Beebdroid

Relive the glory days of 1980s 8-bit computing with this epic BBC Micro emulator

We grew up with the BBC Micro and we loved it, so we're bringing it back to the world!

See that Android phone in your hand? That's not Intel inside - it's powered by an ARM processor. The 'A' in 'ARM' stood for Acorn, a visionary British company that produced the seminal BBC Micro, and thirty years later - coming full circle - your phone hosts its venerable ancestor today.

Have fun reliving classic games from the 1980s, hosted by BBC Micro preservation website stairwaytohell.com - any questions, please email [email protected]

Works at the full 50 frames per second on most recent powerful Android phones and tablets. This means anything significantly better than an HTC Desire or Nexus One (except, annoyingly, the brand new Galaxy Nexus, because it has the archaic GPU from 2010's Galaxy S pushing 240% of the pixels), or any Android 3.x or 4.x tablet. If you try to run this thing on something like a Wildfire or a ZTE Blade, please don't whinge to us that it runs like a dog - just go and buy a Galaxy S II already ;) It's an extremely faithful emulation, way moreso than other machines' emulators, but if you think you can make it quicker, get involved - it's open-source - code it!

Works with the specialised controls of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (but doesn't run at 50 frames per second).

This FREE and OPEN SOURCE application - the source code is published on Github at https://github.com/littlefluffytoys/Beebdroid - is based on B-Em for Linux by Tom Walker and licensed under GNU General Public License v2.0 as detailed at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html - we encourage others to assist us in developing Beebdroid further. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the license for more details.

Beebdroid does not ship with any third party programs such as games - these are accessed via third party websites which have hosted such programs for years. Should any licence holders object to third party websites providing such programs, please contact the third party websites in question. We are furthermore also happy on a best-effort basis to block the visibility of specific programs within Beebdroid upon written request from verified product licence holders. We are also able to offer an in-app payment solution for your programs in such circumstances - please contact us for details.

The rights to the BBC Micro ROMs are believed by the emulator community to have effectively fallen into the public domain, having lain unclaimed for many years - Acorn itself is of course long bankrupt, and the documentation for the rights is rumoured to have gone down in the World Trade Center on 9/11. If you believe that you have a claim to the ROMs that has never been disclosed to the emulator community, or indeed has never been proven under law, remember that this is a labour of love, a free and open source preservation effort, and so please talk to us in the first instance, cheers!