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CoCo3.com - Resources!
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| Welcome to Mike Snyder's COCO Quest! |
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What is this place? This is Coco Quest, a site for my TRS-80 Color Computer 2 and 3 (COCO2 and COCO3) programs. I wrote dozens of games between 1987 and 1991 which were sold to and distributed by T&D Subscription Software of Holland, Michigan. I have obtained permission to release my COCO games to the public - so they may live forever. What is a COCO? Tandy/Radio-Shack's 8-bit Color Computer home system. This amazing system was popular in the 80's but quicky died out in the 90's. It's considered a vintage computer today - like the Commodore 64, Vic20, Amiga, the TI99/4a, the Apple 2c, and others. Who cares about COCO games? I do, for one. I spent every spare moment during high school and my first year of college writing these games. That's thousands of hours. That was my passion. Furthermore, it was the prelude to my eventual career as a professional software engineer. Why put them online? Originally, I wanted to convert my COCO games into QuickBASIC and compile them as stand-alone .exe's for PC systems. After seeing some of my early stuff though, even if I could port them (and I'm not sure I could), they're essentially worthless as IBM/PC games. I don't want to lose them though, so here they are in their native form for COCO systems! How can I play? The easiest way is to use a COCO emulator (available in versions for DOS, Windows, and Macintosh). Most emulators are freeware. The COCO3 emulator (required to play better/newer games) is available for a modest charge. The emulator sites are not affiliated with Prowler Productions. What's an "Emulator?" An emulator is a program that "pretends" to be a different computer. It's a virtual machine; soft-hardware. In order to use an emulator, you need the system ROM (a single file, usually) from an actual computer. Some sites will provide the system ROM for download, but I'm not sure of the legalities involved in that. Can I use a real COCO? Definitely you can. The disks I'm providing here are in ".dsk" format, which is the standard for use with emulators. The emulators will allow you to assign real drives and .DSK files as if they were the same. For example, pick MSNYDER1.DSK as Disk 0, and B: (if you have a real 5.25" Drive) as Disk 1. With a blank disk in the B: drive, do DSKINI1 from the emulator, then BACKUP 0 to 1 to copy the emulator disk to the real disk. Can I buy a real COCO? Probably. I found quite a few good deals on Ebay by searching for "COCO2" or "COCO3" or "Color Computer" or "TRS80" or "TRS-80" or "Tandy Radio Shack Color Computer." Hunt around and you may find one. You can use a cassette tape drive or (more preferrably) a COCO disk drive. A real COCO can hook to any TV (no need for a monitor) with the proper cables. You'll want the optional COCO joystick too. |
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| Latest COCO Quest News (Newest First) |
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Monday, July 21st, 2014: I recently started a podcast with my daughter, where we discuss all manner of videogames. Our focus is on console games (Nintendo, PlayStation, XBox), but we sometimes talk about interactive fiction, BBS games, old shareware, mobile games, and more. It's new, and we need to build up our subscriber base. We hope to keep it going, every week, for many years to come. You can find the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher, among other places. Some browsers let you subscribe directly to a podcast by using our feed. Or just head over to Videogame Generations for the latest episodes and show notes. Saturday, March 7th, 2009: This one was a surprise. A few weeks ago, I got a tip that "The Entity" could be found on a CoCo compilation CD (the legalities of which I didn't really question). My first thought was that it must be some other "Entity." I think I sold it to T&D, but it may never have been published. When marketed independently as "Biware Enterprises" prior to that, very few copies (maybe eight or so) were actually sold. So finding that somebody actually had kept a copy was, at this point in my search, unthinkable. Sure enough, it was my CoCo 3 text adventure "The Entity," now available for download as "msnyder0.dsk" in the download section. I would have preferred to include it with "Monster Mash" on the ninth disk, but even though both disks have quite a bit of free space remaining, both games take up too much room to fit on a single disk. Perhaps if I find any of the few I still need to find, I can do some merging then. I'm still holding out hope for "Time Attack," which I'm positive was on the "flip side" of a T&D issue (maybe only on cassette, though). 
 
 Now the bad news. This game stinks. There may be some jewel of a story lurking under the bad design -- maybe a clever puzzle or two -- but it's virtually unplayable. I suppose this is true of every 80's text adventure I wrote, but this one is doubly disappointing because my nostalgic memories are of an incredible, well-designed, worthwhile adventure. The only graphics are the title screen and the room "frame" (border), making it unnecessarily slow and hard to view without any trade-off benefit for losing the standard text screen. The screen clears when full, and it of course has no scrollback. The writing is as rough and uninspired as my earlier games. It features instant-death, plus time limits on performing certain tasks even though it's not clear at all what those tasks are. It has no save/load ability (at least, none that I found -- the source code is no longer available so I can't check there), so it's a slog just to make progress through trial-and-error. The parser is as bad as was typical for my games, with simple conveniences like "x" for "examine" not supported (you must look" at things -- although don't try too hard, since very little scenery is actually implemented). Looks like it features a number of obvious misspellings, too. Even just getting started requires waiting through a slow and unskippable title sequence. It really is a dud. So now that you're sold... feel free to download and play it! :). Some advice, though. If you use an emulator, take advantage of CPU speed-up (in the Keil emulator, for instance, press [F6] two or three times and watch the speed at the bottom until it's maxed at "????"). When I have nothing better to do, I might export the data files and see if I can get some hints, and then maybe try to solve the game (and post a walkthrough). But don't hold your breath. |
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| News Archive |
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| My COCO Games Are Available For Free |
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Or, download all 10 disks in a single WinZip/PkUnzip Archive (539k).
Before you download, keep in mind that you sometimes have to “trick” a CoCo 3 into running some of them. For instance, games like Lord Silvercape, Police Cadet 5, Virus D, and some of the other “BASIC” games are too big to fit in memory on a disk system unless you do this trick first:
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| Games and T&D Issues I Still Need |
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I've now collected T&D issues beginning with my contributions, up to #121. Are there any issues higher than that? Does anybody know? I haven't been able to find several of my best games (as fate would have it) which include Space Ace (I was unaware of an existing arcade game by the same name, so T&D listed it as Space Race), Gnome Quest 3, and Camel Quest (which, the more I think about it, may never have even been completed, let alone sold or distributed). If you have any T&D issues above #121 let me know. I think some of the disks may have been double-sided or something (I know Time Attack was on a T&D flip-side -- maybe cassette only -- but I haven't yet found that one either) and perhaps I've only gotten the front side (and only disks) and that's why I haven't been able to find those programs. I'm really not sure. If you can help me out, contact me by emailing wyndo@prowler-pro.com.
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This site is copyright © 2000 by Prowler Productions. Mike Snyder's COCO Games are copyright © T&D Software. |