The only vintage computer I've ever used was an old Apple II that my elementary school had. It's so cool to watch videos about computers I've never heard of being pushed to their limits with well-designed games.
Wow, I had totally forgotten about this game! When I was a kid I found what I thought was a bug and called the support number. I was connected to one of the authors and we talked for a long time! Later I wrote a level editor for TI-Runner after reverse engineering the save format, and then after college I worked for a while in video games, including writing the MMORPG Meridian 59 (which I still run). So cool that this is still around.
I've been playing this game on real floppies for years off and on. Several parties got erased through various disk shenanigans but my current party is all maximum level. Thanks for the instructions on what to do next!
I'm absolutely delighted to hear there's someone else out there playing Legends, in this day and age. And indeed, once you're max level, it shouldn't be much bother taking out the big bad. Certainly worth doing, at least once. And then there's Legends 2, if you feel up to it.
Just got the azure pendant.... party leveled down to 9/10 😂 I am going to grind again and max out before I watch the rest of your video. Thanks again for this! Currently backing up my 5.25" floppy on my TI!
Ed and I used every bit and byte and word in the system and disks .. it was a labor of love. If profit was an aspiration anyone should have looked elsewhere... long term though it helped my IT career. Donn Granros Glad you seem to find some entertainment still in the game..
Great to hear from you, Donn! Legends and Legends 2 are regularly talked about in TI circles even now, so you've left a long legacy. As best I can tell, Legends, Legends 2 and Old Dark Caves v2 are the three largest TI Extended BASIC programs ever written, measured in total statements across all files. So really, to this day, your only competition is yourself, in that area. But beyond that, I really appreciate what you did with the system's limited palette.
If you feel like revisiting Legends 2 at all, I did a playthrough of that as well. I enjoyed that it had more characters in it than Legends. And the ending's rather amusing, of course. Very few copies of it out there, but I'm lucky enough to have one: ua-cam.com/video/fy1dLWi00Dc/v-deo.html
Nice to see a video on this. The Legends series is absolutely a blatant clone of the SSI Phantasie series, just within the limitations of the TI-99/4a platform. The Phantasie series is my favorite classic CRPG series, so I loved that, despite the "plagiarism," this was yet another way to experience one of my favorites, again, just scaled back from its "inspiration."
Nice to hear from a fan of the originals! I'll have to play them some day. But until then, CRPGAddict's reviews of them have been a great reference point.
@@PixelPedant The Phantasie series is also fascinating because there are essentially 3 - 4 branches of the same games depending upon the platform you play it on. My personal favorite is the C-64 port, while the most radically different outside of the Japanese ports are the Atari ST and Amiga versions. I have the inverse "problem" from you in that I need to spend more time with the Legends series.
Bill, very much true... Obviously the code was different but the inspiration was Phantsie... I did have a fairly sophisticated semi AI system which would have been quite unique but memory constraints killed the concept ..
Legends had a funny history.. Without taking up too much print I was divorced and became interested in computers settling for the TI. I loved (still love rpgs) and the selection for the TI except for Tunnels of Doom was pretty lame. Too many folks trying to map out 3D hallways with zero graphics to look at. I was aware and played Phantasie for the C64. I felt that I could design similar graphics for the TI using character mapping for the maps portion and sprites for the rest. This enabled the game to load screens and save games fairly quickly. Part of the power of Legends is it's TMS9900 Assembly language core The programs are accessed in extended basic through subroutine calls to the Assembly language portion.. Ed was much better than I with Assembly language and I did most of the storyline and all the graphics. This was pretty optimistic for me as I had only been programming for a little over a year but it was a pretty intense year in terms of learning for me. I am fascinated by the time devoted to going through this program. I had always hoped that folks would fiddle around with the Extended basic parts and maybe rewrite the program maybe improve things.. If there was a really frustrating part of the program for me it was that I had developed a learning/ branching system. This assigned intelligence values to the characters and a branching story based on player actions.. It didn't take a huge a amount of code to implement but the space on disk or in memory just wasn't there. That bothered me but so it was. I think of Legends 1 and 2. Legends 1 was the better developed. By the time of Legends 2 I had remarried and we moved up to Elk River. I was writing the code in our unheated basement wearing a winter coat and boots. My new and thankfully current wife Vicki was tolerant but thinking that being recently married I should spend more time with family and less chasing imaginary adventures on a computer system that was obsolete. I finished Legends 2 as best I could and moved on. Over time I ended up in charge of IT and software implementation for the company I was with for many years. Ed and I made so little money on Legends 1 & 2 that is was almost a joke. But there was always a sense of accomplishment and we learned skills along the way and now that some folks are still finding something of interest still is pretty slick... Me, I am 75 and retired. My wife is happy to have her own personal IT department and I want back to being an artist which is how I got into the whole thing to start with. I still like Wizardry and the like. I sometimes play Halo and Wiz7. I am not trying to sell anything, just an FYI, but a lot of my artwork is not in the computer space any more but rather in drawings and oil paintings at donngranros.com. Donn Granros 01/18/2023
Thanks for all that great backstory. The part about the learning/branching system is especially interesting. If you ever have anything else to share on your contributions to the TI-99 library and the story of their creation, by all means contact me anytime at pixelpedant@gmail.com.
That's why I'm happy to see a new retro RPG. They're RPGs in their most base form so there's a lot to admire. Not many greats to choose from, and even the greats were clunky, and like the one you're playing now, already outdated. That's why it makes sense to make old RPGs with modern day sensibilities. Lots to improve on and explore. I see people making RPGs for 90's era consoles but I don't see the point. Time wasted on graphics that could've went into some other aspect, and every new 90's era RPG is just a clone of some game that was already cloned to death by the end of the era.
The moment I saw the overworld view, I thought of Phantasie. I really like it compared to the more typical CRPG world views that tended to be more limited feeling ... for example, in Ultima III you would only see 11x11 squares around you. Since so many different systems used the TMS9918 chip, I thought surely there must be a lot of CRPGs suitable for porting to the TI 99/4A. But trying to find them ... nope, it seems there were not that many. The various consoles and Coleco Adam lacked floppy discs (that most CRPGs used). The MSX was only really big in Japan, and the Japanese software developers seem to have been introduced to the CRPG relatively late ... by the time the Japanese CRPG scene really took off, MSX2 was the more suitable platform for them. It's so weird for me, realizing that the whole CRPG genre was really only really a thing in North America during the 8-bit era. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Dungeons and Dragons in the late 70s and 80s was almost entirely a North American phenomenon, and Ultima/Wizardry/Bard's Tale all originated on a system that was only big here (Apple ][), and the floppy disc format prevented the numerous ports to C64 and Atari 8 bit from really getting traction in other regions like Europe. The TI-99/4A just sort of missed out on the big CRPG mania due to ... I really don't know. The truth is, early CRPGs started off on tape, in BASIC, with minimal graphics requirements and not so much RAM (TRS-80). And the TI-99 did draw from the early BASIC game era, with Trek and Hunt the Wumpus. I mean ... look at the clunkiness and slowness of Temple of Apshai or Telengard and tell me the TI 99/4A couldn't have handled that.
Yep, with the benefit of hindsight, we know a Dragon Quest 1 or 2 style game with all the visual richness of that approach was possible on the 9918, since MSX1 got those in Japan. But the early 80s just wasn't there yet. A game like that didn't need late 80s tech really. It just needed late 80s ideas.
The only vintage computer I've ever used was an old Apple II that my elementary school had. It's so cool to watch videos about computers I've never heard of being pushed to their limits with well-designed games.
Wow, I had totally forgotten about this game! When I was a kid I found what I thought was a bug and called the support number. I was connected to one of the authors and we talked for a long time! Later I wrote a level editor for TI-Runner after reverse engineering the save format, and then after college I worked for a while in video games, including writing the MMORPG Meridian 59 (which I still run). So cool that this is still around.
Enjoyed this! Didn't have this game back in the day but would've loved it. Thanks for showing it off.
I've been playing this game on real floppies for years off and on. Several parties got erased through various disk shenanigans but my current party is all maximum level. Thanks for the instructions on what to do next!
I'm absolutely delighted to hear there's someone else out there playing Legends, in this day and age. And indeed, once you're max level, it shouldn't be much bother taking out the big bad. Certainly worth doing, at least once. And then there's Legends 2, if you feel up to it.
Just got the azure pendant.... party leveled down to 9/10 😂 I am going to grind again and max out before I watch the rest of your video. Thanks again for this! Currently backing up my 5.25" floppy on my TI!
Ed and I used every bit and byte and word in the system and disks .. it was a labor of love. If profit was an aspiration anyone should have looked elsewhere... long term though it helped my IT career. Donn Granros Glad you seem to find some entertainment still in the game..
Great to hear from you, Donn! Legends and Legends 2 are regularly talked about in TI circles even now, so you've left a long legacy. As best I can tell, Legends, Legends 2 and Old Dark Caves v2 are the three largest TI Extended BASIC programs ever written, measured in total statements across all files. So really, to this day, your only competition is yourself, in that area. But beyond that, I really appreciate what you did with the system's limited palette.
Is there any way to swap weapons, armor, etc. among player characters?
Gotta watch this .. didn't remember a lot of this!!!!
If you feel like revisiting Legends 2 at all, I did a playthrough of that as well. I enjoyed that it had more characters in it than Legends. And the ending's rather amusing, of course. Very few copies of it out there, but I'm lucky enough to have one: ua-cam.com/video/fy1dLWi00Dc/v-deo.html
Thanks again for a great video. I am new to the TI99 and love to see and hear from you and other 99ers
Welcome aboard! Always glad to hear of new folks picking up the platform.
Nice to see a video on this. The Legends series is absolutely a blatant clone of the SSI Phantasie series, just within the limitations of the TI-99/4a platform. The Phantasie series is my favorite classic CRPG series, so I loved that, despite the "plagiarism," this was yet another way to experience one of my favorites, again, just scaled back from its "inspiration."
Nice to hear from a fan of the originals! I'll have to play them some day. But until then, CRPGAddict's reviews of them have been a great reference point.
@@PixelPedant The Phantasie series is also fascinating because there are essentially 3 - 4 branches of the same games depending upon the platform you play it on. My personal favorite is the C-64 port, while the most radically different outside of the Japanese ports are the Atari ST and Amiga versions.
I have the inverse "problem" from you in that I need to spend more time with the Legends series.
Bill, very much true... Obviously the code was different but the inspiration was Phantsie... I did have a fairly sophisticated semi AI system which would have been quite unique but memory constraints killed the concept ..
Legends had a funny history.. Without taking up too much print I was divorced and became interested in computers settling for the TI. I loved (still love rpgs) and the selection for the TI except for Tunnels of Doom was pretty lame. Too many folks trying to map out 3D hallways with zero graphics to look at. I was aware and played Phantasie for the C64. I felt that I could design similar graphics for the TI using character mapping for the maps portion and sprites for the rest. This enabled the game to load screens and save games fairly quickly. Part of the power of Legends is it's TMS9900 Assembly language core The programs are accessed in extended basic through subroutine calls to the Assembly language portion.. Ed was much better than I with Assembly language and I did most of the storyline and all the graphics. This was pretty optimistic for me as I had only been programming for a little over a year but it was a pretty intense year in terms of learning for me. I am fascinated by the time devoted to going through this program. I had always hoped that folks would fiddle around with the Extended basic parts and maybe rewrite the program maybe improve things.. If there was a really frustrating part of the program for me it was that I had developed a learning/ branching system. This assigned intelligence values to the characters and a branching story based on player actions.. It didn't take a huge a amount of code to implement but the space on disk or in memory just wasn't there. That bothered me but so it was. I think of Legends 1 and 2. Legends 1 was the better developed. By the time of Legends 2 I had remarried and we moved up to Elk River. I was writing the code in our unheated basement wearing a winter coat and boots. My new and thankfully current wife Vicki was tolerant but thinking that being recently married I should spend more time with family and less chasing imaginary adventures on a computer system that was obsolete. I finished Legends 2 as best I could and moved on. Over time I ended up in charge of IT and software implementation for the company I was with for many years. Ed and I made so little money on Legends 1 & 2 that is was almost a joke. But there was always a sense of accomplishment and we learned skills along the way and now that some folks are still finding something of interest still is pretty slick... Me, I am 75 and retired. My wife is happy to have her own personal IT department and I want back to being an artist which is how I got into the whole thing to start with. I still like Wizardry and the like. I sometimes play Halo and Wiz7. I am not trying to sell anything, just an FYI, but a lot of my artwork is not in the computer space any more but rather in drawings and oil paintings at donngranros.com. Donn Granros 01/18/2023
Thanks for all that great backstory. The part about the learning/branching system is especially interesting. If you ever have anything else to share on your contributions to the TI-99 library and the story of their creation, by all means contact me anytime at pixelpedant@gmail.com.
That's why I'm happy to see a new retro RPG. They're RPGs in their most base form so there's a lot to admire. Not many greats to choose from, and even the greats were clunky, and like the one you're playing now, already outdated. That's why it makes sense to make old RPGs with modern day sensibilities. Lots to improve on and explore. I see people making RPGs for 90's era consoles but I don't see the point. Time wasted on graphics that could've went into some other aspect, and every new 90's era RPG is just a clone of some game that was already cloned to death by the end of the era.
The moment I saw the overworld view, I thought of Phantasie. I really like it compared to the more typical CRPG world views that tended to be more limited feeling ... for example, in Ultima III you would only see 11x11 squares around you.
Since so many different systems used the TMS9918 chip, I thought surely there must be a lot of CRPGs suitable for porting to the TI 99/4A. But trying to find them ... nope, it seems there were not that many. The various consoles and Coleco Adam lacked floppy discs (that most CRPGs used). The MSX was only really big in Japan, and the Japanese software developers seem to have been introduced to the CRPG relatively late ... by the time the Japanese CRPG scene really took off, MSX2 was the more suitable platform for them.
It's so weird for me, realizing that the whole CRPG genre was really only really a thing in North America during the 8-bit era. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Dungeons and Dragons in the late 70s and 80s was almost entirely a North American phenomenon, and Ultima/Wizardry/Bard's Tale all originated on a system that was only big here (Apple ][), and the floppy disc format prevented the numerous ports to C64 and Atari 8 bit from really getting traction in other regions like Europe.
The TI-99/4A just sort of missed out on the big CRPG mania due to ... I really don't know. The truth is, early CRPGs started off on tape, in BASIC, with minimal graphics requirements and not so much RAM (TRS-80). And the TI-99 did draw from the early BASIC game era, with Trek and Hunt the Wumpus. I mean ... look at the clunkiness and slowness of Temple of Apshai or Telengard and tell me the TI 99/4A couldn't have handled that.
Yep, with the benefit of hindsight, we know a Dragon Quest 1 or 2 style game with all the visual richness of that approach was possible on the 9918, since MSX1 got those in Japan. But the early 80s just wasn't there yet. A game like that didn't need late 80s tech really. It just needed late 80s ideas.
Super cool!
Oh HELL YEAH!
At 28:19 - Easter Egg of the game programmer's initials in the dungeon walls?
Indeed! Well spotted. DG and EJ, for Donn Granros and Ed Johnson.