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Color Computer 3
The Color Computer Games and programs are divided in to two groups. In this section are listed all CoCo 3 products.
Game ROM Cartridges
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Super Pitfall
Official (licensed) CoCo version NES game that featured Pitfall Harry (armed with a gun this time) exploring huge maze with caverns and underground lakes to find treasures, as well as rescuing several people and animals.
The game relied on two levels of graphic compassion to fit over 5 Megabytes screen data into the 32k ROM. The first level of compression was to emulate the Character Mapped Graphics System of the NES. Much in the same way text screen is built out of 8 by 8 blocks to form the letters you seen on the screen, the NES (like most other game systems) had custom 8 by 8 blocks and very large scrollable screen.
The second level of compression was store all the maps and character data in a “LZW-ist” format. At the beginning of each level the data was decompress into ram for use at run time.
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Rampage!
An officially licensed version of the arcade game smash (pun intended) of the same name. The object of the game is to smash the buildings (each character has taken a Jekyl and Hyde style potion that turns them into one of the 3 monsters), and any vehicles that get in your way, and eat the humans to recharge your damage meter. Note that some humans can actually be harmful, if they are carrying anything that you shouldn't be eating (say, like sticks of dynamite). You can also get hurt if you are still climbing a building when it collapses, and the army is attacking you with guns, helicoptors, tanks and explosives. Each time you complete a screen (by destroying all of the buildings in the foreground, you progress to a new city, with new buildings (and sometimes extra things, like collapsible bridges over water), and more people start attacking you.
One of the best things about the arcade version (and, duplicated in the Coco 3 version) is that the players can also attack each other, sometimes quite by accident. If a game is going on with more than one player, and a player gets injured anough that their damage meter goes down to 0, they will then mutate back to a small, naked human (modestly covering their body parts), and will try to scurry off to the side of the screen. At this point, the still active players can scoop them up and eat them too (setting up revenge for the next game). At the beginning of the game, each player can pick their own set of controls, so that each player can basically pick out which monster they want to be (giant Wolfman, Godzilla, or King Kong, who, of course, are given the cute names 'George', 'Lizzie', and 'Ralph'. A very entertaining game in both the arcade, and on the Coco.
Because of SRB Software’s game engine, development tools and a lot of hard work, the game was completed in just 35 days.
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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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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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Z-89
This was the game that I promised the CoCo community back at my seminar at the RainbowFest 86 in Chicago. It took a few years, but the CoCo 3 has a Zaxxon that looks, sounds and plays like the arcade game. The CoCo has come a long way in just six years.
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Marty’s Nightmare
My last CoCo game and was created for the 1990 Atlanta CoCofest. As a Tribute to Dr Marty Goodman, this packman style games use a very large and scrolling (up/down) maze.
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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