Sunday, August 3rd, 2025:
Following up from yesterday, I've uploaded all the images used in issue #13 of
my newsletter, in case they're needed (for what, I don't know) by somebody in the
future. Most of these are the game screenshots I included, with a few extras that
didn't make it into the newsletter. There are also subdirectories for the map I
made for Doctor Who Part 2 and the review snippets from The Rainbow.
Screenshots and Images Directory
Saturday, August 2nd, 2025:
Here it is; my 62-page write-up about all my CoCo games. It's all in
issue #13 of my
Video Game Generations Newsletter. I've included screenshots, links to play
them all in the XRoar Online emulator (page 8), my thoughts on all of them now
(a cross between text-based "let's plays" and mini-reviews), some scans of
related materials (a newspaper article about me and my games, a T&D acceptance
letter, reviews from The Rainbow magazine and more), info about each game from
the T&D cover sheets, etc.
I figure even if it's of little interest to anybody, it's good to have it out
there for preservation and posterity before I get even older and forget even more
of the details from back then. This was fun to put together, and I spent many a
late night/early morning over several days to make sure I didn't have to delay it.
Tuesday, July 29th, 2025:
I gave this old site a small update today, by cleaning up dead links to other
sites and adding a few
new ones to the sidebar. I also
streamlined the "welcome" section and set a max display width to hopefully
make the whole site look a little less messy.
I started a newsletter back in April this year. I'm focusing on video gaming in
general, with each issue tackling a different topic. The
next issue, if I'm
able to finish in time, is all about my TRS-80 CoCo games. This joins a few other
autobiographical issues where I've talked about my old podcast, the interactive
fiction I wrote, my video game collecting, and my old Lunatix BBS game. Most of
my topics have been less focused on me. The latest issue as of last Saturday
(issue #12) features a ranked list of 25 interesting first-person puzzle games
similar to Portal.
I'll post again once the CoCo issue is out. I have a lot to say about each of
my games, plus some history and "making of" type behind-the-scenes stuff.
The newsletter archive can be found at
https://www.vggpodcast.com/news/.
Oh, and one last thing. After appearing on the CoCo Nation podcast at the end of 2023,
I participated in the Game-On Challenge by getting a high score in my own Monster Mash
game. I think most of the participants gave up early on, since the controls aren't great
and it's a difficult game that requires starting over when you run out of lives. I set up
an Xbox joystick and found a utility to map the fire button to multiple actions to make
it somewhat playable for me.
Still, I was unable to finish the game, but I did come close (twice). I was even able to
map it out in its entirety (except for the final boss room). I put together a complete map
and general strategy guide for it. A snippet of the map is below, but you can view the
full high-res image
here (or by clicking the partial image below).
Sunday, December 10th, 2023:
Here's a fun bit of news worth breaking my almost ten years of silence for. I was a guest on
The CoCo Nation
podcast yesterday. You can find
Episode 342 on YouTube
and various other places.
It didn't sink in at the time, but I was on a call with people who were not only influential big names in
the CoCo world back in the 80's and 90's, but continue to push this retro platform forward with new
innovations and an unending dedication to it today. I can't stress enough how
cool that is. It was an honor
to bump elbows (proverbially and digitally speaking) with these guys, and talk about my time writing these games
in BASIC back in the day. Most of my stuff is what might be called "shovelware" today, but I had a blast doing it.
My own podcast ended several years ago when Addie (now just "D") outgrew it. See the prior news for a link to old episodes.
I don't have much else in the way of news, but this was something I just had to post about. I'm interviewed for the first
couple hours of the show, before I had to head out. People are going to be competing for a high score in
Monster Mash
over the next three weeks, and I might join them. We'll see.
:)
Monday, July 21st, 2014:
I recently started a podcast with my daughter, where we discuss all manner of
videogames. Our focus is on console games (Nintendo, PlayStation, XBox), but
we sometimes talk about interactive fiction, BBS games, old shareware, mobile
games, and more. It's new, and we need to build up our subscriber base. We
hope to keep it going, every week, for many years to come.
You can find the podcast on
iTunes
and
Stitcher,
among other places. Some browsers let you subscribe directly to a podcast by using our
feed.
Or just head over to
Videogame Generations
for the latest episodes and show notes.
Saturday, March 7th, 2009:
This one was a surprise. A few weeks ago, I got a tip that "The Entity"
could be found on a CoCo compilation CD (the legalities of which I didn't
really question). My first thought was that it must be some other "Entity."
I think I sold it to T&D, but it may never have been published. When
marketed independently as "Biware Enterprises" prior to that, very few copies
(maybe eight or so) were actually sold. So finding that somebody actually had
kept a copy was, at this point in my search, unthinkable.
Sure enough, it was my CoCo 3 text adventure "The Entity," now available for
download as "msnyder0.dsk" in the
download section. I would have preferred to
include it with "Monster Mash" on the ninth disk, but even though both
disks have quite a bit of free space remaining, both games take up too much
room to fit on a single disk. Perhaps if I find any of the few I
still need to find, I can do some merging then. I'm
still holding out hope for "Time Attack," which I'm positive was
on the "flip side" of a T&D issue (maybe only on cassette, though).
Now the bad news. This game stinks. There may be some jewel of a story
lurking under the bad design -- maybe a clever puzzle or two -- but it's
virtually unplayable. I suppose this is true of every 80's text adventure
I wrote, but this one is doubly disappointing because my nostalgic memories
are of an incredible, well-designed, worthwhile adventure. The only graphics
are the title screen and the room "frame" (border), making it unnecessarily
slow and hard to view without any trade-off benefit for losing the standard
text screen. The screen clears when full, and it of course has no scrollback.
The writing is as rough and uninspired as my earlier games. It features
instant-death, plus time limits on performing certain tasks even though it's
not clear at all what those tasks are. It has no save/load ability (at least,
none that I found -- the source code is no longer available so I can't check
there), so it's a slog just to make progress through trial-and-error. The
parser is as bad as was typical for my games, with simple conveniences like
"x" for "examine" not supported (you must look" at things -- although don't
try too hard, since very little scenery is actually implemented). Looks like
it features a number of obvious misspellings, too. Even just getting started
requires waiting through a slow and unskippable title sequence. It really is
a dud.
So now that you're sold... feel free to download and play it!
:).
Some advice, though. If you use an emulator, take advantage of CPU speed-up
(in the Keil emulator, for instance, press [F6] two or three times and watch
the speed at the bottom until it's maxed at "????"). When I have nothing
better to do, I might export the data files and see if I can get some
hints, and then maybe try to solve the game (and post a walkthrough). But
don't hold your breath.
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.
The game features black bats, flying mummies, and sliding pumpkins. The game
covers dozens of screens (seemingly more than I remember), and enough hearts
(lives) are provided that it's really playable (but challenging). I'm kind of
surprised that it's fairly well-designed. The initial screen load takes a few
seconds (black the whole time), as does each transition between screens, but
it's really not too bad. I think the game was originally distributed with a
freeware RAM Disk program (anyway, one was on the .DSK image from Brian),
but it didn't seem to work with the emulator, and I figured the benefit would
be negligible anyway. I removed it, for this new download.
![[LOADM PROWLER.PRO EXEC]](newlogo2.gif)
![[CoCo Cursor]](cursor1.gif){kind=small}
![[Destination: Unknown]](thumbs/thumpic32.gif)
![[Flying Saucer]](thumbs/thumpic35.gif)
![[Crazy Chemist]](thumbs/thumpic22.gif)
![[Journey Up]](thumbs/thumpic23.gif)
![[Police Cadet #3]](thumbs/thumpic21.gif)
![[Treasure Search]](thumbs/thumpic30.gif)
![[Doctor Who 2]](thumbs/thumc3_23.gif)
![[Virus D]](thumbs/thumc3_1.gif)
![[River Raid]](thumbs/thumc3_0.gif)
![[Food Factory]](thumbs/thumc3_5.gif)
![[Cavern Quest 2]](thumbs/thumc3_12.gif)
![[Gnome Quest 1]](thumbs/thumc3_10.gif)
![[Fortes Fortuna Juvat]](thumbs/mappic6.jpg)
