SPOILER ALERT! The above is a complete walkthrough of the game.
This program is from the July/August 1980 issue of Recreational Computing Magazine. I have made a port to the TRS-80 MC-10 using Microsoft Color BASIC. It is a simple text adventure designed to introduce children to text adventure games. My version of the game can be played online here:
I used Commodore 64 source code. There doesn't seem to be any easily available original TRS-80 Model I/III code out there.
It is a very gentle and forgiving text adventure. Hints are provided at the beginning to familiarize players with the basics of two-word parser text adventuring. However, this does not mean it is without its challenges. There are some subtle puzzles that need to be figured out, which will challenge neophyte players.
I have made a few edits to the text messages of the game. Some are just for clarification (perhaps simply my own). Others are indulgent. I changed the name of a university mentioned. I wonder if Dr. Furman taught at that university? It's in Texas, but the game otherwise has a distinctly British vibe to it. Perhaps it is simply its "Alice in Wonderland" style, or its the name "Nellan," which seems quintessentially English to me.
But I can't see much about Smith there, but the magazine original article supplies these details:
Furman Smith received a Ph.D. in Probability and Statistics from the Florida State University in 1972, taught three years at the University of Kentucky, and has since been at the University of Houston Victoria Campus. He is currently an Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences teaching four courses, Chairperson of the UHUC Faculty Council, and a member of numerous committees including an eight faculty member group that is advisory to the President of the University of Houston System. He has a marvelous wife, two marvelous kids, one good home computer, a garden, and backlog of work.
Nice. From one academic with a backlog of work (who is doing this project during Winter reading week) to another, thanks for a wonderful game Dr. Smith!
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 Alley in only 4K.
Collins' Checkers source code is preserved on the Archive as a printout listing from the Arcadian newsletter:
Bally BASIC is not that hard to work with. It has a few differences from the Microsoft variation provided with 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 cartesian 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).
I also have been making a few graphic fixes to some of my old programs. I rejigged the splash screen (see just above) 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, I had to list the file from the screen buffer to my thermal printer and then type it back in by hand while I also converted it to MC-10 BASIC. Then I modified it further. It survived the years on tape and I converted it to a WAV sound file early in the 2000s and then converted it to an emulator C10 file. So I thought I would give it a little bit of a touch up. I discovered some unused musical note data typed in, but not accessed, probably for a Coco PLAY command. I had obviously simply ignored this data in my original conversion. I was able to convert the data for use with the SOUND command instead, and added back in some musical refrains at key points in the program's operation.
I also finally liberated from another one of my 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 displaying numbers for the dice rolls. 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 that I felt looked more like a brick chimney. Here is the original version:
Here is my updated version:
I also updated my port of the classic game "Switchbox" from the March 1986 issue of Compute! Magazine. I used the Atari ST source code for my original port. But inspired by a recent Youtube video discussing the program I changed 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): https://youtu.be/nZTqwJLJo-Y?si=A2of9-eoOkXpfBQI
Finally, I made some edits to Family Computing's New Years Eve program. It was originally limited to the year it was published (1984, if I recall). I thought it would be nice to update it so a date for any year (at least up to 9999) could be input. That way, the program will be functional for many years to come. Who knows, people might need their MC-10 to function in the year 2100...
Enjoy!
Addendum
I made some updates to Checkers. I added graphics for king pieces and the ability to hit N for a new game. I also streamlined the board display. Turns out, everything in terms of squares get placed by the piece placement routine, so I didn't need a separate graphic routine to display the board. I tested the game against the AI of a online checkers program on Medium difficulty and Collins' program beat it. But it lost when I set the level to Difficult. I just turned my phone upside down and input the computer's moves as my moves in Collin' game. Then I input the moves played by Collins' AI on the phone. If you take all the computer's pieces, it will sense the game is over and prompt you for a new game. Otherwise, if the computer takes all your pieces, you can hit N for a new game (or any other time you want to give up).
You have to set the modern game below to "force jumps" and to let you move first. Here is the site I used to test Collins' game:
This is a recode of a game from the NEC PC-6001 computer to the TRS-80 MC-10 using Micro Color BASIC. The original game, published in Mycom BASIC magazine in September 1989, used machine language to move the meteorites, but I just use a large string array, which I scroll through using variables and the MID$ command to create the effect of falling meteorites. Then I use VARPTR to POKE those meteorites out of existence if hit by an explosion.
The keys used to position your explosions are the following:
2 3 4 5 6 7
W E R T Y U
S D F G H J
Z X C V B N
As you can see, the programmer chose (no pun intended) to use a slightly staggered arrangement rather than simply following the diagonal left line of a QWERTY keyboard. I think this makes more tactile sense as it fits better with the actual up and down orientation of the grid of shots.
I have played the game a little now. It is easy to settle in to using only the bottom row with 3 fingers from each hand. I suspect the original game plays a little differently. It might be faster, but you also seem to have the ability to launch multiple explosions at the same time, a byproduct of the use of machine language and the ability of the NEC to run sound in the background. So I think my program is not a completely accurate rendition of the original gameplay. But I think it does present some of its challenge within the limitations of a fully BASIC variation of the game. My version has only 2 levels of ground above the three bases you are trying to protect, rather that the 3 from the original: _ - =
This decrease perhaps makes up (somewhat) for the lack of speed of my version. And of course, since you can have only one explosion going at time, it requires the player to (perhaps) be more selective when choosing targets.
The original programmer Kenta Cho seems like a really interesting fellow. He is described as an "indie programmer" and he has been responsible for some recent game hits like "Paku Paku." Here is some information on the original programmer: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/02/10/interview-kenta-cho-indie-game-developer/. But his programming career began back in the early 80s on the NEC PC-6001 home computer and using BASIC. From the interview, he credits some of his earliest inspiration as a programmer to playing games originally programmed in BASIC, like Heiankyo Alien, which I have also ported, and their creative game techniques and narrative premises.
If you want to see the original being played, look here:
