What is a COCO? Tandy/Radio-Shack's 8-bit Color Computer home system. This amazing system was popular in the 80's but quicky died out in the 90's. It's considered a vintage computer today - like the Commodore 64, Vic20, Amiga, the TI99/4a, the Apple 2c, and others.

Who cares about COCO games? I do, for one. I spent every spare moment during high school and my first year of college writing these games. That's thousands of hours. That was my passion. Furthermore, it was the prelude to my eventual career as a professional software engineer.

Why put them online? Originally, I wanted to convert my COCO games into QuickBASIC and compile them as stand-alone .exe's for PC systems. After seeing some of my early stuff though, even if I could port them (and I'm not sure I could), they're essentially worthless as IBM/PC games. I don't want to lose them though, so here they are in their native form for COCO systems!

How can I play? The easiest way is to use a COCO emulator (available in versions for DOS, Windows, and Macintosh). Most emulators are freeware. The COCO3 emulator (required to play better/newer games) is available for a modest charge. The emulator sites are not affiliated with Prowler Productions.

What's an "Emulator?" An emulator is a program that "pretends" to be a different computer. It's a virtual machine; soft-hardware. In order to use an emulator, you need the system ROM (a single file, usually) from an actual computer. Some sites will provide the system ROM for download, but I'm not sure of the legalities involved in that.

Can I use a real COCO? Definitely you can. The disks I'm providing here are in ".dsk" format, which is the standard for use with emulators. The emulators will allow you to assign real drives and .DSK files as if they were the same. For example, pick MSNYDER1.DSK as Disk 0, and B: (if you have a real 5.25" Drive) as Disk 1. With a blank disk in the B: drive, do DSKINI1 from the emulator, then BACKUP 0 to 1 to copy the emulator disk to the real disk.

Can I buy a real COCO? Probably. I found quite a few good deals on Ebay by searching for "COCO2" or "COCO3" or "Color Computer" or "TRS80" or "TRS-80" or "Tandy Radio Shack Color Computer." Hunt around and you may find one. You can use a cassette tape drive or (more preferrably) a COCO disk drive. A real COCO can hook to any TV (no need for a monitor) with the proper cables. You'll want the optional COCO joystick too.

Wednesday, November 30th, 2005: I have rolled the old news off to the archive page, but that's not what has prompted a CoCo Quest news update for the first time in five year. The big news is, Brian Palmer has sent me a copy of my game Monster Mash, written and self-published (as "Biware Enterprises") in 1990. We only sold half a dozen copies, if I recall. This jogged my memory that this (and perhaps some of the others I still need) may not have been submitted to T&D at all. Although I'm amazed that Brian had a copy, I'm more worried now that Gnome Quest 3, Space Ace (aka Space Race), and The Entity may be gone forever.

      At any rate, I have added Monster Mash to a new 9th disk in the download section. I'll probably update this later, to include more games (maybe even some new stuff -- I'm kind of inspired by this new discovery) and a .BAS program with documentation for the game. I don't remember the story, exactly. I believe the character is Kerwin. Play using a Joystick. Left and right moves him, Up + Button to jump, Down + Button to shoot a fireball (or something), and Button (maybe Up + Button -- it isn't easy to tell using a mouse with an emulator, and I haven't loaded it on my real CoCo3 yet) while standing directly in front of a door to enter. The P key will pause the game. That's about all I can remember. I think you have to collect ten bags of gold scattered in and around the castle in order to enter a "locked" door to the final confrontation. Maybe I'll be able to find the original manual if I dig around in old boxes long enough, but I doubt it. I won't spoil the identity of the ending boss for you.

Before you download, keep in mind that you sometimes have to “trick” a CoCo 3 into running some of them. For instance, games like Lord Silvercape, Police Cadet 5, Virus D, and some of the other “BASIC” games are too big to fit in memory on a disk system unless you do this trick first: