Four in a Row

Drop discs into the seven columns of an upright board; each falls to the lowest free place in its column. Four of your yellow discs in a line, across, up and down or diagonally, wins, and so do four of the computer's red. A full board is a draw.

On the BOOK level the computer plays as the book's "brute force" program: it scans the board from the top for a piece with a line of three that it can complete or must block, or a pair it can make into three, and with none it plays at random next to a piece already on the board. The new MASTER level first takes a winning place and blocks yours, then plays as the book. Two bugs in the book's checks are fixed: its vertical check looked below the top piece of a column, which was never true, and one of its across checks tested the wrong square for support. You may let the computer start, as the book suggested; its first disc then goes in the middle column. The winning line flashes, the discs fall, and new music (Drop Shuffle) and sound effects are added.

Controls: either joystick. Left and right move the disc above the board, and the button drops it. The keypad is not used.

ColecoVision version credited in the source to Amy Bienvenu for Amy Studio, written in Amy, her own language, 2026: an adaptation of a BASIC program from Tim Hartnell's Giant Book of Computer Games (Ballantine Books, 1984; first published by Interface Publications, 1983). This is a modern homebrew adaptation, not a commercial Coleco release.