Color Computer links

Instead of trying to list every site that has CoCo content, I have tried to keep this a manageable list of what I consider to be some of the better ones. Many of them have extensive link lists, so it's easy to find plenty more to peruse once you've checked these out.

The Color Computer Web Ring
A good place to start since there are links to about 30 sites covering all areas of interest.

Mocha: Online CoCo emulator
If you've looked at the rest of my site, you already know I can't stop raving about this online emulator that allows people to play tons of CoCo games using their Web browser. Kudos to Brad Grier for the best CoCo programming achievement since the likes of Donkey King and Dungeons of Daggorath shocked the gaming world. After seeing this and not finding any sites dedicated strictly to CoCo reviews, I decided it was time to get one online.

The Color Computer Games List
Mandatory for anybody interested in CoCo gaming. Descriptions and screenshots of more than 400 games, with many of them available for download. Also features some interviews with programmers and other historical background. This site by L. Curtis Boyle was the other major motivator in my decision to launch this site (more attitude, less actual knowledge and useful content) and was an invaluable resource when my memory failed me about details of certain games.

The Sock Master's CoCo page
Very good site for modern CoCo news and links. Focuses a lot on the CoCo 3, but plenty of stuff for all can be found here.

Lamune's Homepage (a.k.a.) Mike Pepe's CoCo library
I just discovered this - it's got an incredible amount of software, including a lot of titles I haven't found elsewhere. It's an ftp site, so you're navigating through directories instead of user-friendly Web pages, but if you know what you're doing it's worth it.

Articles from Creative Computing
This site is utterly FANTASTIC if you want to get educated about home computers from the late 70s and early 80s. It has years and years of well-written articles about all machines from the era, including the CoCo. This was one of my favorite computer magazines ever and I've spent hours and hours reliving some of those memories and learning all kinds of new stuff from issues I never saw. Truly a site not to be missed.

Color Computer emulators
If you're going to run downloaded software, you need a program that emulates a Color Computer. This site offers them for Windows, plus some downloadable software and a good collection of links.

TRS-80 Color Computer Emulator Page
Another very good Windows emulator site, plus some software.

Macintosh CoCo emulator through emulation.net
This is where Mac users can get an emulator. It's the one I use most frequently and it works well, except the screen display is small.

The MESS homepage
This program is frequently the choice of retro gamers, since it can imitate virtually every classic machine out there ranging from Atari gaming consoles to the CoCo to more modern machines like Macs and PCs. Great if you can use it, but it does require some setup to work properly. Versions for PCs, Macs, Linux and other platforms exist.

Mike Snyder's CoCo Quest
A great page filled with homebrew software by a programmer for the one of companies that put out a batch of programs every month on disk or cassette. Most such programs were hardly classics, but like today's shareware a lot of them were plenty of little-known gems that proved fun and addicting.

Bob Wither's Home page
Bob programmed a number of the most famous graphics adventures ever for a company called Mark Data Products. Here you can get his games, read about how he programmed them and in general find out a lot about adventuring on the CoCo.

COCO Friends Disk Magazine
More than 70 online issues. Offers all kinds of articles, homebrew programs and screenshots (mostly CoCo3), plus lots of question-and-answer sections and project suggestions. Probably a bit technical and obscure for general tastes, but great for hackers and hobbyists.

The MC-10 home page
A really nice site dedicated to Radio Shack's MC-10, a sort of "mini CoCo" they offered briefly that was one of those notarious short-lived computer flops of the era. It was overpriced, underpowered and had virtually no software or redeeming user features at all. And yet it still has it fans and I wouldn't dream of mocking them for it - in fact the more they can do with it, the better. After all, I'm still firing up my ZX81 emulator and playing crappy black-and-white 1K games after all these years.