🚀 go-pugleaf

 >Reply to Item    9590302                 93/11/26        16:06
 >From:   COCO@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU@INTERNET#
 >Sub:      Re: Best CoCo Game of All
 >From <@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU:COCO@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU> Mon Nov 29 14:12:28

 >As author of Tandy's "Temple of ROM" gamepak, I can say that it was
 >HEAVILY influenced by Atari's ADVENTURE cartridge game for their VCS.

Wow, I should have ordered it.  I never actually saw it in my local Radio
Shack, but in the catalogs.

 >supposed to have a mediaeval theme, but Tandy ignored my written
 >instructions for the game and substituted their own space theme in their
 >own instructions, which I always thought was pretty lame.

Bummer!  I'll have to find it at a CoCoFest so I can check it out.  It
really sounds kind of neat.

 >actually implemented... like, I was going to have a full scale game of
 >Space Invaders going on in the ballroom for you to wander thru...

And so does that.  Heh.  That would have been fun to code <g>.

 >I put an easter egg in, of course... there is a way to pass through the
 >walls, not that it does you any good... it's just in there for fun...

Aha!  It's not a magic 'dot' is it?  <g>  And your name hidden somewhere?

 >Temple of ROM was my first game that I wrote... I developed it on a
 >CASSETTE BASED system... no floppies.  The source fit on a set of three 20-
 >minute cassette tapes... yes, I was a masochist... but I didn't have the
 >money to buy a floppy drive at the time...

How did you get into the CoCo?  And how did you submit it to Radio Shack and
get it produced?  That amazes me.  I kept putting off learning assembly and
all of that back then - I was originally a game programmer for the VIC-20 -
all in BASIC, but I was cranking out things good and sometimes better than
some of the games I bought (often in BASIC) but when I got the CoCo I had
too much fun just "running software" and, later, even spent a few years
doing nothin' but playing around with MUSICA 2 music files.  ;)

 >I was always partial to Dale Lear's games, myself... I really liked
 >Doubleback.  Very original concept, later stolen, errr, I mean, emulated

I used to play that all the time at Radio Shack.  Gee, I can still remember
the display for the CoCo 1 with monitor that looked like an arcade game with
the place where the coin box would go being sliding doors holding their
stock of games.  Wow.  I wanted one of those for me room.

 >by Atari's "Photon" arcade game.  I was carpooling with Dale and his

Do you think they had an original idea or perhaps where truly inspired by
Doubleback?  Also, recall MegaBug - did it come before or after the Apple II
and other games that where very similar?

          Allen C. Huffman -/- Sub-Etha Software