I really loved this video! This was pretty much my life as a 9 year old kid. My first computer (TI-99/4a) with the cassette drive and that's it. I typed many of those magazine games in but, sadly, those were all lost over time. I remember one time I typed in a long listing and saved to cassette. Next month, there was a "part 2" I needed to add. My 9-10 year old self didn't understand that I had to LOAD the original one first! So I typed part 2 and saved over the original. Learned a hard lesson that day! LOL
It's a story as old as games saved to cassette themselves. It seems like accidentally erasing type-in games is the most memorable thing about type-in games, for a lot of folks who enjoyed them back in the day! :P
I've been looking for cannibals forever. I can still picture the cassette tape with my dad's handwriting. It was neat that my dad made a game (from a book)
Any of the versions of Star Trek are great. Dad took one from the old David Ahl book and modified it by inserting graphics into it for the TI. He also took some of the old 3M bookcase games and converted them into Extended BASIC.
My type-in mag of choice was 99er/Home Computer. Always found their listings to be impressive and less prone to printed errors than Compute! (although errors in listings taught me programming far more efficiently than a perfect listing). Funny, I've played Robopods many times (among my favourite commercial cassette games - after Hell's Halls of course), yet never thought of it as being a snake game (which it absolutely is) Love that you pronounce CALL HCHAR as CALL H-CARE (which is undoubtedly correct considering it is an abbreviation for ' horizontal character'. I grew up in the french part of our great land, so it was always CALL H-'CHAR' - as in a charred steak (and the common Québeécois term for one's car) imparting a decidedly french accent to my early programming experiences that remain to this day (the years have disolved most of the rest of the accent these days). The greatest (original era) cassette game (after Grog) though was "Garbage Belly" (also from Moonbeam Software) but if memory serves (too lazy to get up and check) it was created with XB, disqulaifying it from the list. But man, adding sprites and Assembly calls to the basic programming arsenal allowed for commercial games on tape that actually emulated a commercial product ! (presque.) Can't believe there was a Pixel Pedant video I had never watched!! Senility is taking its toll I fear.
Very informative; I really appreciate that you explain the limitations that shaped these games. One genre you didn't mention is fighting or martial arts - I bring it up because I recently found a TI-99/4a cassette called MAXXAM KARATE, and was wondering if you knew anything about it. I tagged you on Twitter about it a while ago. I think it's Canadian-made too, like you and me :)
Haven't played it, but there are so many BASIC games out there, I'm sure there are more than a couple such games I've never played. The TI Karate game which got the most attention I think is Asgard's Karate Challenge, but that's assembly.
@@PixelPedant Cool, I'll check that one out. This MAXXAM Karate appears to be a commercial game, and also includes VIC-20 and Atari 400/800 versions on the same tape. But I have found no trace of the game online at all; no mention in magazines, and none of the 3 versions seem to be included in online archives for the 3 systems. So that makes it extra interesting to me.
Great video as always. I found a TI-99 4/A at Goodwill years back and it had 3 old cassettes and a few cartridge games for under $20. I never had a TI-99. I was soooo curious to know what was on those cassettes. About a year later I got a used cassette player and cable on eBay pretty cheap. The few games on the cassettes were garbage, but I discovered and played basic games someone had possibly typed or copied way back in the 80s… and that was a most excellent trip back in time!
Only have a handful of games for the TI-99, I picked it up for the first time last year. I do like it and hope to be able to get one of the books that has the programs you can enter to play. Not really computer data smart but wow love to learn someday
There are lots of great books along those lines on archive.org should you wish to learn and try out a few type-ins. Just check out the selection, here: archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22TI+99%2F4A+%28Computer%29%22
This was brilliant. Was hoping Lionel and the Ladders, and Atlantis might have been shown here as I own both of those on cassette but have never got around to setting up and playing them. Maybe more to come on TI99 cassette games? Pretty please 🙂 I'm hoping Atlantis might be a more basic version of Scuba Dive on the Spectrum which I always adored.
I'm thinking about a video on Extended BASIC games, and Lionel would definitely make it in to that. But Intrigue Software in general is a pretty compelling subject indeed.
Atlantis is indeed one of the most ambitious TI BASIC games, although its load time was a killer because you loaded the game, and then all the variables from a data file. Pretty unbelievable accomplishment for its time, though.
Well I finally managed to get around to successfully loading Atlantis so uploaded a short gameplay video onto my channel. As mentioned above, ambitious but very slow🙂
i remember playing Nerm of Bemer .. There was also a type-in strategy game call Serf City (I think in family computing magazine) that I spent a lot of time playing. Also a type-in arcade game where you could travel up and down a hallway that was vertical in the center of the screen and shoot aliens? that were in several hallways that went off to the left and right.
Great video. Have you tried Sheep-Dog by S.Bonnett? It was a listing in Games Computing magazine (UK) January 1984. I remember typing it in when i was 14 and found it again today. A cool little type-in game for the standard machine.
Never have, but thanks for pointing it out. I will have to revisit some more of the best TI BASIC games some day. Since there are plenty more I didn't cover here, which I either didn't have time for, or have (like this one) heard about since.
I made my own wire frame maze game. The 3d portion was in a 12x12 box at the top so I wasn't drawing for the whole screen. I also turn off the white wire to black when drawing it. My problem was I had a hard time devising an algorithm to make a good random maze.
Efficient maze generation is I think one of those problems a lot of budding BASIC programmers ran up again, as one just outside the level of complexity where common sense and an inquiring mind yielded good answers. Definitely, it was a problem I didn't have any particularly good answers for! :)
From a few places, none of which make them all that conveniently accessible, I'm afraid. 1) From the archive sold by CaDD Electronics with their PC99 distribution, 2) From the WHTECH FTP (ftp.whtech.com), 3) From the compilation called TI GameBase, and 4) From various AtariAge threads.
Hi. I've seen some of your videos in youtube and there's a great info about TI-99/4A on them. I'm trying to set a gamelist of this computer in my spare time along with as much covers as possible for every game. Some of the entries that I found are games of a company called Stainless but I wasn't able to find information about these games. In my chilhood I had an Sinclair Spectrum so I do no know very much about Texas instruments computer and I wonder if you, by any chance, know somehing about this company (Stainless) and its software. Thank you in advance. I like your videos. My congrats for your channel. Cheers.
Probably everything you could want to know about Stainless is on the website of its founder, Stephen Shaw, here: shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/stainless1.htm Of particular note, sales and reviews (shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/stainless17.htm) and an interview with Stephen Shaw (shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/hcw.htm). Stephen remains quite active in the TI community today.
Thank you very much for making this video. My favorite TI Basic game of all time is “Camelot.” ua-cam.com/video/8CbwNRFzwWA/v-deo.html Hearing that music brings me right back. Unfortunately this video above doesn’t show the second half the game, where you attempt to slay the dragon and save the realm.
Help me understand the contents of the zip file. Obviously the .txt files are the basic statements so I could type them in but I'm trying to figure out how I can get the programs put onto a cassette. The files without extensions, what are they? They're not audio files and there's nothing in the readme that describes what they are or how to use them. I tried loading them with CS1er (which I have previously used to convert Tunnels of Doom cassette files to waves) but it didn't understand these files.
They're TIFILES files, which is the prevalent format for TI files on PC these days. If you wish to convert to WAV, I would suggest using TAPE994A. But note that it only supports V9T9 files, so it will be necessary to convert to V9T9 first with TI99DIR. The steps to get from a TIFILES BASIC program to a WAV of the same program would then be 1) TI99DIR format conversion to V9T9, followed by 2) TAPE994A conversion to WAV.
Well that's pretty nifty. There are very few erotic games for the system. Several strip poker games, since those are easy to do. But also pretty bland, inevitably. A text adventure is more interesting.
I have a couple TIs, but nothing else for them, so my only real experience with the TI has been through emulators. Cartridges work fine, but I've never had any luck running stuff off disk (images). My friend gave me a bunch of disk images and they appear to have BASIC programs on them, but whenever I try to run them, I get some kind of an error. Either they're all corrupt, or they need some expansion cartridge in order to run.
Nice overview but cassette software for the TI was some of the worst imaginable and only really serves a collectability purpose. People did the best they could but working with such a closed system obviously reflected on the quality of the software. I would have been ashamed to show some of my Spectrum, C64 or Atari owning friends cassette software for the TI. No such problems with some of the cartridge software which was comparable or in some cases superior to that found on the more popular machines of the time.
This isn't cassette software by your definition. These are BASIC games that may or may not have been saved to tape. They've been typed in from magazines. They're not worse than BASIC games typed in to other systems such as the Speccy or C64. And it has nothing to do with a closed system as BASIC was open. You can see the code while you're typing it in and can list it at any time. There's no secret BASIC routines that only TI knew of.
@@OldAussieAds Of course it was a closed system. That's the very reason hardly any MC based cassette software was available for the machine except for a handfull of Mini Memory titles. On the Acorn machines you could switch between assembly and BASIC with no extra hardware needed, with the C64 or ZX Spectrum you could pick up an assembler on tape for under £10. On the TI you had to buy the PEB, 32K memory expansion, FD drive and controller and the Editor Assembler package. You were looking at around £1000. That's why the TI tape based 3rd party releases were in the main extremely poor BASIC and Extended BASIC efforts, it was just too expensive to do anything else. Many of the titles were no better than those that were available to type in from magazines.
Best video thus far from PP. I never knew TI Basic games could be this good given the limitations.
I really loved this video! This was pretty much my life as a 9 year old kid. My first computer (TI-99/4a) with the cassette drive and that's it. I typed many of those magazine games in but, sadly, those were all lost over time. I remember one time I typed in a long listing and saved to cassette. Next month, there was a "part 2" I needed to add. My 9-10 year old self didn't understand that I had to LOAD the original one first! So I typed part 2 and saved over the original. Learned a hard lesson that day! LOL
It's a story as old as games saved to cassette themselves. It seems like accidentally erasing type-in games is the most memorable thing about type-in games, for a lot of folks who enjoyed them back in the day! :P
I've been looking for cannibals forever. I can still picture the cassette tape with my dad's handwriting. It was neat that my dad made a game (from a book)
Any of the versions of Star Trek are great. Dad took one from the old David Ahl book and modified it by inserting graphics into it for the TI. He also took some of the old 3M bookcase games and converted them into Extended BASIC.
My type-in mag of choice was 99er/Home Computer. Always found their listings to be impressive and less prone to printed errors than Compute! (although errors in listings taught me programming far more efficiently than a perfect listing).
Funny, I've played Robopods many times (among my favourite commercial cassette games - after Hell's Halls of course), yet never thought of it as being a snake game (which it absolutely is)
Love that you pronounce CALL HCHAR as CALL H-CARE (which is undoubtedly correct considering it is an abbreviation for ' horizontal character'. I grew up in the french part of our great land, so it was always CALL H-'CHAR' - as in a charred steak (and the common Québeécois term for one's car) imparting a decidedly french accent to my early programming experiences that remain to this day (the years have disolved most of the rest of the accent these days).
The greatest (original era) cassette game (after Grog) though was "Garbage Belly" (also from Moonbeam Software) but if memory serves (too lazy to get up and check) it was created with XB, disqulaifying it from the list. But man, adding sprites and Assembly calls to the basic programming arsenal allowed for commercial games on tape that actually emulated a commercial product ! (presque.)
Can't believe there was a Pixel Pedant video I had never watched!! Senility is taking its toll I fear.
I used to wish they would make 'Crazy Climber' a type-in game for TI99/4a. Ah the memories!
Very informative; I really appreciate that you explain the limitations that shaped these games. One genre you didn't mention is fighting or martial arts - I bring it up because I recently found a TI-99/4a cassette called MAXXAM KARATE, and was wondering if you knew anything about it. I tagged you on Twitter about it a while ago. I think it's Canadian-made too, like you and me :)
Haven't played it, but there are so many BASIC games out there, I'm sure there are more than a couple such games I've never played. The TI Karate game which got the most attention I think is Asgard's Karate Challenge, but that's assembly.
@@PixelPedant Cool, I'll check that one out. This MAXXAM Karate appears to be a commercial game, and also includes VIC-20 and Atari 400/800 versions on the same tape. But I have found no trace of the game online at all; no mention in magazines, and none of the 3 versions seem to be included in online archives for the 3 systems. So that makes it extra interesting to me.
I typed in Giants & Dwarves 40 years ago and was amazed at the AI in 1 player vs computer and also nice human vs human mode
Great video as always. I found a TI-99 4/A at Goodwill years back and it had 3 old cassettes and a few cartridge games for under $20. I never had a TI-99. I was soooo curious to know what was on those cassettes. About a year later I got a used cassette player and cable on eBay pretty cheap. The few games on the cassettes were garbage, but I discovered and played basic games someone had possibly typed or copied way back in the 80s… and that was a most excellent trip back in time!
Only have a handful of games for the TI-99, I picked it up for the first time last year. I do like it and hope to be able to get one of the books that has the programs you can enter to play. Not really computer data smart but wow love to learn someday
There are lots of great books along those lines on archive.org should you wish to learn and try out a few type-ins. Just check out the selection, here: archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22TI+99%2F4A+%28Computer%29%22
This was brilliant. Was hoping Lionel and the Ladders, and Atlantis might have been shown here as I own both of those on cassette but have never got around to setting up and playing them. Maybe more to come on TI99 cassette games? Pretty please 🙂
I'm hoping Atlantis might be a more basic version of Scuba Dive on the Spectrum which I always adored.
I'm thinking about a video on Extended BASIC games, and Lionel would definitely make it in to that. But Intrigue Software in general is a pretty compelling subject indeed.
Atlantis is indeed one of the most ambitious TI BASIC games, although its load time was a killer because you loaded the game, and then all the variables from a data file. Pretty unbelievable accomplishment for its time, though.
Well I finally managed to get around to successfully loading Atlantis so uploaded a short gameplay video onto my channel. As mentioned above, ambitious but very slow🙂
100 basic games, you're doing the hard work so we don't have to.
i remember playing Nerm of Bemer .. There was also a type-in strategy game call Serf City (I think in family computing magazine) that I spent a lot of time playing. Also a type-in arcade game where you could travel up and down a hallway that was vertical in the center of the screen and shoot aliens? that were in several hallways that went off to the left and right.
Great video. Have you tried Sheep-Dog by S.Bonnett? It was a listing in Games Computing magazine (UK) January 1984. I remember typing it in when i was 14 and found it again today. A cool little type-in game for the standard machine.
Never have, but thanks for pointing it out. I will have to revisit some more of the best TI BASIC games some day. Since there are plenty more I didn't cover here, which I either didn't have time for, or have (like this one) heard about since.
I made my own wire frame maze game. The 3d portion was in a 12x12 box at the top so I wasn't drawing for the whole screen. I also turn off the white wire to black when drawing it. My problem was I had a hard time devising an algorithm to make a good random maze.
Efficient maze generation is I think one of those problems a lot of budding BASIC programmers ran up again, as one just outside the level of complexity where common sense and an inquiring mind yielded good answers. Definitely, it was a problem I didn't have any particularly good answers for! :)
12:55 "Theyre probably not on your radar." 😂
Great video! Where did you get the games from? I'm assuming you didn't type them in yourself.
From a few places, none of which make them all that conveniently accessible, I'm afraid. 1) From the archive sold by CaDD Electronics with their PC99 distribution, 2) From the WHTECH FTP (ftp.whtech.com), 3) From the compilation called TI GameBase, and 4) From various AtariAge threads.
Another great video. But I never knew any of this. Wow
Great Video, keep up the good work!!!
Hi. I've seen some of your videos in youtube and there's a great info about TI-99/4A on them. I'm trying to set a gamelist of this computer in my spare time along with as much covers as possible for every game. Some of the entries that I found are games of a company called Stainless but I wasn't able to find information about these games.
In my chilhood I had an Sinclair Spectrum so I do no know very much about Texas instruments computer and I wonder if you, by any chance, know somehing about this company (Stainless) and its software.
Thank you in advance.
I like your videos. My congrats for your channel.
Cheers.
Probably everything you could want to know about Stainless is on the website of its founder, Stephen Shaw, here: shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/stainless1.htm
Of particular note, sales and reviews (shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/stainless17.htm) and an interview with Stephen Shaw (shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/hcw.htm). Stephen remains quite active in the TI community today.
@@PixelPedant thank you so much for your help.
Really appreciate :D
king & civil war text adventure cassette FTW!
Thank you very much for making this video.
My favorite TI Basic game of all time is “Camelot.”
ua-cam.com/video/8CbwNRFzwWA/v-deo.html
Hearing that music brings me right back. Unfortunately this video above doesn’t show the second half the game, where you attempt to slay the dragon and save the realm.
Help me understand the contents of the zip file. Obviously the .txt files are the basic statements so I could type them in but I'm trying to figure out how I can get the programs put onto a cassette. The files without extensions, what are they? They're not audio files and there's nothing in the readme that describes what they are or how to use them. I tried loading them with CS1er (which I have previously used to convert Tunnels of Doom cassette files to waves) but it didn't understand these files.
They're TIFILES files, which is the prevalent format for TI files on PC these days. If you wish to convert to WAV, I would suggest using TAPE994A. But note that it only supports V9T9 files, so it will be necessary to convert to V9T9 first with TI99DIR. The steps to get from a TIFILES BASIC program to a WAV of the same program would then be 1) TI99DIR format conversion to V9T9, followed by 2) TAPE994A conversion to WAV.
I typed in "Nerm of Bemer".
OK so like, I plan on making erotic fantasy text adventures for the TI-99, and have been doing a bit of it lately. Its very fun and novel :)
Well that's pretty nifty. There are very few erotic games for the system. Several strip poker games, since those are easy to do. But also pretty bland, inevitably. A text adventure is more interesting.
I have a couple TIs, but nothing else for them, so my only real experience with the TI has been through emulators. Cartridges work fine, but I've never had any luck running stuff off disk (images). My friend gave me a bunch of disk images and they appear to have BASIC programs on them, but whenever I try to run them, I get some kind of an error. Either they're all corrupt, or they need some expansion cartridge in order to run.
How do they play in RXB as it runs Console Basic games but faster to play response.
3:45 - so very wrong… the animation, I mean.
Nice overview but cassette software for the TI was some of the worst imaginable and only really serves a collectability purpose. People did the best they could but working with such a closed system obviously reflected on the quality of the software. I would have been ashamed to show some of my Spectrum, C64 or Atari owning friends cassette software for the TI. No such problems with some of the cartridge software which was comparable or in some cases superior to that found on the more popular machines of the time.
This isn't cassette software by your definition. These are BASIC games that may or may not have been saved to tape. They've been typed in from magazines. They're not worse than BASIC games typed in to other systems such as the Speccy or C64. And it has nothing to do with a closed system as BASIC was open. You can see the code while you're typing it in and can list it at any time. There's no secret BASIC routines that only TI knew of.
@@OldAussieAds Of course it was a closed system. That's the very reason hardly any MC based cassette software was available for the machine except for a handfull of Mini Memory titles. On the Acorn machines you could switch between assembly and BASIC with no extra hardware needed, with the C64 or ZX Spectrum you could pick up an assembler on tape for under £10. On the TI you had to buy the PEB, 32K memory expansion, FD drive and controller and the Editor Assembler package. You were looking at around £1000. That's why the TI tape based 3rd party releases were in the main extremely poor BASIC and Extended BASIC efforts, it was just too expensive to do anything else. Many of the titles were no better than those that were available to type in from magazines.