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I have vague memories of a game I played on the Tandy Color Computer 2, probably around 1990 or so. The game was entirely done with line art, and involved navigating a maze that sprawled across the screen while picking up treasure and fighting monsters. The part which has stuck with me was that you had a selection of weapons and magic that you could pick up to fight with. My memories were that the magic included a lightning bolt and a fireball spell (depicted as 1 and 2 below), a bow-and-arrow (3 below) combination, and I think a spiked mace, which I vaguely recall as the spikes just being lines. I think combat might have consisted of bumping into the monsters and then looking to see what the random number generator said happened. You could only carry a limited number of items to fight with. I remember preferring the spells, but I don't know if that was because they were more effective, or just because I thought the spells were cool.

Artistic depiction of my memory of the weapons/magic panel

I think the color-scheme was monochrome and the keyboard was used to move, just orthogonal angles with the maze similarly being built of right-angles. I don't remember how much of the maze you could see at a time, but I think the view centered on the player character, and you could see a few squares in each direction. I don't remember how the player character or the monsters were depicted. I think the weapons and magic might have been pulled out of chests, and you had a choice of classes at the beginning. And I think you picked the weapon by number keys that were on the entries, which were at the top of the screen.

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  • This sounds much like a port of a pre-PC mainframe game -- meaning it likely had a different name from the versions that got ported to PC-DOS, Apple, or Commodore.
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented Feb 18, 2020 at 15:03
  • Also, do you recall whether this was a disk, cassette, or cartridge loaded game?
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented Feb 18, 2020 at 15:03
  • @ZeissIkon: I believe it was probably loaded off of a 5.25" floppy. Less likely a cassette tape.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Feb 18, 2020 at 15:05
  • At one time, I owned 6 CoCo2 (and a little later a CoCo3), but I never bought games for them and by 1990 I was using PC-GEOS and Windows 3.0. I don't think I'm likely to recall this one. One more thing that might help others, though, was it Tandy software or third part?
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented Feb 18, 2020 at 15:35
  • Honestly, I couldn't say. :) Software just kind of showed up, courtesy of my older brother and his connections as often as it was pieces we bought at the local Radio Shack.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Feb 18, 2020 at 15:43

1 Answer 1

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You appear to be thinking of the game Middle Kingdom. Here is a screenshot showing the character's equipment, spells, and magic items.

Screenshot

The best site for researching CoCo games appear to be this one.

Middle Kingdom is a graphical adventure game, with some arcade like elements to it. It runs in real time, although you can select three different speeds at which messages during fight sequences happen. You walk around, exploring the large map, while collecting gems, weapons and spells, and you battle various monsters. You can even change weapons in the middle of a fight with the same creature. The ultimate goal is to collect all of the magic rings.

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  • That would be the one! Thank you.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 2:15
  • That brings back so many memories, just reading the titles.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 2:27

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