Porting "Real" Games to the Microbee

[elpiggio]

Just out of curiousity, is there any "mainstream" 8-bit system that has even a reasonable degree of similarity with the Microbee graphics hardware / format?

Is there any possibility that one of these can be ported?

https://skoolkit.ca/links/

Skool Days was ported to the Oric, which has an entirely different processor, so must have been a monumental amount of work.

Could some genius, possibly, port something like this to the Microbee (being that it has original, well commented Source Code)?

https://www.bbcelite.com/

I know the Microbee has some great games, and some excellent games have been ported too. But just having ONE of the Spectrum / Amstrad / BBC type games would be beyond cool.

I don't believe the Microbee is any less capable than one of these platforms. But maybe the hardware is just too different.

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Thought the BBC had a Z80. Nope. Edited the post accordingly

[someone]

Hi Elpiggio,

If you read someone's "Microbee - The ultimate Doppelganger posts", you'll find that it can emulate many other platforms including the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, Exidy Sorcerer and authentic arcade games.
Here is an example.
https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/...hp?tid=131
Here's another arcade game.
   

To emulate a ZX Spectrum, the character size is configured as a 32x24 screen of 8x8 chars.  The colour RAM mechanism is almost identical using both a foreground and background attributes.  Like the microbee, the ZX Spectrum also has a bit bashed speaker.

As standard, when the microbee is using an 8x8 character matrix, half of the PCG RAM is wasted but with a simple mod the half that was wasted can be reclaimed.  With even more mods, vastly improved colour ability can be accessed including a 320x256 mode with 2 bit colour combinations for each pixel from either 16 or 256 user configurable colour palettes.


BTW: The BBC Micro had a Z80 expansion board to enable it to run CP/m.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro_expansion_unit

[elpiggio]

Hi Elpiggio,

If you read someone's "Microbee - The ultimate Doppelganger posts", you'll find that it can emulate many other platforms including the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, Exidy Sorcerer and authentic arcade games.
Here is an example.
https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/...hp?tid=131

OK. If I can see Manic Miner running on my Premium+ I will be seriously impressed.

Go ahead, impress me 

[someone]

No permission to distribute the software but here's the next best thing. A video

[someone]

For those who are wondering, can skool daze be ported to the microbee?

Can you gauge it from this picture of just the background map and status bar on a microbee (emulator for ease of screen shot)?