See also: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.

Recently, Rick Adams let me see a CoCo 3 Lights Out game he was working on. I have heard of the Lights Out, but have never played it. I gave it a shot…

I was immediately frustrated by how difficult such a simple game could be to win. In fact, I have yet to purposely win it, but I did get lucky one time and accidentally won.

For those who, like I was, are unfamiliar with the game… There is a 5×5 grid of squares. Of the 25 squares, random squares will be “on”, represented as green in Rick’s version. The goal is to turn them all off, represented by black.

You select a square, and that square, and the squares above, below, left and right of it will switch their state. If an adjacent square is on, it will be turned off. If it is off, it will be turned on. If you are at the edge of the grid, it does not wrap around and affect any squares on the other side.

Simple… and incredibly frustrating. I can manage to get down to one or two squares, but still haven’t figured out a pattern to shut them all off. It reminds me of when I was trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube when they were new (maybe around 1979 or 1980?). I never did. I gave up the first week and ordered the official solution manual.

I recall Lights Out being quite trendy in recent years — maybe as a phone app or something online. This made me wonder about the origin of the game. I decided to do some “intensive/extensive” research.

1990s

From checking the always accurate and reliable Wikipedia, I learned that a game called “Lights Out” first appeared in 1995 as a handheld electronic game from Tiger Electronics. That version used a 5×5 grid of push button lights. Here is a commercial for it:

From that TV ad, I learned that not only was there the 5×5 original, but also a “Deluxe Lights Out” that used a 6×6 grid.

In 1997 they also released Lights Out in cartridge form for their touchscreen Game.com game system. I owned one of those, and since I read this game was included with the system, perhaps I did play it back then. From looking at a gameplay video, this version appears to use a 6×6 grid of lights, which I suppose made it closer to Deluxe Lights Out.

Side note: I believe it was the late Steve Bjork that told me about Game.com. It had the potential to be a Gameboy Killer, but disappeared into obscurity instead. I had one and a number of the cartridges. I actually found my Game.com Monopoly cartridge a few weeks ago, but I sold the game unit years ago.

But I digress…

1980s

Tiger Electronics was not the first to sell this game — only the first (that I can find) to call it Lights Out. In 1983, there was a handheld game called XL25 from Vulcan Electronics . It appears to play the same style game — except the goal was to turn all the lights ON instead of off… Did Tiger rip them off, 12 years later? (And what does XL25 even mean?)

I can find very little about this game, and even less about Vulcan Electronics. Please comment if you can find more information.

1970s

The Wiki also mentions a similar game existed in the 1970s for the Parker Brothers Merlin handheld system. I remember seeing TV ads for Merlin, and I recall wanting one. I don’t think I ever even got to play with one, though.

From this TV ad, the game in question appears to be Magic Square. The goal of it was not to get all of its 3×3 lights off or on, but to make just the outer lights on to form a square.

It does appear the game mechanics where the same as Lights Out.

Did Magic Square lead to XL25 which led to Lights Out? Or was there something even earlier? Maybe on some mainframe system? Leave a comment if you have more information on just what “Lights Out” patient zero is.

Present Day (not Christmas or Birthday)

Since the concept was known in the 1970s, someone could have used it for inspiration to write a CoCo version of the Merlin 3×3 “Magic Square” on a 1980 CoCo. In 1983, a CoCo owner could have created a 5×5 XL25 version. Heck, many of us were still using our CoCos in 1995 and 1997 when Tiger Electronics had their 5×5 and 6×6 versions.

Did you ever see this game on the CoCo back then?

Inspired by Rick Adams’ work, I thought it might be fun to see how much effort this game would be to write. I expect it will be much easier to write than it is to win.

In the next installment, we’ll look at some ways to implement this game in Color BASIC.

Until then…