Tag Archives: game

Breakdown is a game for the TRS-80 Microcomputer. It should run on any TRS-80 Model I, III or 4 with 16K or more of RAM. Breakdown is inspired by the classic video game Breakout and to a lesser degree Tetris. The goal of the game is to score as many points as possible by breaking as many bricks as possible with a bouncing ball while trying to keep the ball in play and avoiding falling bricks.

The game is a work in progress. There are currently 8 different levels in the game.  If you complete all the levels then the game ends.  My thought is that there will be many more different levels added to the game.  Each level takes 80 bytes to define, so we could realistically easily have 100 levels on a 48K system.

Breakdown is freeware and you are free to use it for personal use.

Download the full package including instructions here

Download Breakdown

or stream Breakdown from your mobile phone to your TRS-80 using the cassette port here

Breakdown Cassette WAV (Low Speed 500 baud)

1. Connect mobile device to the TRS-80 cassette port
2. Type “SYSTEM”
3. At *? prompt type “BREAKD”
4. Click WAV link above to start playing WAV audio
5. At *? prompt type “/”

Breakdown is written in Z-80 assembly. It was developed using George Phillip’s zmac cross assembler.

Breakdown in action

I originally wanted to release Breakdown as a real packaged software product, with a paper manual and pre-recorded cassette tape. This was how many TRS-80 games were sold back in the day. However, at this time, I am just too busy to go through the effort of creating the manual and tapes at the level of quality that I would require. Maybe I will do this for a future game.

Let me know how the game works for you and what features you would like to see added. read more