The 20 Greatest Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Games of All-Time
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- In this video I countdown the 20 greatest games for the 16-bit Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer as voted for by you, the retro gaming community!
Video Links:
10 Amazing TI99 Facts - • 10 Amazing Texas Instr...
TI99 Games Compilation - • Over 50 Texas Instrume...
10 Amazing TI99 Exclusives - • 10 Amazing Texas Instr...
MBX Video The Game House - www.videogameh...
Greatest of All-Time Playlist: / watch
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Retro Gaming Hysteria Group: / 1174206102963529
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#retrogaming #ti99 #texasinstruments
Full Top 50 Games List:
50 - Wing War
49 - Bouncy
48 - Rabbit Trail
47 - Legends
46 - Kippy's Nightmare
45 - Planetfall
44 - Lemonade Stand
43 - Red Baron
42 - Buck Rogers
41 - Dragon's Lair
40 - Car Wars
39 - BurgerTime
38 - Chisholm Trail
37 - Zero Zap
36 - Chess
35 - Bump 'n' Jump
34 - Major Tom
33 - Pitfall!
32 - Return of Antiquity
31 - Flying Shark
30 - Q*bert
29 - The Attack
28 - Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
27 - Leather Goddess of Phobos
26 - Borzork
25 - Shamus
24 - Pac-Man
23 - Road Hunter
22 - TI Runner
21 - TI Scramble
20 - Donkey Kong
19 - Dig Dug
18 - Centipede
17 - Popeye
16 - Miner 2049er
15 - A-Maze-Ing
14 - Blasto
13 - Microsurgeon
12 - Moon Patrol
11 - Bigfoot
10 - Defender
9 - Alpiner
8 - Super Demon Attack
7 - Tombstone City
6 - Hunt The Wumpus
5 - Adventure
4 - Munch Man
3 - TI Invaders
2 - Tunnels of Doom
1 - Parsec
I have fond memories of this system in my home as a little kid. There was a mountain climbing game I spent hours on. When you died you would get the prompt "Game Over. Press Redo or Back". To this day that still runs through my head at the end of any game I play. My dad also created a couple of his home developed programs that he was so proud of, but I was too young to appreciate at the time.
That's Alpiner, it's in this video.
@TheLairdsLair it absolutely is. I saw one of your other videos after this one where it started with "onward and Upward" , and my nearly 50 year old brain flashed back immediately to being about 7 years old playing that game. It's amazing how something so insignificant can trigger powerful memories.
TI-99 was the first computer my family had, with both Munch Man and Ti Invaders. Father traded it for an Apple II plus which then got traded for a PC compatible but I still have memories of the TI-99 despite how young I was.
So nice to see some TI99 love, I have all of these games in my collection, have covered a few on my channel too🙂
Hey you included one of my quotes aswell, didn't expect to see that pop up there on TI Invaders, what a game that was!
All of these are brilliant, of course Parsec well deserves its number 1 spot, still extremely impressive today especially with the speech synth.
Thanks for the great vid👍
Great list!! Wumpus is my personal #1, but I can hardly argue with Parsec. Also really enjoyed Hopper, Car Wars, and The Attack. And when I was little, all the various educational games I had were engaging, too.
Maaaaannnnnnnn you are dragging out memories from the tape drive in my mind with this one. Crazy stuff
The TI99/4A was the first computer I had. Got it in 83 at Sears. I never was able to get any of the expansion items back then because they were exorbitantly expensive.
So many great titles for this system. I have put endless hours into Tunnels of Doom, alone.
Tunnels of Doom!!!!!!!!!!!! YES Hours and Hours and very late nights. Theoria Apophasis?
Q-Bert, Shamus and Pinball99 are good games for the TI99/4a, also.
In the US it seems all of my friends had a TI-994a at home. I got mine as a hand me down in 1984. The games were still impressive then.
I just bought a boxed TI-994a and a bunch of games. Still impressive in 2024!
One time I was playing BLASTO and kept resetting the high density mine field until I saw one to my liking.
I have no idea how it happened. But I twitched, moved the tank and fired ONE SHOT. Cleared the ENTIRE screen. All those simultaneous explosions slowed down the game. Mesmerizing like a slow-motion scene in a movie. I kid you not.
"The Home Computer" is such a great name.
"Introducing, our new product... 'THE GAMES CONSOLE'"
Microsurgeon was unbelievable! Especially the TI port. One of the best looking games you could play at home back in the day.
That’s the game I showed to friends to show just how capable the system was.
Nothing ever surpassed it. The multiple screens and the zoom in screen plus speech made it the juggernaut of TI games.
Great memories! The 4A was my first computer and I'm glad to see Tunnels of Doom and Parsec top the list. Despite its shortcomings, some of the arcade ports from Parker Bros and Atarisoft were among the best versions and I'd put e.g. Popeye up against any other home computer of the day!
No Star Trek!? Not "Excellent maneuvering captain!" Just kidding great list!
The TI994A is such a great machine! Taught me a lot as a kid!
Star Trek only just missed out, the competition was tough here!
Amazing computer. Read so many reviews before deciding to go for it back in 1983 or something like that. I still love Blasto (that's me on the quote!), Parsec, TI-Invaders, Bigfoot, and Star Trek... definitely my top 5... I used to compare this to the Speccy and laugh at my mates...
The TI99/4A was ahead of it's time, I ended up with one instead of the Spectrum 16K due to months of delays after ordering one, it was a much more impressive computer with a proper keyboard, sound chip, hardware sprites Etc. and I later got a C64 too. The TI99/4A "speech synthesizer" was very impressive, in extended basic you could break words in the vocabulary down to a string of parts, I spent hours cutting up tiny parts of words from the almost 400 word vocabulary to put them together to make new ones, but it was really just digitized sound, not a synthesizer. Some games were able to increase the built in vocabulary for custom digitized speech like the male and female speech in Alpiner for instance.
Loved this list. Although I didn't have most of the games on it. Had a few though. If you do another list for the TI-99/4A I'd suggest doing one on the exclusive games. Might include some of the educational games as well since they were a big part of it. My folks got it for me as a kid mainly for the educational games. Dragon Mix had you fighting off aliens as a dragon by solving multiplication/division problems. Beginning Grammar had different games for nouns, verbs, etc. that, for me, helped reinforce the lessons.
I've already done one on TI99 exclusives, which is linked in the description, but I'll post it here for you too:
ua-cam.com/video/Osz_jqxVink/v-deo.html
Interesting, thanks for the video. Was speech built in to all systems? Loads of games seem to take advantage of it.
Spectrum homebrew games would be a good list.
The Speech Synthesizer was an add-on.
Awesome work
Didn’t realize the TI-99/4A had such colorful and pretty good graphics.
16 K, in color, and had BASIC programming language, games: fun
Munchman and that maze game with the cat and mouse were the only 2 I ever played for this console. Id like one again. learned about some games in this video that. awesome
Would love to see a compilation of all the different games that just missed the top 20 etc basically all the honorable mentions
As I said at the start of the video I do just that for my Patrons (they get a top 40). In a few months I will update this video with a pinned top 50 list in the comments like I have done with my others.
I didn't know Munchman before seeing this video - it gives strong Pepper II vibes.
Those coin op mods were pretty epic! They deserve top 20. I got to play Only #1 and #2 and maybe TI Invaders (meh). That self mapping on Tunnels of Doom was another epic point i forgot about! I suspect the reason this computer system got so many voters/ so much love. Is that everyone that actually got to play some of these top 20 games are still fans of gaming or retro gaming today. Some systems/platforms.. The first gen fans are all gone.
Joe Ridifer of Game Sack and Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains in the same commercial, who knew?
I never realized they were actually 20 great ones for the ti-99
Wow...one system I never got to play back in the day. From the footage, I can see I would have loved it more than Coleco or Intellivision.
Tunnels of Doom was the killer app for the system along with Parsec. Easily justifying the purchase of a TI after price slashing ($100 or less?). I remember we got a 13" Goldstar color TV bundled with the TI at Kiddie City (Toys' r Us's competitor), they were so desperate to unload them. I spent countless hours playing ToD. Unfortunately, TI software was hard to come by and contributed to the demise of the system.
I would have put Tunnels of Doom at #1. Amazing game that I still like to play.
I agree.... I voted hard for it. But I am cool with it at number 2.
It was soundly beaten by Parsec, but it was also way ahead of 3rd place too.
@@thelairdslair Parsec was definitely gonna win. Every TI syatem i got to play had it in their home. But the one i got to play the most had tunnels of doom.
Tunnels of Doom was really advanced and provided replayability and a D&D experience.
I would rank the mind blowing TI port of Microsurgeon in the top 2 also. It was unbelievable at the time and completely blew away other ports with multiple screens and speech included.
@@AngryCalvin i never saw microsurgeon. I would have been blown away from it.
10:20 Such an unenthusiastic "Help!" 😝
Munch Man is the only video game I ever beat!
My single biggest regret was not having Popeye. I didn’t know it had a port until years later and a really good one.
I'm glad I tagged my brother in the FB post and he got quoted.
Got some real invisible man stuff going on lately. I'll put less thought into my posts next time 😅
Which quote was that? I obviously saw his name before yours or something.
@@thelairdslair alpiner I think. Nate's comment.
It's no big deal. Current bout of seasonal affective disorder makes me feel totally invisible, among other things.
3:00 say what you want about Bill Cosby being a serial rapist but the man had screen presence.
I think we had one at school just before we got some Beebs. Don't remember it being colour though, maybe we had an earlier version. What emulator are you using to run these games, I'd love to check them out.
Classic 99 - very good emulation and easy to use too.
I've got all of these and I know lists are subjective but I can't believe that Blasto got in there ahead of the Parker Brothers version of Q*Bert. Still good to see a bit of TI stuff though. This may be slightly controversial for the purists but I'd also put the Homebrew 'TI Scramble' ahead of Parsec.
Q*bert and TI Scramble both made the wider top 40.
What? No "Early Learning Fun"?
Just kidding. Great video. Thank you.
Fathom and Star Trek should have made the list too
Star Trek only just missed out, Fathom made the top 40 IIRC too.
My dad had one of these...I think I used it once. Did it know this computer had a 16-bit processor in it?
Tombstone City is a banger!
I loved the game and yet it was so simple that I think I could have programmed it, I did programs a few simple games back in the 1980s including a few that were marketed on a school computer.
Just had to say that you're very brave by courting controversy by including a clip with Bill Cosby at the beginning of your video.
Cosby was the face of the TI99 so it's pretty impossible to avoid him!
Not a system that I played that much, and I only have gotten to know thanks to emulation. But, if I were to rank it, I'd certainly include TI-99/4A's versions of Bump'n Jump, Popeye, and the originals Alpiner, Tunnels of Doom and, of course, Parsec.
Bump N Jump made the Top 40, great port.
A lot of people owned these because they were marked down to about 50 bucks, but how many had any way to store data?
Oh damn! Those commercials didn't age did they?
Watch it or Bill Cosby will slip a qualuude in your wine and rework your whole rear drivetrain!
Nothing was more fun as a 6 year old kid than kicking the bear in the bum and falling all the way down the mountain in Alpiner.
Getting farted on by the skunk was also a joy!
I think I used one, but never played any games. I used a lot of computers in the 80s but never owned them or played the games.
There was one I remember playing a lot I think it was called Zero Zap.
Zero Zap only just missed out, but if you click on the link for my TI99 Exclusives video in the description you'll see me include it there!
My dad was a cheapskate so he was all over the TI when it was severely marked down, so that was my childhood computer instead of something more popular.
Why Bill why????
No Star Trek, Burgertime or Jungle Hunt 😢
Star Trek only just missed out, BurgerTime made the top 40 too.
Tunnels of Doom wasn't number one, so this list is flawed. Yes, that was sarcasm.. ToD just hits my nostalgia button more.. Parsec and Munchman after that.
I'm surprised Star Trek isn't in the top 20.
Only just missed out by a couple of points.