TRS-80 Color Computer

[Twixt_fanatic]

Are there other boomers out there who remember how easily amused we used to be? The Motorola 6809 CPU ran at a blazing 0.9 MHz. There was a double speed mode available, but few users knew about it, and most games could not adapt to it, and were impossible to play that way. With just 32Kb to work with until the 64K and later 128k CoCo 3 models came out, creativity was called for, to save time, space, and to keep the user interested. A lot of games failed miserably, but there were notable exceptions. I got a 512Kb upgrade from a third pary vendor. I learned a lot about assembly language with all the weird addressing modes of the 6809 and switching in and out banks of memory with just 16 address lines.  There's a Java emulator downloadable at https://www.haplessgenius.com/mocha/ with some good games preserved. My favorites include:

 

Buzzard Bait was a Joust clone. You had to keep flapping your wings. A great way to get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

The King was Donkey Kong. This was also Tom Mix software, who could be depended on for decent quality.

Tut's Tomb another "go through one screen after another of mazes, collecting good things and shooting bad things" thing.

Fourcube 3D tictactoe with a rotating board and several features including demo mode and the "faircube" option which causes the computer to make a sub-optimal initial move. I wrote it and Tom Mix accepted it.

Cashman a decent clone of Jumpman.

Draconian 2D shootemup. This would put me in a trance for hours.

 

Sadly missing from the emulator is Fangman, a Pacman clone with the twist that you are Dracula and you must collect bats and avoid the evil humans.