SAM Coupé
(Redirected from SAM Coupe)
The SAM Coupé, often styled more simply as SAM Coupe or the SAM, was a relatively short-lived British microcomputer produced initially by Miles Gordon Technology in 1989.
Unlike many of the new machines released at that time, the SAM was 8-bit and was designed to appeal to a similar market as the ZX Spectrum with which it was largely compatible; either through its built-in BASIC support, an official software emulator, or the better third-party emulation software which involved using a copy of the Spectrum ROM.
Despite its commercial failure, it did enjoy some success with text adventure players, particularly those from the UK ZX Spectrum scene. The system had its own adventure writing tool, the SAM Adventure System by Colin Jordan of Axxent Software, a dedicated bi-monthly adventure-focussed disk magazine produced by the SAM Adventure Club, and several exclusive SAM-only releases; such as Sheriff Gunn, Days of Sorcery, and The Occult Connection.
Versions of Spectrum adventures were officially modified to run on the SAM and compilations of games were licensed from Zenobi Software and Compass Software. The community also adapted Gilsoft's PAWS, enabling the Spectrum 128K version of the authoring tool to work on the SAM.
The use of the third-party ProDOS software also allowed the machine to run CP/M software. Modern IF games, such as those created with PunyInform like Tristam Island and Hibernated 1, can be run on the SAM using ProDOS.
Links
- List of SAM Coupé games at CASA.
- World of Sam: community site including a list of software and hardware.
- SimCoupe: the most popular SAM emulator.
- SAM Coupé on Wikipedia.