[Coco] Has anyone done an Angry Birds port on the CoCo?

[Bill Pierce]

from Aaron...

Over these same past few years, many of my non CoCo friends, family,
etc have expressed interest in my new old hobby but again "whats the
point" usually comes up in one form or another.


I got asked a similar question just recently and oddly enough, from a Coco programmer, Lester Hands.
I'm going to repost the question and answer here, because I think it fits the situation...

>From Lester Hands:
Bill, I have a non-programming observation/comment/query. I am curious what motivates CoCo fans. There seems to be a curious combination of nostalgia for simpler times and a desire to bring those times close to being up-to-date. Somehow those mindsets, to my way of thinking, are contradictory. I kind of like pulling out the old hardware and making it work like it used to. Doing that reminds me of the fun I used to have 30 years ago and makes me feel young(er) again. So I have a bit of a hard time understanding how an emulator or DriveWire fits into this. Not that they aren't cool tours-de-forces. Now all of a sudden that simple little 8 bitter is part of a complex machine that requires special handshakes, muttered incantations, and wand waves to make it all work. I certainly understand the enjoyment of the latest technology, but then why not just go on to latest PC with gigabytes of memory, terabytes of hard drive, super fast multicore processors, and a super capable OS (like Linux)? Maybe it really is the magic that is so attractive, the melding of the old and new. And the more obtuse the procedure is to make it all work, the more fun it is! I had been thinking about writing some software to make this all easier to use. But now I think that would spoil the fun!
Lester.

My answer to Lester was as follows:


Lester,
I think you're right on all counts. We have a lot of both types, then a combo set.
 
 To some, they completely avoid/ignore things like drivewire, superIde etc. I find most of those guys on the Coco Facebook page and they were/are usually end users. The people that bought Cocos, bought software, played games, and did their taxes. Even if they use an Emulator, they use it at normal clock. no special hardware fixes, and only software that uses original (even if emulated) hardware.
 
 Then there's the guys that keep striving to get that one more mhz out of the clock, one more meg of memory, etc. They are the ones on the mailing list. A lot of those guys are retired engineers, programmers, and such. You find them designing and building/programming new things. Sqeezing more and more stuff into that little 8 bit 1.8mhz machine. The love the technology. They have the big machines and use them to make the little machin run faster, better than they did before. They also use the new machines to make a living in most cases if they're not retired.  A kind of "6 Million Dollar Man" syndrom
 
Then there's guys like me. I get along with either side. I love the Coco for what it was. I had a lot of fun and really love reliving it. I sit sometimes and play King's Quest III for hours. Even though I beat it in 89. I still laugh at the silly stuff in Lesiure Suit Larry. It's those times my "monster" machine sits idle and the Tandy CM-8 is glowing. But those old drives got tired and give up on me. The disks were flooded in Hurricane Floyd. I never owned a hard drive and used to drool at the Rainbow ads. When I got this current Coco system I thought I would be happy... Coco3, 3 disk drives, 2 hard drives, 1 meg of memory,Eagle AT keyboard... All the things I had wanted in the 80s. Then the HDs broke, the drives rarely will read my old disks, the keyboard dry rotted and had to be redone, the Coco's power supply went out and had to be replaced. It was like owning a vintage car. A lot of mantainance.
 
Then I got drivewire and connected to all the software I never had, the programming tools I had drolled over, and the bug hit me to finish some of what I had give up on. A kind of check list of all the things (Coco related) that I hadn't finished. I also love technology.. the making it better, and all that. With everything I do, even with the speed of the emulators, all the new hardware, anything I create on the Coco, I make sure I can crank up that glowing CM-8 and run it there. So I guess mine is not so much nostalgia, but having the things I never had. Take my conversations with you as an example. I never had access to Delphi or Cis. I couldn't afford it. I was working construction for little better than minimum wage and raising 2 kids. Had I had access and could've talked to guys like you, Mike Knudson, and Gene Heskett, I may have become a good programmer back then and went somewhere with it. Now I'm stuck out here in the middle of the boonies with little communication with society and a lot of time on my hands so you guys are my lifeline. You give me purpose. I can do the things I couldn't then. 
 
It's kind of like this... I used to have horses when I was a kid. I would have one now if I could afford to keep it up... But I'd buy a Harley in a skinny minute and be just as happy. I'd ride my Harley over to the local stables and sit and talk with the old guys that run the place... about horses :-)
 
In the end, I just do all of it because it's fun. It doesn't matter if it's playing Megabug, finding a new way to use Drivewire, or doing a completely digital 32 track recording for the local teen band on my Monster PC. It's just a matter of what YOU enjoy.
 
Give me a rope and I'll make a ladder. Give me a ladder and I'll climb a tree. Let me climb a tree and I'll build a treehouse. Give me a tree house and I'll have a nice quiet place to make a rope.

Bill
 

That sums it all up for me...
Bill P

Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com