[Coco] Help with The Magic of Zanth for CoCo 3

[CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts]

*I'm still looking for help with the beginning of the game*, but to respond
to Nick for a moment... I think it comes down to either having an affinity
for classic synthesized speech or not. I always loved the sound of it and
still do. I seek out such options for my collection for every platform
possible. In fact, I wish it was easier to make more games - particularly
text adventures - talk. It just adds something very era-specific to the
experience that can't really be matched today. Today it's no big deal to
have speech in games; that speech though is "real" speech, not generated
on-the-fly. Certainly there were better solutions even in the classic era,
but the ones that sounded better were generally limited to a small amount
of phrases versus "unlimited" speech like you hear in the Zanth game.

The expansion interface is clunky, agreed, but then these mass market
consumer systems generally weren't meant to be internally expandable. Costs
had to be saved somewhere. It's hard to compare an Apple II, which cost
well north of $1000 to a CoCo or Commodore 64 that cost well south of $500.

===================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade,
Inc.<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
Authored Books<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1>and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
===================================================


On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 5:35 PM, CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <
coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:

> On 12/05/2014 4:10 AM, CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts wrote:
>
>> Anyone play this 1987 CoCo 3 game from Computerware, The Magic of Zanth,
>> before? I like to think I know my way around a game or two, but the scant
>> instructions with this text and graphics adventure and my lack of
>> familiarity with Anthony's world of Xanth that this is based on seems to
>> have doomed me to failure right at the start.
>>
>
> Does every game (are there many?) that used the speech part of the
> sound'n'speech pack sound like a cyclon?  :)
>
> I've owned one of these packs for 20 years (bought cheap when they were
> being cleared) and I've never used it.
>
> Firstly because there weren't enough games that used it (properly) and
> because of my refusal to attach one of those god awful multi-crap kludges
> on the side of my CoCo.
>
> The Apple II had nice internal slot expansion.
>
> The TRS-80 Model 1 had a nice tidy expansion interface under the monitor.
>
> The CoCo has this god awful "multi-crap" dongle on the side with odd size
> cartridges and cables everywhere... not to mention the risj of blowing a
> 6809 when it's bumped!
>
> Nick
>
>
>
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