BLACKSITE for Tandy CoCo 3

Original game • CoCo 3 512K + CoCoSDC

02:17. All contact with the facility was lost. Automated systems reported a containment failure before the network went dark.

Go in. Find out what happened.

Fight room to room through a research complex buried deep underground, where mutants roam the labs and the security robots have turned on anyone left alive. Get the power back on, find the keycards, rescue the survivors and reach the lift before whatever got out reaches you.

Free demoTop-down actionPower-grid puzzlesStreamed music6809 assemblyCoCoSDC required512K

Download the demo Screenshots How it plays Controls

BLACKSITE on the CoCo 3: the player in Lab C with a technician to rescue and a mutant by the specimen tanks — Lab C: power restored, a technician to rescue

About the game

BLACKSITE is a fast top-down sci-fi shooter set inside a classified research facility that has gone silent. An experiment has escaped containment. Mutants crawl out of the hives and vents, the security machines have turned hostile, and whole wings of the complex sit in the dark under red emergency lights.

Each level is a large scrolling map of labs, corridors, storage bays and control rooms, with its own objectives. Clear them, get to the lift and ride it down to the next level.

How it plays

Restore the power. Dark wings have locked doors and dead terminals. Bring a substation or generator back online to light the rooms and open the way, but the power wakes up whatever was sleeping in there too.
Find the keycards. Yellow and blue keycards open the secured parts of each level.
Rescue the survivors. Technicians are trapped in the labs. Each one you get out is worth 1,000 points.
Survive the breach. When the alarm goes off, the lift is called, the countdown starts and the vents open. Hold out until it arrives.
Check the map. It shows the rooms you’ve explored, where you are and your next objective.

What’s down there

Crawlers fast little mutants that pour out of hives and vents
Spitters keep their distance and spit at you
Brutes big, slow and hard to put down
Robots security robots that patrol and open fire
Turrets fixed guns that come alive when their wing gets power

Features

Large scrolling levels: Sector A (Research Wing), Level B-2 (Containment) and Level B-3 (Reactor), with more to come
A pulse rifle and a shotgun, plus medkits, shields and extra lives to find
Powered and unpowered rooms, each with its own look
Music streamed from the SD card, switching to an alert track when the alarm goes off
Arcade scoring: survivor, secret-area, no-damage and time bonuses at the end of each level
Written in 6809 assembly, with compiled sprites and the level data streamed from the CoCoSDC

Download the demo

BLACKSITE-DEMO.zip BLKSDEMO.DSK + BLKSDEMO.DAT + STARTUP.CFG

The free demo has the first two levels: Sector A (Research Wing, B-1) and Level B-2 (Containment). Clear B-2 and it says END OF DEMO. The full game is still in development.

You need a Tandy Color Computer 3 with 512K and a CoCoSDC with firmware 1.17 or later. The demo is three files: BLKSDEMO.DSK (the boot disk), BLKSDEMO.DAT (the levels, graphics, music and sound, which stream from the SD card) and STARTUP.CFG (boots the game at power-on). BLKSDEMO.DSK and BLKSDEMO.DAT must come from the same download.

Option 1: Boot it at power-on

Copy BLKSDEMO.DSK, BLKSDEMO.DAT and STARTUP.CFG to the root folder of the SD card (not a subfolder).
Power on the CoCo 3. The game boots by itself.

STARTUP.CFG replaces any STARTUP.CFG already on the card (for example one that boots another game). Back it up or rename it first if you want to keep it.

Option 2: Boot it from SDC Explorer (SDCX)

Copy BLKSDEMO.DSK and BLKSDEMO.DAT to the root of the SD card. STARTUP.CFG isn’t needed.
In SDC Explorer, open BLKSDEMO.DSK and select LOADER.BAS.

If the screen border turns red when it starts, it can’t find BLKSDEMO.DAT. Check that it is in the root of the SD card.

Screenshots

Captured from the game running in MAME's CoCo 3 (512K) driver with an emulated CoCoSDC and an RGB monitor. Click any screenshot to enlarge it, then use the arrows (or your arrow keys, or swipe) to flip through the rest.