Tandy Color Computer - Indie and Homebrew games |

Many wouldn't be aware of the amazing homebrew scene for the Coco, but I'm here to tell you, it's very impressive.
Nick Marentes: nickmarentes.com/
Glens blog post for Defender: nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2...
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[@8bitsinthebasement]

It's great that there's so much action in the Coco community both on the software and hardware levels. Joust and Defender are in fact transcodes. They take the actual arcade game's ROMs and work some machine code magic on them to make them play nice with the Coco 3 so that what you end up with is a more or less perfect arcade conversion for your Colour computer. Great machines these ;)

[@nowhereman999]

Hi Mr. Lurch, thanks for showing and playing my Joust and Defender conversions. It's a fun hobby of mine and I like to prove to myself that my CoCo from the 80's could do this. Also to think what it would have been like as a kid to be able to play these games at home on my CoCo 3. It makes me happy to find other people also enjoy seeing and playing the games running on the retro computer. Cheers!

[@michahoffmann1054]

both are impressive as hell! especially Joust.

[@parrottm76262]

So many indie devs for all the old systems. I tip my virtual hat to them, and to those who feature them (hint, hint). Thanks to all.

[@ChetSimpson]

You're welcome!

[@Xoferif]

Dead impressed that Defender and Joust are the actual arcade ROMs modified to run on the CoCo! Can't get more authentic than that!

[@stonent]

Someone did a Pacman also that dynamically recompiles the Z80 code to 6809 code.

[@joelavcoco]

@@stonent I think that was the same guy, Glen Hewlett.

[@StingyGeek]

Really surprised at what the machine was capable of! Great capability demo!

[@vwestlife]

I'd love to see some new games for the TRS-80 MC-10 (a.k.a. Matra Alice). That pipes game should be able to be ported to it, although trying to play it with a chiclet keyboard may be a bit clumsy.

[@mintyprojects]

I had that exact joystick back in the '80s for my Dragon 32. My childhood was spent in South Wales, so it was only natural. And that was the Old South Wales, not the New one. Rally SG (in case you didn't already know) is a modern conversion of Rally-X, an arcade game from 1980 by Namco.

[@pfc.thomas348]

I remember this one video game, they would sing this weird song "are you there space station amigos oh"

[@CRG]

Always nice to see new games for these classic systems.

[@OzRetrocomp]

It's a SepTandy miracle!

[@geekwithsocialskills]

True story LOL!

[@massmike11]

I have found the while the C-64 often have bad chips the coco just seems to keep going and going

[@sa3270]

Possibly something to do with the Commodore 64 power supply is notorious for going bad and damaging the computer. Maybe the CoCo didn't have that problem.

[@fourthhorseman4531]

Those Williams ports (Joust and Defender) were fantastic! Very impressive.

[@DaveMcAnulty]

that Joust looks pretty legit! Of course it's terrible to play without a leaf switch "flap" button :D

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent video! The defender and joust games are excellent ports!

[@geekwithsocialskills]

Apparently Joust and Defender are both conversions of the original Williams sourcecode. It was brought to my attention in a reply on my comment above.

[@senilyDeluxe]

Rally-SG looks like a clone of Rally-X, which Namco released together with Pac Man, it runs on the same hardware.

[@8_Bit]

Yes, I'm sure it's an unofficial port of Rally-X, which VIC-20 and Commodore 64 fans may know as "Radar Rat Race".

[@bigdaddigaming]

Sadly I was never a Tandy owner but I did use to play on the machine set up in my local Tandy shop when Tandy was still a thing back in England, mostly because Tandy was right next to a computer shop at the time where I bought my Amiga from, before that I was a Sinclair fan, but after Amiga it was a short hop to PC witch I've been using ever since, but the nostalgia is fantastic

[@renatoamaral2029]

Zaxxon was a great game in the 80s. I had a CoCo II 64K RAM at home.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

Love those block graphics! Brings back the youth of my days! Love it!

[@ctrlaltrees]

Another great video as always! I would say I'm surprised that there's still such an active homebrew scene for the CoCo but it seems to be true of all of these old machines these days - and that's a wonderful thing. 😁

[@joelavcoco]

The CoCo has had a robust DIY ethic from the very beginning, at least in part due to the fact that it was largely snubbed by many of the big developers back in the '80s. Though Tandy did manage to arrange some high quality ports in the early days of the CoCo 3 from the likes of Sierra, Epyx, and Sublogic, there were few official arcade ports (Rampage being a very good exception), and the vast majority of CoCo 1 / 2 games were indie clones. (Some Frogger clones are arguably much better than the official Frogger port.) CoCo folks knew what the machine was capable of, having seen programs like CoCoMax / CoCoMax 3 and the OS-9 operating system. They knew that the machine's potential had not been fully tapped by the commercial offerings available at the time. And they knew that if they wanted software like what was available on the Apple 2 or the C=64, they would have to do it themselves. Now I think we're seeing people who grew up with the CoCo and have the skill (and time) to develop the software that could and should have been available for it in the '80s.

[@druballesteros9293]

Interesting classic games. Thanks mate.

[@brianv2871]

These are some of the best games I've seen on the Coco. I need to finish making a video (probably scart) cable for this which has been what's holding me up on using this system.. Anyway, thanks for sharing!

[@seanmchughnt]

Great looking games. Thanks Mr Lurch!

[@geekwithsocialskills]

Wow! Both the Defender and Joust ports look and sound great! Do I dare say very close to arcade perfect? Pipes and Rally-SG look pretty good too. Not as awesome graphics and sound like the first two games, but they do look fun with decent gameplay which is what really matters. Digger III looks amazing! I had no idea the CoCo 3 was capable of such games. I don't own a CoCo 3 computer, but seeing these games makes me want to consider adding one to the collection. P.S. your beard is starting to look pretty epic!

[@CurtisBoyle]

Joust and Defender are both conversions of the original Williams sourcecode (both they and the Coco share the 6809 CPU), to run on the Coco 3's sound and graphics hardware. So they are basically transcodes, except with the same native CPU (unlike Donkey Kong, or Glen's old PacMan transcodes, which use code manually translated from a different CPU, like the Z80). So they *are* essentially running the original code.

[@geekwithsocialskills]

@@CurtisBoyle Well that explains why they look arcade perfect. Thank you for sharing those details. I know zero about the specs of the CoCo 3.

[@MrLurchsThings]

Glen did really well with both ports 👍

[@martindejong3974]

@@CurtisBoyle Meaning that both Tandy and Wiliams both used the same Motorola reference design for their hardware platform

[@CurtisBoyle]

@@martindejong3974 - Not quite; I believe the reference design included things like the SAM and VDG, neither of which are used on the Williams games. (Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is what I faintly remember).

[@BCjeffro420]

very cool

[@patbreen3859]

Really great episode Jason! Although I gotta question your upbringing if you are that bad at Defender and never played Joust! :)

[@MrLurchsThings]

Don’t think they were ever released on the Sega Master System (aka, the greatest console of all time) 😁

[@PJBonoVox]

Beard looks fine buddy, don't stress :) I've gotta say, it's a lovely looking machine. Being from the UK I've never seen a Tandy machine of any variety in real life.

[@CurtisBoyle]

The Coco 2 was sold in the UK for awhile, but you already had the Dragon 32/64 (which Pipes & Rally-SG will run on as well).

[@_zzpza]

I'm in the UK and I had an MC-10 as my first computer, one of my brothers had a model 1, and my pop had a coco1.

[@rager1969]

Digger 3 looks great (and fun), Those are good ports of Defender and Joust. DK Remix is a good game.

[@renatoamaral2029]

Great video, man! Lurch, what is your real name?

[@wayland7150]

That Defender looks spot on. When's it coming to Dragon 32?

[@richardparker3200]

Hey Mr Lurch did you like any of these games: Sailor man Rupert Rhythm Lunar Rover Donut dilemma Buzzard Bait Cash Man Speed Racer

[@cathrynm]

Coco3, was a pretty huge upgrade from Coco2, looks like. Back in the day, I did not know this. I don't think these machines were well-marketed. RS had a confusing product line back then, and I think they were selling Tandy 1000s and Coco3s and Model 3s all at the same time?

[@rottmanthan]

i used to play joust on atari, i think i have it now also but not the same one, lost it all in house fire of 99 but have since replaced some of it.

[@wimwiddershins]

I never sussed out Defender's contols even back in the day in the arcades. Too many buttons for my 8yo brain.

[@FADE2GRY2048]

And my 15 or so year old brain and by now it would be totally hopeless. Loved the look and sound of the game.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

DOOD!

[@renatoamaral2029]

If possible, try to get Zaxxon and play it. Great game it was! ❤