CoCo Planes

Permalink: http://sarrazip.com/dev/coco-planes.html

By Pierre Sarrazin

CoCo Planes is an unfinished prototype of an airplane fight video game for the Tandy Color Computer. It is a clone of the Biplanes game of the 1981 Triple Action cartridge for the Intellivision by Mattel Electronics.

The game can be played by a single player against the computer, or by two players. The planes can be controlled by the joysticks or the keyboard. The game requires a CoCo (real or emulated) with at least 64 kB of RAM and Disk Basic. It runs in the PMODE 4 (256x192) graphics mode. On a CoCo 3, an RGB monitor is recommended.

The current version is 0.1.0 (2026-09-06).

I can be contacted (in French or English) at sarrazip at sarrazip dot com.

As of Fall 2026, this project is an unfinished prototype that still has several issues to be resolved, namely:

• The game has not been tested on a real CoCo. The sound effects and the joystick responsiveness may be faulty.
• The computer-controlled plane (in the single player mode) is much too easy to beat.
• The computer-controlled plane sometimes shoots as its launches.

There may be updates to this project in the future.

Download

This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License (version 3 or later).

• Floppy disk image for Disk Basic (18 kB)
• To run the game under Disk Basic, uncompress this file, mount the .dsk file in drive 0 and give the DOS command on the CoCo.
• Source archive (60 kB)
  • Not required to play the game.
  • Requires CMOC for compilation (version 0.1.100 or later).
  • Requires these libraries (which are available on the CMOC home page):
    • cardgame (version 0.1.15 or later);
    • bcontrol (version 0.1.6 or later);
    • decbfile (version 0.1.13 or later);

See SHA512 signatures for these and other files.

How To Play

The object is to score 15 points first by shooting down your opponent's plane or the ascending balloon, and by not crashing your own plane.

Take off by pressing the joystick fire button, then climb by pulling back the joystick.

Get back to a horizontal position by pushing up the joystick.

Don't make your plane climb too fast or it will stall and crash. If it starts to lose altitude, pull back the joystick, so the plain gains speed and stability.

To fire at the ascending balloon or your opponent's plane, aim at the target and press the fire button.

A plane can do loops, dive and fly upside down.

When a plane, a bullet or a cloud reaches a side of the screen, it teleports to the other side instantly.

The presentation screen allows choosing a 1 or 2 player game. In a single-player game, the red plane is controlled by the computer, and you control the blue plane.

When playing with the keyboard, the red plane climbs with Z, dives with A and fires with S, while the blue plane climbs with ., dives with ; and fires with L. (These keys may be awkward to use. They may be changed in a future version. It is recommended to play with a joystick.)

A choice is also offered between short-range and long-range bullets.

Pressing the Reset button quits the game and shows the presentation screen again.

Other resources

• CMOC, the 6809-targeting C-like cross-compiler I wrote and which is necessary to compile this game.
• CoCoSmash, a simplified clone of Astrosmash for the CoCo.
• Color Eights, a CoCo card game I also wrote with CMOC.
• Color Verbiste, a partial CoCo port of my French conjugator, also written with CMOC.
• My page on emulating the CoCo on a GNU/Linux system.
• XRoar, a Dragon and CoCo emulator.
• My home page.

Last update to this page: 2026-09-06 22:13:59 EST5EDT