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Syndicate for Acorn RiscPC

hardware_ucomputer_acorn_archimedes

The Archimedes was the first RISC home computer. There were three series, the 300, 400 and 500 which shared the same hardware basis: the ARM-2 processor (ARM-3 for the A500) and three custom chips dedicated to memory (MEMC), video (VIDC) and I/O (IOC) controls.

The operating system, first named Arthur then subsequently RiscOS, was in ROM along with the WIMP graphic interface (Windows Menu Icon Pointer), the fast BBC BASIC V interpreter and various utility programs, among them a Paint package, a music editor and an Acorn BBC model 2 emulator.

Syndicate+ for Acorn RiscPC is still in sale. You can order this game on the R-Comp Web Site.

Here you have a one-level demo of the game:

Download Syndicate for Acorn demo

More information you can find on Acorn Arcade site.

There is few Acorn emulators for PC platform:
Virtual Acorn a5000
VirtualRPC
Red Squirrel
ArcEm

I was testing demo version on VirtualRPC. To run the game from this emulator, you must:
- Install the emulator
- Copy ROMs into .\Romsets directory (for example Riscos4 ROM file)
- Create model in .\Models, for example "Arm7 RISC OS 4 (JIT)" (or find somewhere and copy it - like I did)
- Unpack the game into .\HardDisc4 or other "Hard drive" directory (you may create your own directory)
- Rename file "!Run" into "!Run,feb"
- Rename file "Demo" into "Demo,ff8"
- Rename files "DataVox" and "Ethereal" (I don't know the right name, but these files are just for music so I skipped them)
- Run VirtualRPC, select Tools->Options and in "Hostfs" tab add your "Hard drive" directory (if it is not already added)
- Select Action->Power Cycle and run Syndicate from the menu that should appear between "0:" and "Apps"

The game was developed in 1998, but the in-game graphic is in the same quality that in PC version.

The movies inside Acorn version are probably in better quality than those used for PC version (I'm not sure).
I don't know if sound is better, but MIDI music is stored in many files, what differs it from PC release.