Acorn Electron

The Acorn Electron was developed by Acorn to act as a budget version of its popular BBC Micro and allow for Acorn to compete in the low-end British home computer market against the ZX Spectrum. While mostly compatible with software for its big brother, the Electron ran Micro games with a considerable performance hit on the Electron due to much slower memory access which hobbled the performance of the processor. Compromises were also made in the implementation which dropped certain graphic modes, and supplied only single channel sound. Subsequently, games on the Electron were more popular when developed specifically for the capabilities of the platform rather than playing Micro titles.

Limited supply of the custom chip which provided Micro compatibility resulted in supply being restricted over its first holiday season. Ultimately, as the home computer market softened in the mid-1980s, the Electron wasn't able to compete in hardware sales with systems like the Spectrum and Commodore 64. Financials troubles led Acorn to discontinue production and sell off its stock of Electrons by September 1985.

Despite limited sales, and hardware production ending after barely two years, the Electron had a surprisingly strong third-party software market, with commercial games being released as late as 1991 for the platform. Acorn had also sold a series of upgrades for the system which allowed for software to be distributed on ROM cartridges (which avoided some of the slowdowns of the Electron's RAM subsystem) as well as allowing for a floppy disk drive. Third party vendors would offer expansions for things like joystick ports, RAM upgrades and speed boosts.