Games

Introduction

The RISC OS games scene has never been very active, and became even quieter with the disappearance of Acorn Computers Ltd in 1998. However, since the release of the Raspberry Pi and ARM X6, new game developers have been attracted to RISC OS (e.g. AMCOG games) There has also been a renewed interest in games from established companies such as Softrock Software. Thus small independant game developers are producing both new titles and re-written older titles.

Otherwise many newly appearing RISC OS games are ports (many hosted on riscos.info), with the occasional original title available from R-Comp's !Store, or a rework of an older BBC Micro or Archimedes game. Many of the ports are relatively processor intensive, and can be impractical on a RiscPC or Iyonix, so a Raspberry Pi 2, Pandaboard, Beagleboard or ARMX6 is required.

There are also a variety of emulators available, such as DosBox and PicoDrive, and these make a wide variety of classic games such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers available for play - provided suitable ROM images can be found.

riscos.info Games

riscos.info hosts many game ports

The following games/emulators have their own pages:

• Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe
• Freeciv
• ScummVM
• DosBox

Game Developers

Although there have been many game developers in the past this list contains only links to developers who are somewhat active, or have games available.

• AmCoG are actively developing new Indie games for RISC OS. The first game released was Overlord at the Wakefield 2015 show. The second Legends of Magic was released 6 months later at ROUGOL 2015. The third Xeroid was again released 6 months later at Wakefield 2016.

• Soft Rock Software developed a number of budget titles in the early 1990s. as of June 2016, Escape From Exeria is now being updated to work on modern RISC OS hardware.

• Chris Bazley including Star Fighter 3000

• Cloudsprinter Software

• Sine Nomine Software has also proved to be one of the most active games developers in recent years, with impressive work being done on their various shareware puzzle games, SuperDoku and the new Wrangler being their flagship titles.

• Jason Tribbeck was writing a couple of new games, both were last seen in alpha or early beta stages of development in the early 2000s; ACED and Equinox.

• R-Comp has a selection of ported games that have been fully converted to RISC OS (including Quake, Doom and Descent), and a native RISC OS Doom-like game, Destiny.

• APDL now own the rights to and are selling the 4th Dimension's back catalogue. Notable among these games are Cataclysm, Nevryon, E-Type and others. The 4th Dimension Games Collections typically feature 9-12 games on a CD, so there's enough to keep you occupied for a long time!

News and Discussion

• Acorn Arcade covers some RISC OS games news, and also has some former commercial games available as freeware.
• The usenet group comp.sys.acorn.games has general RISC OS games discussion.
• The Archimedes Software Preservation Project has many former commercial games available for free download, along with utilities to make them run on newer hardware.
• Playing Badass Acorn Archimedes Games on a Raspberry Pi is an absolute beginner's guide to playing retro games on a Raspberry Pi that presumes absolutely no prior knowledge of Risc OS.

Commercial Games

Commercial and shareware games are occasionally released for RISC OS, usually when the work involved in writing or porting the game required a considerable amount of time. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a number of popular games ported to RISC OS from bigger platforms by R-Comp, [[AcornQuake|Quake Resurrection] and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 are amongst the biggest titles.

The turn of the millennium saw a decline in commercial games development for RISC OS, the latest major releases being TEK 1608 from Artex Software in 2002 and Desktop Repton from Alligata in 2004. It was around this time that commercial development ceased on many major games, Iron Dignity from Artex and Eat My Dust from Visions of the Impossible are two prime examples.

In recent years, RISC OS has seen the releases of a small number of commercial titles, FunFysics (20ukp) from David Snell was released at the 2011 RISC OS South West Show, Wrangler (5ukp), SuperDoku (5ukp) and House of Cards (5ukp) from Sine Nomine Software and a series of 4th Dimension compilations from APDL (11.90ukp) are among the biggest titles. Commercial and shareware development continues, with Sine Nomine releasing regular updates for all of their puzzle titles, StarFighter 3000 development continues from Christopher Bazley, a new version of the game authoring suite Trellis from Soft Rock Software is nearing release and a RISC OS port of the newly released Repton game is under development from Retro Software.

A new 2.5D shoot-em-up (Overlord) was launched at the Wakefield 2015 show on CD by Ambiguous Contrasts Games AmCoG. Developed by Anthony Vaughan Bartram on a Raspberry Pi , it is was made available to buy via the !Store for 9.99ukp on the 27th of April 2015. The second indie game from [[AmCoG] was an isometric 3D quest game called Legends of Magic which includes a free 200+ page book of the backstory to the game. It is available from the !Store for 8.99ukp and like Overlord, also available to buy at RISC OS shows on CD. A third indie game, Xeroid, was released at Wakefield 2016. Xeroid is a 3D vector graphic game.

Freeware

RISC OS has a good number of both old and new free games, 2007 saw Dave Brown port Quake 2 to RISC OS, SokoBas from Dorian Computing in 2011 and a large amount of open-source games were ported to RISC OS thanks to the Unix Porting Project (now hosted on this very site). Old classics such as MarsQuake and Angband are 32-bit safe and still popular with RISC OS to this day. A huge amount of games are now available for free from the APDL Public Domain library, which is now completely free.

Interactive Fiction

RISC OS has fairly good support for both playing and writing Interactive Fiction (text adventures).

• Inform interpreters - Play Infocom games, and other games compiled to the Z-Machine format
• TADS 2 intepreter - Labelled AcornTADSruntime.spk
• Inform 6 compiler
• Trellis - Design your own text adventures
• GTAC - Design your own text adventures

Want to make your own games?

• FST - Design your own flight simulators
• Spatience - Design card games