47 replies to this topic

[Willsy]

Of course, I don't expect you to agree with my choices, so feel free to post your own turkeys as you see fit, and we'll shoot each one down in flames!

[Official Ninja]

What!? Hunt the Wumpus is one of the best games EVER.  

[InfernalKeith]

Munchmobile.  What a piece of CRAP.

[Christophero Sly]

The Attack is awesome!

[Gary from OPA]

I voted for Car Wars.

But hey for '79 most of these games were top-notch!

If anyone today saw the original Pong from '76 they would vote it as the "worst game ever!"

[InfernalKeith]

Gary from OPA, on Sun Oct 17, 2010 3:34 PM, said:

I voted for Car Wars.

But hey for '79 most of these games were top-notch!

If anyone today saw the original Pong from '76 they would vote it as the "worst game ever!"

I don't mind Car Wars, but I'm terrible at it.

The Attack, I always feel like there's something I'm just not getting.  That AND ZeroZap, come to think of it.  Kinda like "this CAN'T be all there is to this game."

I get more annoyed by subpar games that came out in 1983.  You had Commodore 64's coming onto the market, game production was stepping up to a higher level, and TI saw fit to put out crap like Munchmobile and Slymoids (great backgrounds, dumb game).  Compare those to stuff like Microsurgeon, Fathom and Moonsweeper -- hmm, all Imagic titles.    I wish Imagic had done Dragonfire or Atlantis for the TI, those are great games they created on some pretty limited platforms.

[marc.hull]

absolute worst piece of crap ever.. Picnic Paranoia.  unplayable even if you can figure out what to do

[save2600]

Picnic Paranoia is utter crap, but I'd have to go with Zero Zap. Pinball my ass! That game is completely useless.

Surprised to see some of these games listed. Miner 2049'er, Tombstone City, Car Wars, Hunt the Wumpus and even A-Maze-Ing are all excellent games in their own right. Miner and Car Wars especially: got to be a couple of the best conversions out there.

Edited by save2600, Sun Oct 17, 2010 5:02 PM.

[S1500]

Chislom Trail had potential to be a TI version of Targ/Spectar. But then it throws dick moves at you like having a laser fire from the outer edge volcanoes.

[jchase1970]

i have not played beyond parsec or miner 2049 or soccer but the rest of these games I liked alot when I had my ti in 1980, I still don't think they are bad games.

a game that disappointed me back then was Moon Mine.  Also Video Chess, it was just to slow to play against.

[S1500]

Beyond Parsec was terrible since it was nothing like the original. It was 2-player only, basically being a dumbed down horizontal shooter version of Space War.

Moon Mine, once you look past the fancy graphics(compared to other games), was a way-too-simple "shoot the sprite" game.

I actually enjoyed Munchmobile. It was at least different than the usual offerings.

Edited by S1500, Mon Oct 18, 2010 9:45 AM.

[JamesD]

S1500, on Mon Oct 18, 2010 9:44 AM, said:

Beyond Parsec was terrible since it was nothing like the original. It was 2-player only, basically being a dumbed down horizontal shooter version of Space War.

Moon Mine, once you look past the fancy graphics(compared to other games), was a way-too-simple "shoot the sprite" game.

I actually enjoyed Munchmobile. It was at least different than the usual offerings.

Maybe they should have called it "Before Parsec".

[Tursi]

I liked Picnic Paranoia, used to play it a lot.

If we're just talking official cartridges... I'd probably go with Zero Zap too - wasn't much of a game there, I think.

[unhuman]

I was truly disappointed by Alpiner. I didn't like that. Of course Zero Zap was a heaping pile too... But some of your choices I quite liked (Miner 2049'er & Car Wars). And, Indoor Soccer could've been done better in XB. Dunno who got that job, but they should be fired.

[sometimes99er]

Well, I'll try and judge the carts I had back in the day - mostly based on the time I spent playing them.

1. TI Invaders, very nice
2. Donkey Kong, very nice
3. Munch Man, very nice
4. Burgertime, very nice but a bit slow
5. Parsec, nice
6. Pac-Man, nice but a bit slow
7. Defender, okay
Car Wars, boring
Centipede, boring
Connect Four, boring
Alpiner, boring
Hopper, boring
MASH, boring
Moon Mine, boring
Star Trek, boring
Zero Zap, boring,
Tombstone City, sucks

[Bones-69]

Tombstone City was my first ever TI cartridge. As much as I try, I could never hate that game.  

[sometimes99er]

Bones-69, on Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:05 AM, said:

Tombstone City was my first ever TI cartridge. As much as I try, I could never hate that game.  

Oh yes, the thrill of things coming alive on your screen, and you being in control !?!!  

Apart from a few text based games on some mainframe, and those pong machines, I think Space Invaders (1980) was my first game with my 2600. And apart from the early Sub Commander, Gunslinger or whatever in the arcades, it was games like Galaxians (1979) and Pac-Man (1980) that really made me want a programmable computer. I have had many computers both before and after the TI-99/4A, and I don't know why, but this is about the only one I care for.

[matthew180]

My first computer game, ever, was from page 86 of the Beginner's BASIC book that came with the 99/4A:

10 CALL CLEAR
20 SECRET=INT(100*RND)+1

30 PRINT "I HAVE A SECRET NUMBER!"
40 PRINT

50 INPUT "WHAT IS YORU GUESS?":GUESS

60 IF GUESS=SECRET THEN 130

70 IF GUESS>SECRET THEN 100

80 PRINT "TOO SMALL!"
90 GOTO 110

100 PRINT "TOO BIG!"
110 PRINT "TRY AGAIN."
120 GOTO 40

130 PRINT "YOU GUESSED IT!"
140 PRINT "LET'S PLAY AGAIN!"

150 FOR DELAY=1 TO 1000
160 NEXT DELAY

170 GOTO 10

I think my first cartridge game was Hunt the Wumpus and I played that a lot.  Then I got A-Maze-Ing which I also liked.  Then it gets kind of muddled, but I had Parsec (never really liked it), Centipede, Star Trek (I liked the graphics, but didn't understand the game really), and Chisholm Trail which I *really* liked.  Somewhere along the line I also got MunchMan and I played that quite a bit too.

However, my game interest changed when I got Adventure with Pirate's Island.  That was the first adventure game I had ever played and I was hooked.  Never had a game taken me THREE DAYS! to complete.  Then things changed again when I got ToD.  I played that for a long long time, until I could do a 10 level dungeon on the hardest setting; war ball and chain - oh yeah!

However, I still liked the coin-op games the best and I spent the majority of my time trying to make arcade games on my 99/4A.  I was always upset with the inferior color and resolution of the 99/4A though, even though it was actually pretty close to a lot of the coin-ops of the day (but I didn't know that).  I never even saw Tombstone City until I got the E/A and PEB, and I didn't know it was a cartridge too.  It was ok and I played it some, but mostly I hacked it and borrowed code for my own assembly programs.

I never saw most of the 99/4A games until recently when you could use an emulator to check them out, and most of them feel pretty shallow to me today, but I don't think I can be objective any more.  I think the non-RPG or adventure games were good for "twitch" gaming, i.e. 20 minutes at most, so I think I would have felt the same way about most of the games mentioned here as I did about the games I had.  I really liked Adventure and ToD though, so I was usually doing that or coding.

Matthew

Edited by matthew180, Thu Oct 21, 2010 9:57 AM.

[Mad Hatter]

Some of the games I enjoyed the most as a kid (in no particular order):
Burgertime
Congo Bongo
Parsec
Pirate Adventure & Ghost Town
Munchman
Car Wars
Alpiner (I really liked it!)
Ambulance

Some of the games I enjoy NOW, but didn't own as a kid:
War Zone 2
Jumpy
Q*Bert
Henhouse
Midnite Mason
Attack of the Creepers
Centipede (esp. w/Wico trackball)
Star Runner
Pitfall
Still like Munchman and Burgertime (but prefer the Colecovision version of BT now)

[Opry99er]

Ask InfernalKeith what the worst game is... Dungeon Key maybe?

[InfernalKeith]

Opry99er, on Mon Oct 25, 2010 11:20 PM, said:

Ask InfernalKeith what the worst game is... Dungeon Key maybe?

It's a piece of crap, but I wouldn't count it, really.  I think the poll was for games that a large number of 99'ers had actually seen.  If we start counting all the crappy Frogger knockoffs and fake TI BASIC Q*Bert clones that popped up back then, our list would be huge, and full of forgotten moldy oldies.

I couldn't stop brainstorming about it today, though, for ways to make it less sucky.  I may mess with it if I can get this other TI stuff done and off my plate this week, like I'm hoping.

[Opry99er]

Look forward to seeing your work.  This game playable anywhere?  By that I mean--- do you plan to post the code at any point?

[InfernalKeith]

Opry99er, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 12:01 AM, said:

Look forward to seeing your work.  This game playable anywhere?  By that I mean--- do you plan to post the code at any point?

Yeah, hopefully as early as tomorrow.  I'm in the middle of moving all my TI stuff down to the basement 'war room' from my upstairs office, so it's all in flux... but it's just a matter of throwing the game onto the CF and bringing it over into Classic99.  I'm gonna grab screen shots and box scans for my site, too.  It's a shame, by 1983 third-party standards, the packaging is really nice for such a lousy game.

Really hoping the different setup gets me working on 99/4A stuff again.  I thought having it all in my work space would make it accessible, but it just ended up buried in papers and junk and inaccessible most of the time.  Plus, I could never work on my TI without work staring me in the face and saying "be productive, slacker."  With all my old stuff down in the basement, away from work, I can hopefully use that as an oasis from real-world concerns and put in some uninterrupted coding (and gaming!) time.

[Opry99er]

Great stuff!!!  Thanks Keith.  You're a true archaeologist

[Tempest]

It may not be THE WORST, but I never liked The Attack so I voted for that one.  Then again I never played Indoor Soccer, so that one may be worse.

Tempest