/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8221147]

Imagine getting a computer in the mid to late 1980s and thinking, "Yes, I will buy a computer from the place where I get cheap hi-fi equipment and also can't buy software for it from anywhere else."

[Anonymous No.8221154]

Tandy had some of the highest computer sales in the country; they made good gear. Particularly the 1000 line once IBM compatibles took over. They made some missteps early on with having multiple incompatible machines, but everyone was just seeing what stuck to the wall at the point, it wasn't unique to Tandy.

[Anonymous No.8221174]

I don't have to imagine. I had a Tandy Color Computer 3 when I was a kid. My parents bought it for me as a Christmas present in 1990, or so. I didn't have a single game for the machine for the first few months I had it. All I could do was type in a few commands from the large i"learn basic" book that it came with, and I would execute commands. Wasn't smart enough to know how to make any games for it. But when my parents did take e to a Radio Shack, I did find some discount software for it. Radio Shack only stocked anything published/ made by Radio Shack. There were 'fanzines' that would mostly be filled with mail-in orders for third party software and hardware. But systems like the Tandy 1000, were still IBM-DOS clones, but would contain their own Tandy video and sound modes. I knew more than a few people with Tandy 1000's.

[Anonymous No.8221176]

>>8221147
Okay, I imagined your scenario. Now what?

[Anonymous No.8221191]

The software available on the CoCo amazingly managed to be worse than the ZX Spectrum.

[Anonymous No.8221209]

>>8221191
hey you shut your whore mouth, Dungeons of Daggorath was the shit

[Anonymous No.8221228]

>>8221147
Imagine outing yourself as a "zoomer" in a single sentence.

[Anonymous No.8221247]

>>8221228
I was born in 1995 and collected "retro" computers starting at age 13. TRS-80 shit was always the worst stuff to collect, even Atari 8-bit stuff was more valuable. Anything other than CoCo-3 stuff was basically garbage.

[Anonymous No.8221261]

>>8221147
Did ratshak sell cheap hifi shit? I never noticed. I always headed straight to the back in hopes they had the parts I needed so I could overpay instead of driving 45 minutes each way to a real electronics shop. But I can imagine fucktards who bought cheap hifi might do think that way.

[Anonymous No.8221263]

>>8221247
>I was born in 1995 and collected "retro" computers starting at age 13
lol

[Anonymous No.8221384]

>>8221263
it's cute though lel

[Anonymous No.8222135]

It just didn't have worthwhile software. Even the Spectrum had major publishers and all the big AAA games of the day on it.

[Anonymous No.8222356]

>>8221263
He's quite the retro gamer

[Anonymous No.8222556]

>>8221247
>I was born in 1995
Imagine continuing to out yourself as a zoomer in each subsequent post.

[Anonymous No.8223012]

>>8221191
Yeah no. Compare the CoCo versions of Robocop, Arkanoid and Rad Warrior with their versions on the Spectrum. Plus the CoCo's analog stick made stuff like Polaris (their Missile Command ripoff) better than on most other machines. Also there's some great exclusives: Temple of Rom, Stellar Lifeline, Starblaze, Poltergeist, Downland and Spidercide are reason enough to get the machine if you like games from that era. And to go even further, some of the CoCo 3 ports were better than their NES counterparts, namely Thexder, Super Pitfall and Rampage.

[Anonymous No.8223024]

>>8221228
Like an oomerposter?

[Anonymous No.8223036]

My brother and I got a Tandy 1000EX with wn external 3.5" floppy drive for Christmas in 1987. My brother took it to college with him a couple years later and was replaced with a 386 of some kind with a VGA card + monitor. It also had a 80MB hard drive, so I could finally play all of the newer Sierra games.

[Anonymous No.8223053]

>>8221147
>bad b8

[Anonymous No.8223068]

>>8221147
I had one of these when I was about 7 or 8 (1987-1988). My dad worked at Radio Shack (literally) so I got to sit in there all day playing games and occasionally he would bring one home for us to play. Distinctly remember playing Dungeons of Daggorath, Dallas Quest, RoboCop, Robot Odyssey, Arkanoid, Thexder, Silpheed. Many good memories.

[Anonymous No.8223339]

>>8223012
No. You're forgetting the CoCo 3 came out in 1986, it's closer to an Amiga spec-wise while the Spectrum is more comparable to the CoCo 1-2.

[Anonymous No.8223441]

>>8223339
The Spectrum also had a 128k model so the comparison is still valid.

[Anonymous No.8225038]

>>8223339
>it's closer to an Amiga spec-wise
This zoom zoom is taking stupidity to a whole new level

[Anonymous No.8225324]

>>8221174
>buying a new 8-bit computer in 1990
Should have invested in a 386 PC instead.

[Anonymous No.8226196]

>>8225038
>Motorola 6809 must be the same as Motorola 68000! It's an Amiga!
I can see where someone would get confused but yeah this is pants on head levels of idiotic

[Anonymous No.8226204]

>>8226196
tbqh he didn't say exactly like the Amiga. although the CoCo 3 didn't have hardware scrolling or sprites the Atari ST is a bit more accurate comparison

[Anonymous No.8226470]

>>8221147
In the mid and even late 80s there really weren't many other options outside of small specialty stores or mail/phone ordering. This would have been completely normal for most of the US

[Anonymous No.8226615]

Played the shit out of Coco stuff as a kid, but we never called it the Coco. It was the TRS-80.

Mega Bug, Stellar Life Line, Clowns and Balloons, Slay the Nereis, and Dragon Fire.

Fantastic fun.. in fact, I fired up my Coco yesterday and sat on the floor like a kid. Pic related.

[Anonymous No.8226695]

>>8225324
>>buying a new 8-bit computer in 1990
>Should have invested in a 386 PC instead.

The color computer 3 was like $200.00- $300.00 Canadian at most Radioshacks. A 386 would have been like $1200-$1500 dollars Canadian.

[Anonymous No.8226714]

>>8226615
comfy

[Anonymous No.8226903]

>>8221261

actually they sourced quality stuff from japan and korea to put their own name on up until the late 90s when they started carrying shit tier stuff.

they did overcharge for their Realistic stuff, but it was not bad at all. the Mach1 and Mach2 speakers still hold up real well with only 10 watts.

[Anonymous No.8226910]

>>8221247
You're making it hard for the other 26 year old on here homie

[Anonymous No.8227560]

>>8226615
Only the first model was called the TRS-80, and that was just for brand recognition since folks were already familiar with that machine. They dropped the TRS-80 branding after the first model, which was a good call given that the CoCo machines have zero comparability with the actual TRS-80 line.

[Anonymous No.8227628]

My dad bought us a trs-80 model 1 with a cassette deck. He took us to meet this old dude from his radio club who hooked us up with a bunch of mixtapes full of games. You would fast forward to the gap in the audio then plug the cables in. You could get it to play audio as well, you'd reverse the cables, take the tape out and hit record. We thought it was amazing. This year I finally went back and finished Scott Adams Adventureland.

[Anonymous No.8227729]

>>8226615
What's the SD card cart you've got anon

[Anonymous No.8227749]

>>8226204
>>>8226196
>tbqh he didn't say exactly like the Amiga. although the CoCo 3 didn't have hardware scrolling or sprites the Atari ST is a bit more accurate comparison

The Colour Computer 3 is still an 8-bit machine, and falls into the 8-bit microcomputer category. It is graphically more comparable to the C64. The big upgrade with the CoCo3 is that it comes with 128K standard, and has an additional chip in it called GIME, which has some undocumented graphics mode features in it. Tandy/ Radio shack were a bit worried that the CoCo3 might be too competitive to the T-1000 line of PC's. The Contras is a pretty good example of what the CoCo 3 could do when developers figured out some of those features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LbQQjzCeKQ

Rampage for CoCo3:
https://youtu.be/WgPLmo5Xohk

Pacdude: Monster Maze (total Pac-Mania clone)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvSFnQXM5CI&t=92s

[Anonymous No.8227885]

>>8226903
Only realistic shit I ever owned were CBs. I left burgerland in 90 and every shop I ever saw was a hole in the wall in a strip mall. They would have been hard up to even fit all the AV shit I had in my house, so certainly didn't have anything decent there. I would have never dreamed of ordering a sound system and waiting weeks or months for it to be delivered.

[Anonymous No.8228003]

>>8227885

there were definitely tiers of stores. A fullsize one would have had not only that stuff, but oodles of parts and batteries the stripmall sized ones didnt get.

They also carried alot of those science project 'toys' that the Discovery store or current geek stores dealt in.

just go here for purely curious interest and check out the early 90s ones, after that, their supplier they slapped their name on was the absolute worst. But its not only at their feet, thats when the first electronics cos started getting consolidated and bought out by china.

https://www.radioshackcatalogs.com

[Anonymous No.8228704]

>>8227560
Yup, the silver first model is what we played on.

[Anonymous No.8228709]

>>8227729
It's a CoCoSDC. It's a disk drive emulator. Allows you to load any disk image and play it, much like many flash carts for other systems.

There is no menu though, you mount a disk image into one of the 8 slots, then load it from the basic prompt like you would any normal disk.

[Anonymous No.8228947]

>>8227749
The Spectrum 128 is a suitable comparison.

[Anonymous No.8228980]

>>8228704
The audiovisual capabilities of these things are like an Apple II but worse.

>>8221191
One other problem was probably lack of experienced 6809 coders. The 6809 is a great CPU but not seen often in consumer level devices while Z80 and 6502 coders were a dime and dozen back then.

[Anonymous No.8228985]

>>8228704
The audiovisual capabilities of these things are like an Apple II but worse.

>>8221191
One other problem was probably lack of experienced 6809 coders. The 6809 is a great CPU but not seen often in consumer level devices while Z80 and 6502 coders were a dime a dozen back then.

[Anonymous No.8229002]

Japan had a few 6809 computers like the Hitachi MB6890 and Fujitsu FM-8.

[Anonymous No.8229008]

>>8223036
Radio shack always had the latest sierra game running on their demo PC at the mall. Firs time I played hero quest and police quest was at that mall. One time they had the first leisure suit Larry running and I wasn't allowed to play, but I watched some old fat guy play it for like 40 minutes.

Also the first 386 I played a game on was at radioshack.

[Anonymous No.8229009]

>>8229002
FM-7 was the most relevant.
And it wouldn't be M6800 without the Dragon.

[Anonymous No.8229017]

>>8226695
>A 386 would have been like $1200-$1500 dollars Canadian.
Not a chance in 89/90. Look at the price for ram alone.

[Anonymous No.8229029]

>>8221147
Fun fact: the coco used a display chip originally made for a stand alone teletext machine farmers would use to track weather and agricultural info. Which is why the text and graphics are kinda shit.
Still a great machine for the time, as long as you knew that 99% of the decent software was mail order only because radio shack would only carry games they published themselves.

[Anonymous No.8229051]

>>8229017
Page 2. That $5000 PC didn't even include a hard drive or monitor.

[Anonymous No.8229278]

>>8229017
>Not a chance in 89/90. Look at the price for ram alone.

LOL, I am way off on the cost.

[Anonymous No.8229282]

>>8222556
Zoomers are after 1995, not from 1995 onward.

[Anonymous No.8229292]

>>8221147
FunFact: The Tandy 1000 line were the best DOS computers for gaming for their time.

[Anonymous No.8229303]

>>8229292
Still not a patch on the Amiga though.

[Anonymous No.8229312]

>>8229017
That doesn't seem like a smart thing to buy. Compared to the functionality of a Tandy 1000 it was barely an upgrade.

[Anonymous No.8229316]

>>8229303
One's a DOS computer, the other is an Amiga. For their time they were two very different animals.

[Anonymous No.8229319]

>>8229051
I think I have a VGM-300. It's a weird monitor that has a D9 but only takes VGA signals. Not CGA at all. I had to buy a Magnavox monitor to have anything that took CGA/TGA.

[Anonymous No.8229356]

>>8229312
Tandy 1000 came in two flavours in 1989 though. The 8088 and the 286. The 286 wasn't bad for late CGA era but the base model 1000 was hopelessly out of date.

[Anonymous No.8229371]

>>8229356
Out of date compared to a 286? Exactly what couldn't you do on a later model Tandy 1000 that you could on a 286?

[Anonymous No.8229372]

And CGA was fine in 1989 since very few dos games supported VGA yet. At this point there was 686 attack sub that supported 256 colors for VGA and thexder has potentially 256 colors with MCGA. That was it.

[Anonymous No.8229384]

>>8229356
Even the HX like the one in your picture had memory upgrades, modems ect. I have an HX that I got a Compact Flash / Memory / Mouse adapter card for. I also have an older SL. Other than being a little slow I don't see the big reason to go out and spend more money on a 286 back then. I almost don't even see a reason to upgrade until the 486's come out. I mean sure there are things you can't do on a 8088/8086 than you can do on a 386, but for most people's purposes you just wouldn't need it. Plus there were NEC CPU's that would upgrade those old 1000's.

[Anonymous No.8229405]

>>8229384
My cousin had an 8088 of some vintage, monochrome, and even kings quest 3 was a struggle. Long load screens and slow walk speed, like a 98 year old man with two bad hips crossing the street in February.

[Anonymous No.8229436]

>>8229405
Monochrome? We're talking about Tandy 1000's. They had 16 color CGA/TGA. And Tandy's 3 Voice protocol for sound. It came with a built in "sound card".
These things were way better for gaming than those other PC Clones at the time.

[Anonymous No.8229470]

>>8229405
Sure you don't mean King's Quest 4? Because I've seen 3 running on an IBM XT+CGA card and it ran at a normal pace and had 60 fps animation.

[Anonymous No.8229502]

>>8229372
>And CGA was fine in 1989
no
>since very few dos games supported VGA yet
EGA

[Anonymous No.8229517]

Here is 1989s hero quest on an 8088, one with more than ram than the tandy 1000 above as well as a faster CPU 10MHZ vs 7). The screen load time is horrific.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uRoMkKOpSvM

Technically playable but a horrid experience.

[Anonymous No.8229532]

>>8229517
To clarify, 640k vs 256k ram plus playing off a hard drive in that video. The tandy 8088 would be fucked.

[Anonymous No.8229542]

>>8227749
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LbQQjzCeKQ [Remove]


How did Sundog Systems not get sued?
https://youtu.be/gyP0kq-bx7k?t=113

[Anonymous No.8229554]

>>8229517
This is in Hercules graphics? If it was CGA it would run faster since it would only have to move a 16k graphics page instead of a 32k one.

[Anonymous No.8229570]

something else to remember. Hercules graphics are 50Hz while CGA/EGA/Tandy scan at 60Hz.

[Anonymous No.8229580]

>>8229554
Yea that is is a possibility one of the guys in comments brought up as well.

[Anonymous No.8229581]

>>8229542
most likely because the CoCo was so niche and irrelevant that Nintendo would never ever find out about this

[Anonymous No.8229596]

As I said, I'd ran King's Quest 3 on an original 4.77Mhz XT with CGA and it ran perfectly acceptably but that was also an AGI game and it's a bit skinnier and not as big/complex as SCI games.

[Anonymous No.8229603]

>>8229554
the instruction manual for Earl Weaver Baseball I know mentions that it's recommended to run the game in CGA rather than EGA on slower machines

[Anonymous No.8229615]

>>8229603
amerimutts were retarded 34 years ago. Who would have thought

[Anonymous No.8230460]

>>8228003
As a kid I had a bunch of those electronics kits and a bunch of those little Forest Mims books. I don't think I ever bought any mainstream consumer oriented shit from ratshack. Maybe that pocket dialer, but that was just to make a red box.

I had a look at some of the catalogs but it all looks like pleb shit. I always had high end stuff. I had giant big dick 4.0/4.1/5.1 speakers through the 70s and 80's I don't remember what my first amp was but the later ones were Onkyo. When the first 5.1 Lifestyle came out I switched to that.

I' sure ratshack hifi shit was fine for playing games or watching rented tapes. And if it's good build quality and lasts, even better. But I always just plugged by consoles, and even computers, into the same stuff I used to listen to music and watch LDs.

[Anonymous No.8230794]

>>8230460
>I always had high end stuff.

bose is high end?

[Anonymous No.8230995]

>>8221147
only bloated american retards were buying this shit.

>>8221154
>Tandy had some of the highest computer sales in the country
more than commodore? yeah, fuck off retard. you let us know when any tandy cancer breaks sales records like the c64 did.

>>8221191
>The software available on the CoCo amazingly managed to be worse than the ZX Spectrum.
quite accurate. it's nothing more than an american version of the speccy but worse in every way imaginable, and several times more expensive.

>>8223012
>CoCo 3 ports were better than their NES counterparts,
compulsive lying on a grand scale.

>>8223339
>it's closer to an Amiga spec-wise
wasn't even close or in the same city as amiga. coco3 used an ancient text mode video chip, no blitter ability, 128kb ram (standard), 6-bit audio (one voice, multiple voices only achieve via mixing but the quality ends up substantially worse, and coco3 used a 6809 cpu that couldn't compete against any 68000 machine. consider coping harder. everything tandy made was pure fucking shit for computer illiterate retards.

[Anonymous No.8231004]

>>8221147
only bloated american retards were buying this shit.

>>8221154
>Tandy had some of the highest computer sales in the country
more than commodore? yeah, fuck off retard. you let us know when any tandy cancer breaks sales records like the c64 did.

>>8221191
>The software available on the CoCo amazingly managed to be worse than the ZX Spectrum.
quite accurate. it's nothing more than an american version of the speccy but worse in every way imaginable, and several times more expensive.

>>8223012
>CoCo 3 ports were better than their NES counterparts,
compulsive lying on a grand scale.

>>8223339
>it's closer to an Amiga spec-wise
wasn't even close or in the same city as amiga. coco3 used an ancient text mode video chip, no blitter ability, 128kb ram (standard), 6-bit audio (one voice, multiple voices only achievable via mixing but the quality ends up substantially worse), and coco3 used a 6809 cpu that couldn't compete against any 68000 machine. consider coping harder. everything tandy made was pure fucking shit for computer illiterate retards.

[Anonymous No.8231049]

>>8230794
Compared to ratshack it was incredibly high end. The Lifestyle 12 had amazing sound. Do you think ratshack had anything that came close to that? At that time or even later?

[Anonymous No.8232319]

>>8231004
slow down before you have a stroke, dude

[Anonymous No.8232328]

>>8221209
That does look cool.

[Anonymous No.8232329]

>>8231004
>it's nothing more than an american version of the speccy but worse in every way imaginable
Better keyboard and available disk drives count for something much, no?

[Anonymous No.8232338]

The CoCo was sold in the UK but didn't make any impact due to the already oversaturated UK home computer market.

[Anonymous No.8232530]

>>8231049
Late 70's Realistic hifi was legit. Most of their high end amps and speakers were made by Fostex. My most powerful receiver/amp was sold by Radioshack. And it is indeed manufactured by Fostex.

[Anonymous No.8232542]

>>8232328
It's alright. The only CoCo games I own is a boxed copy of that. And Predator and Robocop for the CoCo 3 that I got for free. The retard that owned it before me was done with it and cut all the cords off of it. It's also one of the rare ones that got the 512k upgrade in it. I took it apart. Gave it a new Power Plug and it works great. It came with a Modem and a External Floppy disk drive. Both of which have their cords cut, and I don't care enough about the modem to try and fix it yet, and the ribbon cable for the disk drive is a bit of a pain in the ass to repair or replace.
Computer works though. Tell gramps not to cut the cords on their old computers they don't want to use anymore.

[Anonymous No.8233083]

>>8231049

yeah, its fine, its just from the way you were making it out to sound like you had actual high end stuff, and Bose is roundly mocked for its approach to sound, cheap components, and draconian marketing requirements to sell their stuff in stores.

As far as quality, the Mach series still absolutely slams as a 3-way studio style cabinet and are highly sought after. Go lookup what an Acoustimass set from the same era goes for on ebay to see where the demand lies, you might be surprised.

>>8231004
>more than commodore? yeah, fuck off retard. you let us know when any tandy cancer breaks sales records like the c64 did.

woah, chillipill. Not first doesnt mean not among the highest. 2nd would still be among the highest.

[Anonymous No.8233132]

>>8229282
Imagine thinking that /vr/ doesn't treat anyone born after 1976 or so as a zoomer.

[Anonymous No.8233980]

>>8232338
>The CoCo was sold in the UK but didn't make any impact due to the already oversaturated UK home computer market.

Radio Shack was a pretty widespread chain across the United States and Canada. I am from Canada, and RadioShacks Tandy Computer line sold well enough. Though the Color Computer line was still competing directly with the Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit PC's and a few others. The CoCo line certainly had a userbase. The thing with the Tandy brand was that it was Radio Shack exclusive, and RadioShack would only stock Tandy published software and Tandy hardware peripherals as they didn't have infinite space. So they didn't stock anything made by third parry groups. The only way to get a hold of third party software was to purchase or subscribe to magazines like Color Computer Magazine, or Rainbow magazines.

[Anonymous No.8234823]

>thread talking shit on the CoCo turns into CoCo appreciation thread
Well done lads. Love me CoCo.

[Anonymous No.8235464]

>>8226615
Is that a photo of your actual unit? That's in good nick, friend. Did you retrobrite it or something?

[Anonymous No.8236116]

>>8235464
My CoCo3 isn't yellowed either. I don't know if they yellow like other consoles/computers. All depends on the plastic's composition.

[Anonymous No.8236810]

>>8236116
My CoCo 2 is a real yellow bastard but the CoCo 3 looks real nice. Pretty sure I've seen yellowed CoCo 3s out there tho

[Anonymous No.8236965]

>>8235464
It is my actual unit, yup. Didn't retrobrite it, just got lucky. I picked it up late 2018 for $40. I have another one that's the original melted keyboard style that's much more yellow.

It was pretty dirty so I disassembled it and cleaned it, but it's in really nice shape.

[Anonymous No.8238615]

the CoCo 1 had 32k memory the CoCo 2 had 64k but you have to switch out the OS ROMs to get at the second half of that. graphics are like the Apple II's but with 4 colors instead of 6. they never took off because they just didn't offer anything unique or interesting enough, you could barely tell most games apart from Apple II ones.

[Anonymous No.8239125]

>>8238615
You could upgrade the Coco 1 to 64K but it wasn't official. Back in the day I ended up with a set of 64K chips that still needed +12V for some reason, so I set one of the jumpers to 32K.