PROJECT TIMELINE

1982 - Stellar Odyssey

1982 - Cosmic Bomber

1983 - Neutroid

1983 - The Gladiator

1983 - Stellar Odyssey 2

1984 - Donut Dilemma

1984 - Escape Zone

1984 - Neutroid 2

1986 - Donut Dilemma 

1988 - Rupert Rythym

1988 - Space Intruders

1989 - Rascan/Digiscan

1992 - Cosmic Ambush

1997 - Pacman Tribute

1998 - CoCoNuts

1999 - Pennfest '99

2000 - Gate Crasher

2000 - Pennfest 2000

2002 - Digiwiper

2015 - 4K Invaders

2015 - Neutroid 2.015

2015 - Hi-Res Interface

2015 - 225 Line Basic

2016 - Pop*Star Pilot

2019 - Water Fall

2019 - Game Menu

2019 - Donut Dilemma 2019

2020 - Gunstar

2020 - Rally-SG

2020 - Pipes

2021 - Gem Hunter

2022 - Zero Hour

2022 - Jumping Joey

2023 - Neutroid Reloaded

2024 - H.E.R.O.

MISCELLANEOUS

In Search of 256

My CoCo3

Downloads

 

SEND E-MAIL TO

nickma1@optusnet.com.au

Welcome to my website!

Buckle up and get ready to take a journey down "Nerdville" as I give you a guided tour of the many computer projects that I have accomplished from the day my parents bought me my first personal computer... under the pretence that it will "help me with my homework".  

A little bit of history

My name is Nickolas Marentes and I live in Brisbane, Australia.

I started with computers back in 1979 when I would drop in to the local Radio Shack/Tandy store after school to play with the TRS-80 Model 1 that was on display.

After getting my own TRS-80 in 1980, I had a desire to start a software company and create commercial grade games. I started under the name "Supersoft Software" which was later changed and officially registered as "Fun Division". It was a small "cottage company" and sales were only small but I was a high school kid at the time and anything I earned was good money.  

My TRS-80 Model 1 had 16K of RAM (upgraded later internally to 32K), low resolution 128 x 48 monochrome graphics and no disk drive. I learned how to program it's Z-80 8-bit microprocessor and developed all my TRS-80 Model 1 games on this setup using a cassette player for data storage.

By 1984, the TRS-80 was showing it's age so I decided to move up to something newer with high resolution and color graphics. Being familiar with the Radio Shack/Tandy line, I chose the Tandy Color Computer complete with 64K RAM and dual floppy disk drives.

Although it wasn't as graphically impressive as many of the other competing systems on the market at the time, it had two important attributes. Firstly, it had a great CPU, the Motorola 6809. Secondly, it had a large distribution channel via the many Radio Shack/Tandy stores which I had hoped to exploit for my planned future rise to stardom and obsene riches. In 1986, Tandy released the Color Computer 3 with improved graphics, more memory and faster speed. The future was looking bright till... 

In 1992, Tandy decided to discontinue the Color Computer and so I decided to move on to the Commodore Amiga. Due to lifestyle changes, I never did create any software for the Amiga but in 1997, the bug caught me again and I returned to the Tandy Color Computer. I found that a dedicated group of faithful users still existed so I re-entered the CoCo community.

To this day, I continue to create games for this computer, nowadays just as a hobby.

What's this site about?

I have designed this site to be read sequencially from the first project to the last so that you can see the progression of events, ideas and decisions that were made as time went on.

As I detail each project on this site, you will read about my dreams and desires for each project, the challenges I experienced during their development and the inspiration and motivation behind them. I will show you how I achieved everything on a shoe string budget using very limited development tools and cover the post product development stage which involved documention, packaging and marketing, all of which I had to do myself.

Those were days in which it was easier for one person to create a small software company operated from a bedroom office to create and market a few video game programs. Today, the games are far more complex and software houses employ many people and cost thousands, even millions of dollars to produce.

I enjoyed doing each of these projects and I am grateful to those who supported my efforts by purchasing my products over the years.