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Volume 1, ISSUE 3

March 2005

Welcome everyone to the third issue of the CoCo Lounge online Magazine. What happened to February's? Well, it just wasn't done in time, so I am skipping right to issue 3. The interview with Mark and Boisey will have to wait, as they are busy gearing up for Chicago Fest. Many people have asked me if I am going to attend. The simple truth is I would give my left arm to be there, but I simply just can't afford it this year, It will cost probably about $500 just for the plane fare alone. If I had a good car, I would love to spent 4 days traveling the country to get there, but unless I win the lottery, it just will not happen this year. For more info on the Chicago fest click Here.

THE HOME COMPUTER R.I.P: The PC has taken over the "Home" computer market and with that a truly "band Name" computer has died . -by Glen VanDenBiggelaar
I was listening to a speech by some of the original Atari programmers, when one of them made an offhand comment about the home computer market that was so true, I had to take a moment, to soak it all in. In the early 1990's is when the last "home Computer" rolled of an assembly line, and thus, killing it for ever.
In the 1980's, everybody and their dog was building a "home" computer and a IBM clone mostly for business use. Tandy was no exception and wanted very much to focus just on the Tandy 1000 series, because it made them the most money. The individual computers had almost "cult" followings, and many of heated arguments came out of which machine was better (we all know the answer to that, but try telling that to a Atari user) Now all the "home" computers have died out, and there is no truly "brand name" because all of the parts are generic and are produced by the thousands. Dell , IBM, HP are all just names, and what's inside is the same as the next manufacturer. For a company like Tandy, or Atari to make a new home computer is just insane, as the R&D costs would be too high. Long gone are the days when a guy in his basement can "invent" a computer from wire and IC Chips, for now computers are designing the next generation of computers and the simple days where one could sit down and figure out the whole CPU and Motherboard are gone. The only "choice" that the consumer really has is the OS they want to use, or if they want an "Apple".
This is OMHO is truly sad days.

COLLECTING COCO'S AND EBAY Part 2: Some general guidelines on what is going down on Ebay. -by Glen VanDenBiggelaar

This Month I thought I would, amongst other things, Update my January article. In the past 2 months, there seems to have been a huge jump in the activity of collecting CoCo and it has not gone unnoticed by other vintage computer collectors. I recently bought a pile of 5 1/4" floppy's of off a "Commodore" collector, and he asked me about it. Prices have seem to sky rocket. And If you watch, there is only a "handful" of the same people bidding. I am not sure if they are serous or just "bidding up" the prices. People should know by know that I bid very high to get the Items I want, so I know some of them are just bidding to see how high I will go.

I have been on Ebay everyday for the last few years, watching the auctions. I have notice a lot of trends. Here are my best tips:

TIPS FOR BUYERS :

Collecting CoCo's themselves on Ebay is an art form.

1. BID HIGH
   I have made it a policy, not to bid less than $100 on anything I really want. Mix up your bid though, because, if people catch on that every auction you bid $100, they will up the bid to $99.99 just to make you pay a lot for an Item. This has happen to me numerous times, because there is at least one buyer out there who seems to be buying every floppy drive FD 501, that comes up for bidding. I personally think that he is hoarding these, and plans to corner the market.
2. ASK QUESTIONS .
   Because a lot of these sellers have no clue on what they are selling, mistakenly list Items. I had one a auction recently on a Floppy drive FD 501 for $55 US. After the auction, I asked why the shipping was so cheap to Canada for the drives are very heavy. I then found out it was just the controller and the seller mi-labeled the auction. We ended up canceling the auction, as I wasn't about to pay that kind of money just for the controller.
3. NEVER USE THE ON-LINE SHIPPING CALCULATOR.
   The calculator may be accurate for people in the US, but it is always at least $10 out for Canadian shipping . A CoCo 1 in the box, shipped USPS ground from any were in the US to Canada will cost about $ 23.30 US. I have had over 20 units shipped now and they have always been the same. If you have one shipped loose with no box, it should not cost over $20.
4. ALWAYS ASK TO WRAP THE BOX or ship it inside another box.
   Remember, sellers will do everything in their power to do the least amount of work possible. Most will not clean the item after sitting in dust and dirt for years, and most will just slap shipping labels on the original box. Most sellers don't care that you collect these things, so the will cover the box with Duct tape, shipping labels etc. I, have had many of "mint boxes" ruined because for this laziness.
5. Do Not pay over $20 for a CoCo 1 (except the white ones) or CoCo2
   I have seen in the last month, silly bidders grab the "buy it now" for up to $50 on plain 16K CoCo 1's, with no books or manuals, just because it was "in the box". I myself have 10 of these units in storage, and on the online-store, for just as low as $5. These are not rare.
6. Do NOT pay over $30 US for a CoCo 3.
   I laugh every day I see a CoCo 3 Auction, Most go for between $35-$50. You can go to cloud9 and by a used one (That has been refurbished, and you know it will work) for $30. You can Buy a new one for $70 (NOS). With Cloud9's reputation of excellent's, its a no brainier.

The tips for sellers remain the same, for sellers seldom see this page anyway
Common Prices

Rare Items (prices jump all over)

RS 232 Paks
OS 9 Software and Books
NON Basic Books
Mice (both 1 and 2 button)
Floppy Software
X-Pads
Tandy RGB Monitors (Separate)

Remember, There are now 2 types of people buying CoCo's. The collectors and the users. Now is the best time to start collecting your CoCo's. With Cloud 9's Super Board nearing completion, over the next year the prices will just keep going up. According to the chat on the new's groups, you couldn't give multi-paks away a few years ago. I guess its people like me who are "re-discovering" the fun from their youth that is driving the price up.

Games and the CoCo : Intellivision VS. The CoCo 1? . -by Glen VanDenBiggelaar

Many people have asked me "wasn't the CoCo just a glorified game system?' The answer is no. But it brings up the question "what were the best games made for the CoCo?" People will argue that comparing the Intellivision to the CoCo is like comparing yo-yo's to roller skates, but When I had both these systems growing up and only one TV to share the systems with, it was a constant debate which my brother and myself would play. Also, if you remember, Radio Shack sold BOTH Systems and games, They sold the Intellivision under the name TANDYVISION 1 or TV1. In the early days of the CoCo, the two system could not really stack up against each other. Intellivision had the game base already established and the graphics were just miles ahead of the CoCo (for a while).

I have never clamed to be the "expert on the games", and there are many web sites that take a look at the games of the system (one of the best I have found is " the Color Computer Games Page" .) When I was growing up, most of the games we got were by the way of a cassette that had probably been copied 500+ times. Most games for the CoCo 1 had very bad graphics, so the game play had to take you by surprise , or it just wasn't ever loaded again. If you are like me, The pain of using the cassette deck, just could not justify playing a lot of games on the CoCo. I more than once save up my allowance and got a Cartridge, but because we had an Intellivision, we played with that a heck of allot more than the CoCo. in my opinion, the Intellivision had better graphics that the CoCo 1, which was quite shocking at the time because this was a computer after all. My cousin had the C64, and that had better graphics. Why was this so? No one can say for sure. Some argue that the C64 had a better graphics chip, but in my personal opinion, it was that nobody took the time to make a "good looking" game. Take Space Assault, for example:

Space Assault (TANDY )
Tandy released Space Assault in 1981. It was a clone of Space Invaders. Why would they release this game with a "Green " back ground? Last time I saw anything to do with space, it was black. Some may argue that this was Tandy's way of getting around copyright infringement. I think Tandy could have sold allot more CoCo's and games if they just got rid of the "Green Back".

Video Pinball (Tandy) VS. Pinball (Mattel)
Pinball was one of the first games i had seen for the CoCo. Boy was it bad! The Intellivision version just screamed that it had the better graphics. I personally have never owned the game for ether system though, I thought I would just present both of them here. To be fair though, Radio Shack did release a "improved version" that did look much better.
WINNER HANDS DOWN MATTEL

TANDY SPORTS

Football (Tandy) VS. NFL Football (Mattel)
I thought I might show a couple of early sports games for both systems. Football was a big seller for both systems. Here the Intellivision showed its best, and with the big play book, you had a good number of plays to work with. I remember many hours TRYING to beat my brother with this cart. In fact this was probably the most played cart, on our system besides Baseball and Burgertime. Tandy probably noticed this and came out later with a much better version.
WINNER HANDS DOWN MATTEL

Color Baseball (Tandy) VS. MLB Baseball (Mattel)
Here was a very close battle, in the Tandy game you had the stands and the "take me out to the ball game" music, but on the Intellivision , you had the classic "YERR OUT". I think Radio Shack gave away Baseball with every system sold in the US, or at the very least it was the #1 selling cartridge for the CoCo ever.
WINNER VERY CLOSE TANDY

Now don't get me wrong, even though the backgrounds and graphics were cheesy on some games, and the fact that it took an hour to load from the cassette if you were lucky, some cassette games were great. One of my favorites was "Return of the Jet-i" I have not seen this game in years, but , being a big star wars fan, it was a fun game.

Return of the JET-I (Thundervision)

This is one of those games, I thought look better on a black and white TV than in color . The Green again just kills me, but this game was fun. You were on a speederbike, whizzing through the forrest (very fast moving) and sometimes an Ewok would appear that you "ran over" -picked up or another bike would bump you in the trees.

But slowly the "good looking" games did appear, or at least games that were not so bad looking. One of my favorite carts was Downland. Yes, it had simple graphics also, but it was not hard on the eyes.

Downland (Tandy)
Downland is just one of those games that you become hooked on right away. Here was a game that you just had to finnish (even though I never did). It was hard, but if you like games like Donkey Kong, it was worth every frustrating hour played. I just wish I had the deluxe joysticks at the time, for the regular joysticks were so darn sensitive for this game.

Zaxxon (DataSoft) VS. Zaxxon (Coleco)

Zaxxon showed us Intellivision users that the CoCo did have superior graphics. Have you ever seen the Intellivision cartridge? The CoCo version actually looked like the arcade version. The only game that Intellivision had that beat the CoCo was Burger Time For arcade ports (but just Barely) , but that is because Mattel had their best programmers on the game, and it was not put out by Coleco. Some will argue that Coleco made ONLY good Carts for its own Colecovision, while any other company got the worst game they could possibly put out.
WINNER HANDS DOWN DATASAOFT

Lunchtime (Tom Mix) VS. Burger Time (Mattel)
Tom Mix software was one of the few developers trying to get good graphics out of the CoCo. Lunchtime was the Burger time clone, the only weird thing is that there was no eggs or pickle chasing you. The pickle on the title screen is also BLUE! The second set of photos above is the Intellivision version which came out 3 years earlier and fit into a 16 k Cart. Lunchtime was 32K and looked not as good.
WINNER VERY CLOSE MATTEL

Donkey King (Tom Mix) VS. Donkey Kong (Coleco)
Tom Mix had proved back in 1982, That they could do a good job bringing Arcade games to the CoCo. Why they never licensed the game to have the name Donkey Kong is beyond me. They had the best version seen on any home computer at the time. Just look at what Coleco gave the intellivision users. An interesting aside, is that the Blue Sky Rangers (original Intellivision programming team) was so angry at Coleco for putting a game so bad out "on purpose" that the went to the head of Mattel and asked if they could take a shot at creating a better version not for release, obviously, but to demonstrate for the press what Intellivision could do when programmed properly. They were confident they could put together a version more faithful in feel and game play to the original arcade game than even the ColecoVision version. Management said no, feeling the programmers' time could be better spent
WINNER HANDS DOWN TOM MIX .

So when it was time for DK Junior to hit the stores, do you think Coleco made a CoCo version or at the very least, made it better for the Intellivision? -not!

---------

Juniors Revenge (Compuware) VS. Donkey Kong JR. (Coleco)
Why Tom Mix Did not do the sequel to Donkey King is unknown. But Compuware did take up the slack and again beat the Coleco version hands down. An interesting side fact is that in 1986, Compuware decide to re-release it for the CoCo 3 with even better graphics (more on the CoCo3's Graphics next month). The Coleco version is one that I did own though, and even though the graphics are bad, it was fun and game play was close to the arcade.
WINNER HANDS DOWN COMPUWARE

But wait, lets just do a comparison of games that were released both for the CoCo and Intellivision for a true "side by side" test.The only game company to do Carts for both systems was Imagic. Imagic was possibly the best third party distributor for the Intellivision. I personally never owned a Imagic game for the CoCo at the time, for these were not widely available here in Canada. and I personally had never seen them at the local "Shack". I believe these were available late in the CoCo 2's life cycle and I was out of the games by then. The only 2 games I have seen by Imagic for the CoCo were Demon Attack and Dragon fire.

Demon Attack
Demon Attack was clone of an old arcade game Phoenix. Here the CoCo wins (but its close) the background looks great, and Imagic really did a good job of porting the title. The Intellivision looks great compared to the Atari 2600 version, but pales to the CoCo. Why couldn't I get these carts way back when.
WINNER HANDS DOWN COCO

Dragonfire
Dragonfire was another original game from imagic . The game played in two stages: in the first stage one had to navigate between two turrets in a castle, jumping and ducking your way past fireballs and pits. Once you got through this stage, you entered the interior of the castle, where you had to collect treasures while dodging fireballs being hurtled at you by a large dragon. Again, the Intellivision version (bottom) was great when compared to the Atari 2600 version, but the CoCo version is truly stunning. Look at level 2 (second picture) only complaint is the Dragon looks like a crocodile, but the curved walls make you see what it was suppose to be like. This again backs up my original point, that when programmers wanted to, they could make a game with great graphics.
WINNER HANDS DOWN COCO

The really good looking games didn't appear until much later in the CoCo 2 life. Whether that was due to the new graphic chip or just programmers who cared is beyond my guess. I suspect the "good games" didn't show up on either tape or Cart, but rather Floppy disk. Next month I will continue with some great looking games.

Click here for last January's Issue .

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