I HUNGER, COWARD! It's the CoCo EXCLUSIVE Sinistaar on COCO SHOW 55! TOTALLY original IP!

[@stompreaper]

Congratulations Brent and family! Thanks for another great episode, I hadn’t seen this game before but I’m going to try it after watching this. Catch you on the next rotation!

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Thanks for that man! I think you'll dig it!

[@David_Ladd]

@AmigosRetroGaming Great video! Thank you for covering Sinistaar for the CoCo 3 :) I liked the game back when I played it. :) Also thank you for crediting where the game play video was gotten from :)

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Hey Paco! I HAD to use you video! You are CoCo Royalty!

[@David_Ladd]

@@AmigosRetroGaming I haven't posted any videos in a while for anything. I probably should sit down and play some more games. I have been using MAME and MAME's AVIWRITE feature which makes it easy to output nice looking video. :) Maybe I should find the two games you listed in this video and try to play them and make a couple videos :)

[@shanehebert396]

Played the heck out of this at Kroger before school started many days. I'd sneak off campus (our bus got there really early so we'd leave campus) and go to Kroger next door. I'd get a pack of Raspberry Hubba Bubba and play this and Star Wars (the vector graphics one) a few times and then go back to school a few minutes before the bell rang to hang out with some friends before class.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Man, you're taking me back Shane! That's good stuff right there.

[@LegendaryWizball88]

I played this on a sit down cab in the 80s. Scared the shit out of me. F you Sinistar!

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Man, you are a lucky boy! That sit down cab was pretty rare and is VERY valuable!

[@LegendaryWizball88]

@@AmigosRetroGaming Really?

[@CurtisBoyle]

There was a review in Rainbow - May 1990, Page 74 (also one in Coco-Link, March 1993). I agree that this is one that should get some 6309 treatment (if only I didn't have so many projects on the go...). As far as a transcode: While Sinistar does use a 6809 just like the Coco 3 (and other Williams games) and a 6802 or a 6808 for sound, and it's 6809 is clocked slower than a Coco 3 (which also has to simulate a sound chip using samples in real time), it also has a separate speech chip. The Coco now has to do triple duty - the main game/graphics, sound, and speech - with just the 1 CPU and no dedicated sound hardware. There is also hardware added for Sinistar that "write protects" the score area at the top so that the blitter hardware (another thing the Coco has to do in software) doesn't accidentally overwrite anything while moving graphics off the playfield. So while I think a transcode could definitely be closer to the arcade in appearance than this port, I don't think we would be able to match the speed (maybe with a 6309 in native mode and some optimized code). I would love to be proven wrong on this... lol.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Hey, this is exactly why we pay homage to L. Curtis! Great info, my hoser pal!

[@van_goghx]

@@CurtisBoyle Maybe trash the voice? As much as I loved the menacing voices of the game and it made it stand out during that period of time, it is also probably the most unimportant aspect of the game itself. But it does make sense why anybody thinking of tackling a transcode port might decide otherwise if they can’t replicate a signature part of the game, and then potentially might have to forego sound all together.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

As PAINFUL as it would be to lose the voice of Sinistar, I had the exact same thought. That might be the way to go.

[@VampireJack10]

Looking forward to seeing the CoCo version of Horace Goes Skiing, as I was always a big fan of the Speccy version and didn't even consider it would turn up on another system, as I always thought of Horace as just a Speccy icon.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

I don't think I've ever played it, Jack...so we'll so we'll see if it fills me with Christmas cheer or if it gets the bah humbug treatment!

[@boatofcar3273]

Great episode! I had no idea RJ was involved in the arcade version! Shame the Amiga PD version isn’t great.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Trust me, I never knew he worked for Williams!

[@Nebulous6]

Quite the crew that worked on the Amiga: Two guys from Atari, one from Activision, one from Apple, and two from Williams Electronics. After seeing Fly Harder, Cytron, and Zarathrusta, I'm sure an OCS or ECS Amiga could do a great job of Sinistar in the right hands.

[@boatofcar3273]

@@Nebulous6 True words!

[@van_goghx]

The arcade Sinistar used a 6809. I wonder if anyone has tried converting the game like they have other 6809 arcade machines like Joust and Robotron. The Wikipedia entry for the game says that the source code is freely available online, so I’m guessing that someone must have done it by now? Definitely a nice looking clone for the time. Beware, I LIVE! 😮

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

You're talking about a transcode...you know I hadn't really thought of that! Wouldn't that be interesting. Perhaps a tech-head will have a thought on it and post it here!

[@VampireJack10]

@@AmigosRetroGaming It would be interesting to play.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

OH I agree...i'd LOVE to see it happen!

[@Nebulous6]

After seeing the CoCo 3 transcodes of Joust kzbin.info/www/bejne/qoq0gaGendF9oqM and Defender, I'm sure Sinistar could have been much better on the Tandy Color Computer 3 than this nasty approximation that we got back in the day.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

You don't like Sinistaar?! I actually think it's quite good given the restrictions!

[@David_Ladd]

I have to say I liked Sinistaar on the CoCo 3 :) I played it on the CoCoTALK Game-On for the week we played it.

[@Nebulous6]

@@AmigosRetroGaming The rocks are good. I'll give it that. I guess I'm still suffering PTSD from back in the day when the CoCo 3 kept getting awful games prior to Tandy quickly abandoning it. The arcade transcodes finally did that machine some justice.

[@scottcooper3107]

@@David_Ladd What week did we play this on The Game-On-Challenge? I don't remember this one.

[@David_Ladd]

@@scottcooper3107 You know, you are right. I was thinking of when we played PHOTON. It sucks getting old :O