Was that the one which begins with a town in flames? I think I've played all Castlevania games and indeed, a bunch of them had some pretty nice effects of this kind. Wow, frankly I hadn't ever seen any footage from the system until now. And interesting game. :D

Funnily enough, as soon as I saw the thread title, this is what I thought of :-D

Thanks. I played both of these ages ago and didn't remember that either had parallax scrolling. Particularly Lionheart has some really nice BGs. In terms of style they come pretty close to the kind of stuff I'm looking for.
Oh yeah. Now that you mention it - I particularly remember a level called "Victorian Secret" or something and it's actually due to the backgrounds. Thanks for reminding me. :D

Wow, thanks! I didn't know this one. Pretty nice example, despite the limitation to the very bottom of the screen.
Indeed, thanks. Particularly the snow storm seems brilliant.
I'd like to say "well duh, that's because it's the best parallax scrolling ever seen in any game!" but I guess that's not really true. Well, it will always have the best parallax scrolling in our hearts, it seems.

Thanks for the many suggestions so far!

Wow, I never even knew this system existed. From a technical standpoint, it seems to have been superior to the market leaders at the time. However, it also seems to have been mostly unknown outside of English-speaking countries.

Indeed it was technically superior, and not just the hardware but also the operating system - RISC OS. Unfortunately, when it came to gaming the Amiga beat it, and when it came to computing the PC eventually overwhelmed it and Acorn died out. Last I heard there were still some RISC PC machines being made by Iyonix (I think that was their name) but I don't know if they still exist.

For some reason, Acorn machines were quite popular at primary and secondary schools at the time.

Apparently, you have Tesco to thank for that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes#Significance_and_impact

For me Lionheart also came to mind first. That one was pretty impressive back then. Turrican 3 also had quite a lot of parallax layers in some levels (i.e. Scrapyard).

First thing that came to my mind was Forbidden Forest. It probably doesn't fit the criteria mentioned in the OP though, since it looks very primitive today. Still, back in 1983, a C64 game with several layers of Parallax scrolling (as can be seen in the video in the line of trees, left half of the screen, around the 1:35 mark) was pretty impressive ...

I've never seen the system in action and I don't think it got much of foothold here either, but I recall when Acorn Archimedes was reviewed in a Finnish computer magazine, and they said "With these specs, AA beats e.g. Amiga 500". As an Amiga 500 owner who still thought Amiga is untouchable with its superior features, I was devastated. :(

I specifically remember when they reviewed "Zarch" for Acorn Archimedes, it sounded like a great game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALfnZjCiuUQ

Later though, Amiga also got its port of the same game, renamed as "Virus". I guess the port was pretty good, considering the lower specs of A500:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1sYsOm-y8w

Damn that game had hard controls... Much later I've played some freeware PC remake of Zarch/Virus which was superior to both versions (I think it supported 3Dfx Glide?), I don't recall what was the name of that game. Maybe I still have it somewhere on the hard drive.

Back then it was too easy to hang on to certain specs and feel betrayed when some other unit came which was technically superior. Ever since I got a PC which keeps evolving all the time, I haven't cared much even if my current gaming system is not "state of the art" anymore.

I guess you didn't check out the YouTube links in my first post. :D

Btw, do you know how confusing it is to have a user in this thread who has "toxic" in his name and at the same time another user having the toxic symbol as his avatar? I think you guys should merge or something.
Indeed not quite but still an interesting find, thanks!

Sorry, I'm at work and can't watch videos here.

I'm wondering whether that's actually an A500, or at least emulated A500, the game is running on in this video. I'd expect this kind of performance on an A1000 (that was the more powerful one, not the A2000, right?) but I can't imagine the A500 handling a 3D game like this this well. Most 3D games I remember from my A500 had like five frames a second. ^^

Edit: Also DANG. Incidentally I just discovered where your avatar is from. I actually played the game like fifteen years ago. :D

Well, the standard version for Virus was for A500 (The A2000 was the more powerful (OCS/ECS) machine btw, not the A1000). I don't remember if the A500 needed a memory expansion for Virus though.
There were a few 'alternative' versions in circulation, including an AGA-fixed Harddisk installer version.

I have this game (Amiga version). And it shows about the performance of the Amiga 500 version. There were quite a few 3D games like Starglider 2 or the DID titles (F-29, Robocop 3, Epic etc) that actually had quite impressive 3D graphics. Now, textured 3D graphics, that's where poor performance really became a problem and the almighty PC and console titles with custom chips took over.

I played the DID games but don't really remember how well they worked, although indeed, at least Robocop 3 ran at a decent speed if I recall correctliy. I mostly remember games like Red Baron, Fighter Bomber and Midwinter 2, though, all of which ran pretty much in slideshow mode, I think.