I never owned a BBC. Nope. Never.
However, my cousin who lived next door did. She was about 9 years old in 1982 (I was 11) and I would pop around to my Uncle's house on a weekend to play on her BBC and this was one of my earliest exposures to computing. I don't have a clear memory of what software titles she owned, but I just remember being fascinated by it.
And then, of course, my comprehensive school had around 10 of them. I remember IT classes as they were then known (Information Technology) when we would have a BBC two or three a piece, and our teacher would be instructing us to use them. I do remember a lot of educational software, adventure games where the focus was improving our command of the English language, and I think I remember a version of 'Turtle', the LOGO based program that taught rudimentary programming by controlling a cursor on the screen that could draw lines.

So that was my experience of the BBC in the 80s. I eneded up owning an Amstrad, bought for me at Christmas 1984 by my beloved, long since passed, grandparents.

By the time we reached the mid to late 90s my interest in retro 8-bit computing had began to evolve and now, here in 2025, I use Launchbox as my 'front-end' running RetroArch and individual emulators under the hood, and I love playing 8-bit games on a variety of computers such as the BBC, Amstrad, Electron, Enterprise, Oric Atmos, Spectrum, Commodore, MSX, Dragon etc.

I wasn't that knowledgeable about the BBC. I was aware of the obvious stuff that most retro gamers are aware of - things such as Elite being programmed and developed on the BBC, that the Boulderdash variant Repton was highly regarded etc.

This wonderful book by Idesine is absolutely wonderful. It's like 'comfort food' if that makes sense, featuring a wealth of interviews, reviews and captivating screenshots of classic games.

I highly, highly recommend this book to retro-gamers and anyone who has the slightest interest in the history of 8-bit computing in the UK.

Absolutely superb and quality book bringing back many happy memories of my childhood. Everything from school days with BBCs and home with my Electron and plus one. Citadel and Arcadians were top for me until Elite came out. Even in wireframe it was a different level. Thank you. Worth every penny.

Fabulous service

Brilliant book. Great to relive the old days.

A wonderful book, lovingly put together. Looking forward to the next release from Idesine!

First off - disclosure that I'm in it, so I might be biased! But it was lovely to be propelled back to the 1980s and see all those games & listen to the authors give their memories of their games' back story.

Also, very high production quality artwork really shines through, improving the experience still further.

OK so 5000 characters you provide me with here for a review of a potential readers first digital childhood experiences (we don't mention the PET). That's 4842 characters left to describe 600 pages of content? That is also after I have spent the last hour or so already typing my review only to wonder half way through if the counter was going up or down...the rather late arrival of the yellow bar suggests it was going down all along, and despite how often I clicked submit that web enforced limit was having none of it. But hey, there are tricks to fitting a lot into a little as we all know.

So I am assuming you are reading this as either a former (or current) Acorn owner, gamer, teacher, seller, employee, modern blogger, whatever an influencer is- if so then you know when faced with a limitation like characters or in other words RAM. The reward of achieving the impossible is always to be sought. Now I could try to procedurally generate a review from a few bytes of hackneyed old sayings, that is at once seemingly complex and in depth, but is just a tick of the words repeating. Or I could cut out some of the graphics, or rather paragraphs, and claim it is the same thing. No, because as you will no doubt know a Commodore owning mate who will tell you Barbarian had the person you were fighting for appearing on one of the final screens, and that was kind of the point to it. She was censored out of more than just the back page of Acorn World you know! (this topic, I admit, is repeated in my full review). Or perhaps I could overwrite some of all the white space around this box with the random digital coloured pixels of all those thousands (about 5000 tbh) of characters that I ran out of memory for. Actually that is not too dissimilar to how TV or film recreate 9:16 captured phone footage on a 16:9 aspect if you think about it..a blurry mess in the background. I don't approve of that technique in use there - as of course all phone users should hold their phones length ways if they want to influence traditional media rather than mere seconds of tick face insta tweet viewers. So no, I won't use that method.

No, now I have written it, and now I have even downloaded a free licence Mode 7 font for nostalgia reasons, I will instead use the wonderful little HIMEM or PAGE adjusting trick of adding a picture or video. Well, picture in this case. Yep, if you like this ramble so far and want more of the same or if you actually want to know what I think the real magic of ACORN WORLD OF PIXELS is, and a spoiler on that is it is not about reading it cover to cover. Then have a look at the attached carefully curated screenshot of text. If there is no such thing then my cunning plan has failed the T&Cs somehow, and this review is almost pointless. But if there is one, and it is readable, then I shall hand over to a me from about 45 mins ago....

Cheers, oh yes, and before you read my full review in the attached screenshot just buy the book as you will only feel foolish to have got this far into your curiosity and not bought it yet :-)

Very good book, I have both revisions and the usb version. Good to relive the days of the BBC Micro

Excellent quality

I loved the nolstagia. Many re-readings!

It has a fantastic design and excellent content. Can't recommend it enough!

I loved every single page of it. Bought it three times: original, extended and the ebook version. Worth every single penny!

Very informative book about BBC micro games. A real blast from the past.

An excellent summary of the early days of computer games from the perspective of the BBC Micro.

Packaging was perfect to preserve the book, the content was great, and the quality of the print was beautiful. Thank you!