Does the possibility exist to port CV games to the TI99?

[eightbit]

You know, when I first received this computer (which was only a few years ago...never had one back in the day) the first impression I had of it was that I was using a Colecovision in computer form so to speak. I mean, it really reminded me of the Colecovision with the sound and graphic style...which was a GREAT thing! I come to find later that the video chip is the same. I know many SG1000 games (based on the same chip) were ported to the Colecovision and greatly expanded that library.

 

I wonder if the same can be done with the TI99? How great would it be to see SG1000 and Colecovision games ported to this? The keyboard is there to handle numeric presses that you find on the CV controllers and the video chip is identical from what I read. I am not entirely in tune with the sound and other hardware differences, but is it possible? It would be great to see the TI99 game selection grow as it did with the CV

Edited April 23, 2017 by eightbit

[+arcadeshopper]

Unfort the coleco and 994a are two different processors memory maps and input chips so there's not a lot to convert. Two games are the same as the colecovision. Mr. Chin by Tursi written in C so he ported the C code and then developed ti specific routines for sound and graphics etc. And pitfall which was a labor of love by the author who painstakingly wrote it from scratch to match the coleco version.

 

The Sg1000 is the same z80 cpu 9928 vdp and probably the same soundchip too..easier to port

 

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[eightbit]

SG1000 had a lot of really great games too. I'd love to see Ninja Princess on a TI!

[+arcadeshopper]

Probably the only way that will happen is if someone rewrites it

 

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[+jedimatt42]

I recently picked up an MSX. Also same VDP. There is a collection of Coleco ports for it. I was actually very surprised by how different burgertime and centipede are visually from our 4A versions.

 

-M@

[artrag]

You can reuse the graphics but the cpus of the two systems are very different and there is no chance to port the assembly code.

Different history for colecovision msx and sg1000 that share cpu and vdp

[kl99]

One could try to use the F18A power (mostly GPU and the 2k extra VRAM) to emulate the different CPU instructions that the Colecovision has and the console abstraction.

[Tursi]

I recently picked up an MSX. Also same VDP. There is a collection of Coleco ports for it. I was actually very surprised by how different burgertime and centipede are visually from our 4A versions.

 

-M@

 

Check out Coleco Popeye - that's one place the TI actually got the better looking game.

[JamesD]

The Colecovision videogame has more built in CPU RAM than the TI-99/4A computer.
That alone would probably make a lot of games impossible to port without some sort of RAM expansion on the TI.
MSX, ADAM, SG1000, etc... games would be even worse.

If you had source code, porting a game isn't too bad for a good programmer as long as the code is well commented.
Then you can duplicate the logic easy enough.
But if you have to disassemble the game and figure out what everything does... that is very time consuming.
I spent months commenting the disassembly of a piece of code... granted that was on the Amiga and larger than a game cart... but still.