I ran across a neat post on the Atari Archives Site that discusses very early computer versions of Checkers. Kevin Bunch mentioned a version of the game on the Bally Astrocade system that was by John Collins. I've converted other programs by Collins and other programs for the Astrocade system. The system had limited memory, about 4K. It was one of the first early video game systems to also include a version of BASIC (a reasonably good one for a machine without a keyboard). Those limits seem to have inspired high levels of programming cleverness among coders. In the late 70s these pioneers created very memory efficient games with AI features within the extreme limits of 4K. Their skill can be easily leveraged to obtain programs that can run on the 4K MC-10 as well. I converted a very powerful Othello game with a strong AI by Clyde Perkins called O-Jello, which works in only 4K. And Collins made a very clever but fairly extensive text adventure Bally's Alleye in only 4K.
Collins' Checkers source code is preserved on the Archive as a printout listing from the Arcadian newsletter:
https://archive.org/details/ballyalley_Source_Code_Checkers_by_John_Collins
Bally BASIC is not that hard to work with. It has a few differences from the Microsoft of the MC-10, but they are not hard to adjust to-- Semicolons for separating commands on the same line. No OR or AND Boolean operators. It uses # for "not equals" instead of <>. The biggest challenge is that it uses a graphic coordinate system which starts at the centre of screen, instead of the upper left corner and therefore uses negative numbers. I'll put my version up on the Internet Archive, so if people want to play the game, it might be a little easier than using a Bally emulator, since input for that system was only by controllers with numeric keypads and overlays for functions and alpha input as with the old telephone key pads.
https://archive.org/details/CHECKRBA
I also have been making a few graphic fixes to some of my old programs. I rejigged the splash screen and the menu operations of my Micro Color Trek. This version is from some Coco version I acquired back in the day. I think I typed it in from an old BBS, since the MC-10 Micro Color Compact didn't have download capabilities. Had to list it to my thermal printer and then type it in by hand. Then I modified it a bit. It survived the years on tape and I converted it to a WAV sound file early in the 2000s and then converted to an emulator format file. So I thought I would give it a little bit of a touch up from my old hacked version.
I also finally liberated from one of those old tapes a "Crap" game demo program from the MC-10 User Manual. Like Trek, I had added some simple SG4 graphic dice, instead of just numbers. Back in the day these kinds of edits felt like monumental "computer hacking" to the teen me.
In the spirit of such hacking, I decided to modify a version of a Santa Claus graphic program from Family Computing magazine. I never liked the version of the chimney presented in that program, so I decided to make something better. I used the SG4 graphic editor to come up with something I felt looked more like bricks. Here is the original version:
I also updated my port of the classic game "Switchbox" from Compute! Magazine, March 1986. I originally used the Atari ST source code for my port. But I recently updated the animation of the switches and added some more speedups to the code (e.g. converting to single character variables, using periods instead of 0s, combining lines). The idea for the switch animation update came from: https://youtu.be/nZTqwJLJo-Y?si=A2of9-eoOkXpfBQI
Finally, I made some edits to Family Computing's New Years program. It was limited to the year it was published (1984, if I recall). I thought it would be nice to updated so a date for any year (at least those up to 9999) could be input. That way the program will be functional for many years yet. Who knows, people might need their MC-10 to function in the year 2100...
Enjoy!
