MattPatrol

I recommend asking Larry Clague himself.

Nobody but me (the author) had a copy of "SELMA presents Matt Patrol" until 1996, when XXXXX, a collector/dealer of videogame cartridges, talked me into selling him a copy. A few years later the ROM image was on the intertubes...

Atari was losing $1M per day in early 1984. Time Warner told Atari to publish nothing more on ColecoVision and began looking for a buyer for Atari. A few months later TW found Jack Tramiel.

Atari was not licensed by Coleco as a publisher/developer on ColecoVision. If Coleco had decided to sue Atari for developing/publishing without a license, Atari was more likely to win if the Atarisoft games did not use Coleco bios calls. Yeah -- why trust some buggy bios anyway...

Yep -- the CV bios was avoided by Atarisoft programmers. It was slower than using your own code and you had to figure it out. Much easier/quicker to just write your own routines. Plus Atari was not paying Coleco a license fee. They had paid another company to reverse-engineer the hardware -- which was "off the shelf". So, not using Coleco's bios was insurance that Atari could not be successfully sued by them.

Cool, Tony. Better tools will be useful. The debuggers I've found for CV (blueMSX at least) don't have memory editors! I don't have the source code to Moon Patrol -- but plenty of notes (since I designed/coded by hand on paper first, then worked on the ZAX emulator to finalize/debug). I could reverse-engineer (with the help of my notes) the ROM image into real source code with a dis-assembler. Some of my code could be useful in building new games/tools or re-building my tile editor.

Yep -- I had been playing Robotron for several months when I started designing Krull.

Some answers to various questions: 1) I've worked in games since 1981. 2) My first game was Krull for coin-op at Gottlieb in 1983. 3) My second game was Moon Patrol for ColecoVision at Atari in 1984. 4) I worked at Atari from 1983 to 1985. The last time I programmed was in 1985 when I wrote the line and polygon graphics primitives for the Atari ST operating system, GEM. 5) Since then I have been a game creator, designer, and producer. 6) I worked at Epyx from 1985 to 1988 where I produced Winter Games, designed/produced World Games, and created/designed/produced California Games (and numerous others). 7) After that -- Activision/Mediagenic, Epyx again, DTMC (a Nintendo and Sega publisher), and 3DO. 8 ) Finally, in 1996 I joined Blizzard North and helped them wrap up Diablo. Next (among other things) I recruited and hired dozens of people to develop Diablo II. I was producer of Diablo II at Blizzard North and wrote most of the dialog in the game. Fun fact: I created the "!" as the NPC quest marker. I also managed the Blizzard North sound department. 9) In 2004 I joined the creators of Diablo at their new company, Flagship Studios, and worked on Hellgate: London. It flopped and the company went under. 10) In 2009 I joined Playdom which was acquired by Disney. I designed and produced monetization content for Mobsters, Mobsters 2, Sorority Life, etc. on MySpace and Facebook. 11) My final game for Playdom was "Kitchen Scramble" on Facebook of which I was co-creator and lead designer. 12) Last fall I quit Playdom and started a new company, "Play On Games", with another guy. We are building a new kind of word game for Facebook and mobile (iPhone/Android). I still have a ColecoVision (among other classic game systems). I still have my first computer that I built from a kit in 1976, Polymorphic Systems - Poly88. I have 2 coin-ops: Computer Space (in red) and Robotron: 2084, my favorite game of all time.

Defender - Chris Merkel (not sure of spelling) Centipede - Larry Clague Jungle Hunt - Dave Cartt Galaxian - Jim Eisenstein Moon Patrol - Matt Householder Pac-Man - Mike Hendricks Dig Dug - Larry Clague (w/Mike Hendricks?) Joust - Larry Clague (w/Mike Hendricks?) Ms Pac Man - Jim Eisenstein

I did not work on other ColecoVision games. I was a month into designing a scrolling engine to port Vanguard to ColecoVision when I was switched to Moon Patrol instead. I have hand-written/drawn notes on my code and the other design data -- I don't have source code, as such. But I could dis-assemble my Matt Patrol ROM and produce source code. The Joust title screen does not exist, but I have my hand-drawn notes on how to render the Joust logo on the ColecoVision.

NIAD -- That's basically correct. I made several customized copies of "Matt Patrol" for Atari colleagues - in particular - Helyett, who was in QA and had tested it for a month straight, and Selma, who was in marketing. I remember I gave Helyett her copy, but Selma had been canned already. So, I kept that one (and I still have it). I must have burned some customized copies for my fellow ColecoVision programmers -- like Larry Clague, Mike Hendricks, Dave Cartt, and Jim Eisenstein. But I don't recall exactly who got one. The bra UFOs were just silliness. I had been a DEVO fan since 1978, hence the "energy domes". I don't have final versions of Joust or Ms Pacman.

I didn't work on the Joust game -- just the logo for the title screen. Not sure if Larry Clague (CV Joust programmer) ever put it in his game. After I submitted my Moon Patrol ROM for the "final" time -- and was waiting for manufacturing approval -- I started coding a CV art tool = Coleco Screen Editor (CSE). Meanwhile, Larry wanted a nice-looking title screen for Joust. So, I finished my CSE tool and drew the Joust logo with it as a test-case. The CSE code ran on the ZAX Z-80 emulator plugged into the ColecoVision -- so you could see your work on the TV -- which helped greatly for anti-aliasing and such. It used the CV controller for all functions. CSE was designed to allow editing of 1/3 of the screen (top/middle/bottom) at a time. The other 2 (1/3) sections were for showing the character set and editing of 1 character in the character set.

I'm the guy who did the original Moon/Matt Patrol for ColecoVision in 1984. It was canceled by Atarisoft 30 years ago just as I was finishing it up and was about to do the title screen. I still have my original design/development notes - including my artwork and code. I looked through them today and found the final approved box design and manual mark-up. I also found my title screen art for CV Joust. I could code changes/improvements to CV Moon Patrol. Anybody care? Any questions?