn were picking the wrong fight. By 1992, the competition at the low end, one that used to be the traditional 8-bit stomping ground in the late 80's and early 90's, had been concluded. The Amiga was lording it over the ST, even if Commodore was haemorrhaging cash, and Atari was trying to decide how to stay alive. But the nature of the conflict had also been redefined by the rise of 16-bit consoles. If people just wanted to play games, a Mega Drive or SNES were the first ports of call. If they wanted a home computer, well, then it became interesting, but as '92 gave way to '93, the Windows 3.1 PC and low-end Mac's were more than capable, and relatively affordable, to suit most if not all of your needs.
But that's a whole different thing. The point of focussing on this issue of Acorn Computing is that it's a marvellous snapshot of a manufacturer specific format publication at its peak. Software was plentiful, you couldn't move for new hardware and if you wanted games, there were games to be had. The peak didn't last long, but for a few months in late 1992, it really did feel in the world of Acorn computer users that the sun truly was shining on them.
