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Color Computer 1 & 2
The Color Computer Games and programs are divided in to two groups. In this section are listed the early CoCo 1 & 2 products. While listed as CoCo 1&2, they will also work on the CoCo 3, except where noted.
Game ROM cartridge
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Popcorn
Based on the Atari’s 1977 Arcade Game Avalanche, this was my first Tandy marketed game. Your goal is to prevent the falling popcorn from ever reaching the ground. There are six rows of popcorn to deal with. You start with a six-storied platform and you lose one platform when you lost a life by a popcorn hitting the ground.
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Clowns & Balloons
Loosely based on the 1977 arcade game Circus by Exidy, with a game play improvements. One change was replacing the teeter-totter with a trampoline. In the original game it was easy to forget what side of the teeter-totter you had to get under your bouncing player.
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Mega-Bug
Based on the Pacman theme of a maze filled with dots that you have to eat, it also differs in several ways. For one, the maze is MUCH larger and more complicated. Two, there are no power pills... you are always at the mercy of the monsters chasing you in the maze. Three, you are looking through a sliding magnifying glass to see where you are, and four, you leave trails behind you that the monsters will follow... if you make quick dashes into side corridors, you can throw the monsters off your trail. The game was also unique for the time in having both multi-voice music during several stages of the game, and even some speech ('We gotcha!'). A very fun and addictive game, and similiar games were made for other platforms as well.
It should be noted that this game is actually cloned from an earlier Apple II game, called Dung Beetles.
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Stellar Life Line
The premise is for you to protect a convoy of 6 fuel ships as you traverse across the entire space lane. There are 3 levels; the first level (pictured above) consists of meteors that you must destroy before they hit your convoy ships. On later levels, actual alien craft are added to the mix, and some of them will steal the convoy ships, splitting your convoy all over the place, and making it very difficult to guard them all.
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Arkanoid
Official Arkanoid title for all three CoCo systems. (CoCo 3 has enhanced graphics and sound.)
This was also the final project that Steve created for Tandy. A new requirement from Tandy legal department that every project had to carry $1,000,000 liability policy with Tandy as the beneficiary. The real catch was who was going to pay for the insurance, not Tandy but the game developer. At the time the policy cost about the same as what Tandy was paying for the game and they were unwilling to pay more to help offset the cost. Since it cost more to produce a game for Tandy than they were willing pay, it was time for Steve to move on.
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Game Disks
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Sands of Egypt
The first Animated Graphics Adventure on any home computer. Featuring a fairly normal adventure game interface, with animated graphics scenes, and the ability to save/load up to 9 games at once on the original disk, it started a whole slew of animated graphic adventure games for the Coco.
The game had many types of animation; scrolling clouds and terrain (multi-plane yet!), an animated camel that chewed, blinked and hopped, rivers, and other things. The object of the game was to find the treasure room of the pharoah, and claim the riches contained in it.
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Zaxxon
Zaxxon is the official Coco version of the arcade hit of the same name. Except for some graphical subtleties in the backgrounds, and the slight monotony to the firing/explosion sound routines, the game is pretty dead on to the original arcade game. This is probably Datasofts, and my most famous game.
DataSoft mostly sold games to computer stores and Zaxxon was not going to released to Radio Shack because they did not pay very well. But once the higher ups in Tandy saw the game out in computers store they did not own, that was it. They finally paid what DataSoft was asking.
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Ghana Bwana
The game itself came with a little comic book that described all the stages of the game, and the game actually adds some songs and speech if you have the Sound/Speech pak. The game has 7 or 8 stages, of which 4 are pictured above. Basically, you have to collect map parts (designated by white squares), until you finish completing the map of the next level, after which you actually go to the next level. You face a variety of obstacles along the way, including sharks, natives shooting you with crossbows, boulders, pits, etc.
The game itself plays in a pseudo 3-D landscape, similiar to Zaxxon. The ultimate goal is to escape aboard your outrigger canoe, with a hot air balloon attached.
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Desert Rider
A 3-D ATV racing game in the desert near Fort Worth Texas. The player can avoid on coming holes, rocks and other riders dodging or jumping over them. The game was created as user project by the CoCo user group Color America with Steve Bjork as project leader. Interesting to note that the famous Tandy towers appear on the horizon while you play the game.
The game had its world premiere at a Color Computer show in Pasadena California with a real ATV to play it. The ATV was rigged up in front of a Big Screen TV with the sheering and throttle controlling the game. (The foot break was use to jump in the game.)
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Pitfall II
Pitfall II was the first sequel to the smash, cross platform hit Pitfall from Activision. The biggest difference with Pitfall II is that you are no longer limited to horizontal motion (well, some vertical movement was allowed in the original, but only within the same screen)... there are literally dozens of smooth scrolling, vertical screens to go through, as well as the traditional horizontal screens.
Like the original, you are trying to collect treasures, and dodge various dangers. Expanding on the original is underwater areas, and "checkpoints", which allow you to sort of save your position somewhat, without having to go through the whole maze again.
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One on One
One on One is just about the only basketball game on the Coco, and was actually made for one of the larger game companies in it's early days... Electronic Arts, who have continued to dominate sports games even to this day.
This game pits two of the famous basketball players of the early 1980's against each other: Dr. J (Julius Erving) and Larry Bird. One can play the game with either 1 or 2 players, and you can do things like steal the ball, get penalties, and play several different timed games.
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Bash
Original game with game play somewhere between Breakout and Arkanoid. This is also one of the few games that plays on all CoCo systems with enhanced graphics for the CoCo 3 version. (Using 16 color hi-res modes.)
This game convinced Tandy that Arkanoid could be done well (and profitable) on the CoCo.
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More to come
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| Copyright 2008 by Steve Bjork, All Rights Reserved |
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CoCo 1-2
CoCo 3