It only made sense for my first ever post here on RetroStreamers to be about my first ever computer game! *Fast forward about 2 minutes (depending on your reading speed/level ) to avoid an obnoxious story about me š Letās go back to Christmas of ā84 shall we? I was a meager five year old young boy enamoured by bright lights and flying machines. I recall various friends and family with home computers and gaming consoles that I begged to play whenever we visited. I specifically memorized any aunts or cousins that had Atari or Commodore 64ās set up next to their VCRās or in their studies. In restaurants or department store lobbies I would quickly glance to see if there were any arcade cabinets, and if so- Iād be begging my parents for a quarter to quench my video game thirsts.Ā
My parents started to take notice that I had a strong interest in video gaming, unfortunately for me they thought of video games as a waste of time. I remember seeing a HUGE box in a store that said Atari, it mustāve been the 5200. I just stood there staring at it, I was afraid of the answer I would get if I had asked for it, but I didnāt care. Christmas was rolling around and I was getting desperate so I built up the courage! I asked, and I was immediately rewarded with a āWeāre not getting one of those machines in our houseā…
I was a farm boy in a country house with pigs, cows, chickens and all that. My dad was a farmer and really only left the house to tend to the farm, and hit up the bar down. I overheard a conversation in the kitchen after I had gone to bed one night about going to a neighboring town to ālook around for one of those machinesā. Now, the only machines my parents knew how to operate was either a milk machine or a tractor, so my curiousity was peaked hearing my parents whispering about this!
Finally the eve was here and I could hardly stand it. Lucky for me my parents would wake up around 4:30 in the morning to tend to the farm, and as soon as I heard them stirring I was up to ask if I could open gifts. My parents agreed I could start opening before dad went out to the barn. I had two very large boxes and a few smaller ones under the tree. The first thing I opened was a 13ā TV!! I couldnāt believe my eyes! My very own TV for my bedroom! Now, this TV was a black & white display, but I didnāt care! I was getting a TV for my own room! Then what came next was amazing and a shock as well!
I opened up the second box and, to my bewildered eyes it was a freakān COMPUTER!! Wait, what?! A Tandy Color Computer 2?!?! I had NEVER even seen anything like this before! Inside the box was a booklet called āGoing ahead with extended COLOR Basic! I couldnāt wait to fire this up!! Those 3 smaller boxes I quickly tore through to find 3 Tandy CoCo carts!! Color Baseball, Color Cubes, and this very curious looking cart called āDownlandā!
I grabbed everything up and ran to my room to set it upā¦ well, my dad set it up. While he was putting everything together, I read through the booklet for Downland. For some reason this one above the others got my attention. Even though Color Baseball was one of the first baseball titles to have actual computer teams to play against, rather than sporting only 2 players, and Color Cubes seemed like a fun rubix cube simulatorā¦ but I had a black & white TV! How could I even play it? (Fun fact: I did make it work, the shades of grey werenāt too difficult to navigate) Low and behold I played Downland FIRST! And my goodness, I would imagine that 95% of my first dozen or so hours on my little Tandy CoCo2 was dedicated just to Downland. It was brutal, it was beautiful with tons of surprises and branching paths. I felt like I too was lost in the caverns!
Downland featured a minor character dude traversing caverns with cliffs, acid drops, flaming balls and a hellish timer that was ticking away far-too-quickly while you figured out where to go next! There was no offering of a password or saving your spot or anything. You were given 3 guys to descend through 10 screens and it was extremely difficult. I remember at one time I was fairly decent with a legit controller, but these days Iām lucky to make it to 3 or 4 screens in. The gameās aesthetic was similar to a Donkey Kong or Miner 2049er full of treasures and secrets to discover.
The game is never easy, but each screenās challenge progression ramps up accordingly the further you climb. The game also includes branching paths and some backtracking to find your way to certain exits and treasures that werenāt reachable from when you first saw them. A little bit of Metroid openness on the olā CoCo2!? What youāre left with is a fun rompinā adventure that deserves more recognition than it ever gets! If youāre a fan of Spelunky, Pitfall, or other single screen quests, I think you should definitely invest some time into Downland.
Downland was āauthoredā by Michael Aichlmayr and released by Spectral Associates. Iāve looked around for other titles developed by Mr. Aichlmayr and results have come up fairly empty. Other than releasing a port to the Dragon 32 in 1984. A sequel named Cave Walker was released in 1986, with no developer or author listed, also released by Spectral Associates. Iāve really never played that one, but Iād love to give it a shot someday.
That Christmas of ā84 is still one of my fondest memories growing up, and I still cherish my Tandy CoCo2 and Downland to this day. Even if Hitch thinks itās ānot a very good gameā. Yes I heard you!
Thank you for your time.
Fun Fact: A while back a super talented developer named Chris Covell was developing a fan project to port Downland to the PC Engine! It even included a level designer, however was never finished. You can check it out here!
Nice one! I really enjoyed reading that.
Even though it was the other side of the Atlantic, a different machine, a year earlier & replace “farm boy” with “townie”, that was very relatable!
The CoCo 2 is a completely new machine to me but it’s awesome to discover it’s quirky games.
Lovely stuff.