Tandy (TRS-80) Color Computer Games - Timeline Index


This index lists games by copyright year. Some games would have been copyrighted one year, but not released until the following year.

1980 - Nuthin' but Radio Shack!

The first year that the Coco was revealed to the world in July, 1980. Nine program pak cartridges were released at the same time, all capable of running on the low end TRS-80 Color Computer 4K RAM model (the maximum RAM at the time was 16K). Extended BASIC would not be released until near the end of the year, and disk drives wouldn't be out until 1981-1982. No software was sold for the Cassette interface, even though it was built in and Radio Shack already sold cassette software for the Model I (and, announced at the same time, Model III).

The original 6 games released for the Color Computer (from what I remember, only 5 of the original 9 program paks were available at the initial release, but all 9 were advertised right off the bat):

Quasar Commander - Coco's first 3D game
Football - Coco's first sports game
Checker King
Micro Chess
Bingo Math - Coco's first educational game
Video Pinball - Coco's first design-your-own-board game

The rest of the games from 1980 are also Radio Shack cartridges... I don't know of any 3rd party games that were for sale in 1980. That wouldn't start until 1981...
Backgammon
Super Bustout
Dino Wars
Skiing - Coco's first game that really needed 16K RAM to run properly, and the first with speech

1981 - The start of 3rd party software

Since Radio Shack/Tandy exlusively sold everything through their own stores, and would not carry 3rd party software, the 3rd party market for the Coco started slow, with mail order software only. Advertised in such magazines as Creative Computing and 68 Micro Journal, and the fledgling Coco newsletters (later magazines) like Rainbow and TRS-80 Color Computer News, new companies were formed to start a new Coco software market. Amongst these are Spectral Associates, Computerware, and the just starting Tom Mix Software...

Robot Battle (renamed to Android Attack in 1982)
Audio Spectrum Analyzer - probably Steve Bjork's first commercial Coco program
Berserk (renamed to Haywire in late 1982) - probably the first PMODE 4 color artifacting game
Color Invaders (the 1st Computerware game?)
Colorout (the 1st Spectral Associates game?)
Color Robot Battle (the reason Spectral's Robot Battle was renamed)
Color Space Invaders
Crosswords
Color Cubes - the first Coco game to allow saving/loading a game in progress to tape
Lunar Lander (Greg Zumwalt version) - Greg Zumwalt's and American Small Business Computers first Coco game, and one of the first Coco 3rd party games period (programmed by Feb. 12, 1981)
Labyrinth - the first 3D Maze game on the Coco?
Mars/Mars II
Color Meteroids - First Asteroids clone for the Coco
Microbes - 1st Spectral game re-licensed to Tandy
Nuclear Submarine Adventure
Offender - Lots of firsts: 1st Defenders clone on the Coco, 1st Greg Zumwalt game for the Coco, 1st Coco game release from American Small Business Computers
Pac-Tac - 1st Pacman clone for the Coco
Polaris - 1st Missile Command clone for the Coco
Popcorn
Roman Checkers
Space Assault
Star Blaster - first 3rd party Cartridge game
Star Trek III - 1st Officially licensed Coco game; 1st game to require 32K RAM
Tower Of Fear - 1st Coco game by Charles Forsythe and The Programmer's Guild
Vegas Gamepak - 1st Coco game by Nelson Software Systesm/ColorQuest
Wildcatting

More to come...