🚀 go-pugleaf

In <9312011830.AA13938@apple.com>, apple!GENIE.GEIS.COM!coco-sysop says:
>Wow.  I never thought of games coming out that way.  I always expected them
>to come from existing companies (ala the Bjork involvement with DataSoft
>over Zaxxon).  How old where you when you got the published?  Any ideas on
>how many copies where made/sold?
>
>Rick, what do you do now?  How many games did you write for the CoCo (or any
>other system for that matter)?

Yes, I never was an "existing company"... just a hacker type that bought
a Color Computer because everyone else seemed to be getting one at the
time, among my circle of friends, and I liked the machine.  I spent about
one and a half years programming Temple of ROM, learning 6809 assembler
in the process.  Such a game would take much less time for me to develop
now, but at the time I was just learning.  I was around 31 or so then.
I did the game just for fun, but when I got done with it, it seemed good
enough to send to Tandy, so I did... and they liked it, and bought it.
I forget how many sold, but figures of something like 14,000 units every
six months or so sounds close.

People at work were impressed that I picked up 6809 assembler, so they
tapped me for a project at work involving 68000 assembler, programming
an operating system.  So I got involved in systems programming there,
and I had my Coco to thank for it.  ;)

I wrote a second game named "Bomb Threat", that was sort of reminiscent
of Pengo (I am told; I never saw Pengo).  Tandy ALMOST bought it, but
eventually changed their minds.  That game never saw the light of day.
I always wanted to sell it, but didn't try very hard, and nobody I showed
it to was terribly interested.  It always was a big hit at parties, tho.

Then Tandy and Activision asked me to do the Coco 3 version of Shanghai.

At the time I was also doing a lot of shareware and freeware stuff with
RSDOS (like DELPHIterm) and OS9 (various little utilities, OS9 UUCP,
a text adventure game interpreter, stuff like that).  I still turn out
something every once in awhile.  Some stuff I never released that didn't
have universal appeal, like some utilities for exchanging email in JIS
code for use encoding/decoding Japanese characters... I had an email
correspondant in Tokyo at the time...

I have called myself "Color Central Software", but that was just so
I could answer the question "who are you?" with something other than
"me".  :)

Right now, I have just moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota... and am working
for West Publishing in Eagan MN... programming telecommunications products
on various UNIX platforms.  I have both a Color Computer and a Macintosh SE/30
at home, and I program on both of them in my spare time.  I ported my Coco
adventure game interpreter to the Mac, for example, and am working on a
Mac Japanese online dictionary program.--
Rick Adams / Color Central Software / rickadams@ccentral.UUCP