Downland1983 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 I don't know if any Tandy CoCo enthusiasts here have a Nintendo Switch or Super Mario Maker 2 for it. But I do, and Downland published in 1983 for the TRS-80 Color Computer remains one of my all-time favorite games. And so, I have lovingly recreated it as a course in Super Mario Maker 2. I had to take some liberties and use of imagination of course, but I consider it a decent and somewhat faithful recreation. One of the biggest alterations was stretching each chamber to fill 2 vertical screens so that Mario's jumping mechanic wouldn't render the course to easy to breeze through. I wanted to make it challenging in a way that would be a fitting homage to the original. So far, only 1 person out of 29 has completed the course in 60 tries. Here is the Course ID for anyone who has the Switch and SMM2 and would like to try it: Course ID: YQD-723-X5G 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thanatos Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 Got any screenshots? I love Downland! Might be hilarious for an old CoCo game to be the reason for me to pick up a Switch! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 2, 2020 Author Share Posted March 2, 2020 Sure thing. I'll try to snap and upload some screenshots tonight. Thanks for the interest in seeing it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rietveld Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 1 hour ago, Downland1983 said: Sure thing. I'll try to snap and upload some screenshots tonight. Thanks for the interest in seeing it! I m interested also. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 2, 2020 Author Share Posted March 2, 2020 Okay, great. I'm looking forward to hearing both of your feedback once I get the pics uploaded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 3, 2020 Author Share Posted March 3, 2020 Sorry for the delay. I snapped screenshots from the title screen, first 5 chambers, and a 30 second video of the first chamber yesterday afternoon. I want to edit the top and bottom screenshots of each chamber into a single picture before I upload them. Brought my microSD card adapter to work before I saw that the new (refurbished) PC they replaced my old one with a few weeks ago is a Dell OptiPlex 3010 that has no SD Card Reader (my old office PC did). Anyway, I'll just do it on my Acer at home tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoosierdadee78 Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 DownLand was so good. I remember playing Springster, DownLand and Thexder on my ColorComputer3 back in the 80’s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 3, 2020 Author Share Posted March 3, 2020 My 80's collection included Downland, Dungeons of Daggorath, Demon Attack, Dragon Fire, Pinball, Color Baseball, Tetris, Chess, Canyon Climber, Stellar Life Line, Monster Maze, and Pooyan (my only cassette game). The CoCo2 got my older brother and I through the mid-80's after the North American Video Game Crash ended Coleco's support for the Colecovision up until we got an NES in 88'. Even then, I remained fond of it and kept playing those games into the early 90's until it stopped working. Years later when I had my own income, I re-bought a CoCo2 and CoCo3 from ebay to enjoy them again from time to time even now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 3, 2020 Author Share Posted March 3, 2020 Replayed my creation on lunch break today. I grabbed screens of the other 5 chambers. I'll upload the screenshots tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 4, 2020 Author Share Posted March 4, 2020 Okay, I finally edited the top and bottom screens of all 10 chambers into single screenshots. Here are the Title Screen and the 10 Chambers of Downland that I recreated in Super Mario Maker 2 on Nintendo Switch. Enjoy! By the way, there is a final chamber in the course that has the Flagpole Exit. I didn't snap a screenshot of it since it's not from the original Downland, and also there is a "true ending" in that chamber. 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rietveld Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 That's looks great. I will have to play that on my switch tonight 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thanatos Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 Wow, that looks amazing. How much time did making that take you? Looks like a ton of work! I may have to buy a Switch... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 20 minutes ago, thanatos said: I may have to buy a Switch... No kidding. Been putting it off too long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thanatos Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 40 minutes ago, Tempest said: No kidding. Been putting it off too long. But the prices never change for Nintendo gear, so my cheapness is still holding me back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 15 minutes ago, thanatos said: But the prices never change for Nintendo gear, so my cheapness is still holding me back. Same. I was waiting for a price drop or a Pro model. Neither of which are happening this year it would seem so once I get through all the Kingdom Hearts series on my PS4 (my current backlog) I might look into getting one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted March 4, 2020 Author Share Posted March 4, 2020 2 hours ago, thanatos said: Wow, that looks amazing. How much time did making that take you? Looks like a ton of work! I may have to buy a Switch... I'm not certain how much time I put into it to be honest. From my uploads I can tell that I uploaded the course on January 20th. I have pics on my phone from January 19th from when I texted my older brother (who I used to play Downland with on our CoCo2) that I had recreated the game we used to play so often. And, the last course that I previously finished had been uploaded on January 5th. So I definitely worked on it at some point during that 2 week span, but I doubt that I worked on it for the whole 2 weeks. From my recollection, I spent a little time the first night crafting the title screen when I was first inspired to do it. The next night I pulled up a playthrough of Downland from YouTube on my Wii U Gamepad to be able to look at screens from the original while recreating the game on the Switch. I think I did a few chambers per day from there (including some work on lunch break in my car with the playthrough vid pulled up on my phone for reference). So, it was more than likely an hour or so per day over maybe a 5 day stretch? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted May 6, 2020 Author Share Posted May 6, 2020 I was recently encouraged to start a Super Mario Maker 2 course sharing thread in the Nintendo Switch Forum. While adding screenshots to my courses, I edited all of the Downland Chamber screens into a single map. So, I figured I would update that here as well along with the vintage Downland map found on CoCopedia (http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Map_of_Downland) for comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downland1983 Posted May 7, 2020 Author Share Posted May 7, 2020 On 2/28/2020 at 2:09 PM, Downland1983 said: I don't know if any Tandy CoCo enthusiasts here have a Nintendo Switch or Super Mario Maker 2 for it. But I do, and Downland published in 1983 for the TRS-80 Color Computer remains one of my all-time favorite games. And so, I have lovingly recreated it as a course in Super Mario Maker 2. I had to take some liberties and use of imagination of course, but I consider it a decent and somewhat faithful recreation. One of the biggest alterations was stretching each chamber to fill 2 vertical screens so that Mario's jumping mechanic wouldn't render the course to easy to breeze through. I wanted to make it challenging in a way that would be a fitting homage to the original. So far, only 1 person out of 29 has completed the course in 60 tries. Here is the Course ID for anyone who has the Switch and SMM2 and would like to try it: Course ID: YQD-723-X5G Miss typed the Course ID in OP. Correct ID is: YDQ-723-X5G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrDave Posted May 17, 2020 Share Posted May 17, 2020 (edited) We're playing Downland as our weekly game challenge on cocotalk if anyone wants to join just take a photo of your score / game and you can enter before friday 22 may 2020 I will remind people of your awesome mario version again..lol Edited May 17, 2020 by MrDave 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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