COSMIC BOMBER

Genre: Arcade      Creation Date: December 1982     Language: Z80 Assembly  Language    System: TRS-80 Model 1

 

My first attempt at writing an assembly language game was a version of arcade Frogger for the TRS-80 Model 1. I had reached the stage where the program would draw up all of the graphics and was ready to start the animation when I felt that what I had done so far, could have been done much better and more efficiently. I decided to discard the Frogger project and instead made my first commercial grade game Stellar Odyssey which was written in BASIC with assembly language (M/L) subroutines. After completing Stellar Odyssey, I felt better prepared to tackle a full assembly language game project again and Cosmic Bomber was the result.

The idea was based on the last level of arcade Pheonix where you need to destroy the Mother Ship as it hovered ahead but I added the element of falling and exploding bombs to add to the challenge. This plus a few ideas from arcade Space Invaders where the enemy is slowly coming in to land and invade, added a sense of tension as the player had to complete his mission before this time limit was reached.

It was a good game except for one major disaster... I'VE  LOST IT !!

I lost all the source code and even the final binaries! Don't ask me how because I don't recall but if anyone can help me out by sending me a copy of my own game, it would be GREATLY appreciated.

Original Story Pretext

"The screen flashes at you "Bomber craft in range" and you prepare yourself for battle. The Aliens are back to destroy you but this time, it's you against the Mother Ship. You must penetrate through the bottom of the craft to kill the alien gunner within. But be careful for the alien is loading his bomb racks and once they're full, they begin dropping and exploding on the ground. At the same time, the bomber is coming down to land and invade Earth! Beware the bomber craft's escort ship hovering above firing high speed missiles at you. Earth is depending on you comrade so give them all you've got !! "

Wow! These story lines just getter better and better don't they !?    :)

Development Notes

Cosmic Bomber was actually a good game, especially considering it was my first full assembly language game. I have no screenshots of the game but I at least do have all my hand written notes and programming lists so technically, I could re-enter it all into an assembler and re-draw all the graphics... but I'm not that bored yet!

Here I have two scanned images of the video display graphics sheets that I designed the graphics on. Doesn't it look great?! You'd hardly pick that it was done on a low resolution monochrome system like the TRS-80 Model 1.     :)

Marketing

Looking at my invoice books of all my sales for that era, I can see why the game hasn't surfaced on any web sites. Only one copy appears to have been sold and that was to a distributor so I don't know who actually ended up buying the game. I guess to summarise the marketing of Cosmic Bomber, it would be safe to say that it was practically non-existant judging by the sales.

I guess I would wait till at least the next game before I would become a multi-millionaire game programmer.   :)

 

 

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