[Coco] Game Writer

[Rogelio Perea]

"L. Curtis Boyle" wrote:

> Good idea. There was a "Game Writer" available for the Coco 1/2 that was
> supposed to do this as well, but I have never seen it run. Graf Xpress by
> Sundog also (talk to Briza... I have it, but have never really used it)
> has some functionality for this as well (Coco 3 only).

The "Game Writer" package was issued as part of the Education
Management Systems offerings from Radio Shack. Technically it was a
spinoff of Color Logo... you knew your way around Logo, you already
were almost done with Game Writer.

The limitations seen in Color Logo were also present in Game Writer so
the 'games' that could be produced were pretty simple sticks and
figures kind of games on a PMODE 4 CoCo screen. The software was
really oriented at doing something at the classroom rather than
producing an arcade grade kind of game.

The Commodore 64 (oh sacrilege) had several game construction sets,
being the best one of the bunch Garry Kitchen's GameMaker
(Activision). Even with the limitations GameMaker had, it was far
superior than Game Writer :-(

Our own Game Writer could not generate stand-alone applications, each
'game' needed the system disk, so right there a hurdle came about with
trying to distribute your creation in a legal way... only Game Writer
owners could have had the chance to play your product. Bummer again!

IMHO, Game Writer (as well as Color Logo) had its value on the
potential use on a educational environment as in a school lab with
young kids.



-=[ Rogelio ]=-