[Coco] SuperPak Cartridge... coming soon.

[Nick Marentes]

On 11/12/2015 9:02 AM, Zippster wrote:
> Yeah, the $25 would include what I would want for building them, and logistics (others may vary).
> If the cases could be had for $5, $30 plus shipping wouldn’t be too bad.
>
> Of course there’s whatever the software author would want too, so I guess they
> wouldn’t be too cheap, no.  That’s an 8MB chip though, so multiple titles if you wanted.
>
> If someone were to write a nice menu system, with both classic and new titles on the cart,
> it might be worth $50 a piece.
>
> It really looks like all the pieces are here for some group members to pull together and
> produce a nice multi-cart.  Something you see in other retro computer groups.
> Just saying.  :)
>

I'm looking at it from the point of view of a developer with a new CoCo3 
game to be released on cartridge.

A modern CoCo3 game with detailed graphics takes up more than 16K. The 
32K "super cartridges" that Radio Shack sold were for the games Super 
Pitfall, RoboCop and Predator.

Remember that a 320x200 16 color graphics screen on a CoCo3 takes up 32K 
on it's own so sprites, tiles and maybe sound samples can easily chew up 
more than 8/16K.

16K is not enough.

I suspect that with the CoCo's market for games, $50 is too high for a 
Rom Pack game. The CoCo market doesn't command the same level of game 
market space as an Atari, Commodore or Coleco unit.

We need some way to get the cartridge price to around $30 selling price 
to the consumer.

And I still don't see the value in a multi cart. Not when  you have a 
CoCoSDC for about $50 loaded with an SD card with every available game 
(Not just 8/16K ROM PAKS) in one compact cartridge.

Nick