the TV game

9/4/20

This is another one that is only loosely connected to the TI99.

A couple weeks ago I had a backup drive crash with a lot of my retro-computer stuff on it. Fortunately I have found most of the stuff elsewhere but while looking through my old Atari software I found one of the oddest role playing games ever, 'the TV game'.

Way back in the 80s me and some friends of mine came up with a role playing game where you took on the mantle of a network TV primetime programmer. Our 1st iteration of the game was on paper and my friend's TI programmable calculator. well it wasn't long the game grew past that and I wrote a small program for the TI-99/4a to help. that didn't last too long before the game out grew that too (I needed random access disk files by that time) so I wrote a huge suite of programs with databases, charts, printouts and such on the Atari 800xl. This is that game. You use the show creating program to create TV shows then put them on a weekly schedule. the other networks (3-5) do the same. all the schedules are put through a ratings program that spits out reports of that weeks ratings, shares and ranking. you adjust your schedule then do the next week. after a set amount of weeks all added up and a winner is declared for that season. Me and my friends play this game on and off for quite a few years. sometime there where just 3 networks, sometimes as much as 5. one year we even video taped our version of the emmys for the game while being a little inebriated.  

the files are in .txt or .bas form. PLEASE don't ask me details of how the game works though. you are on your own. it's been almost 20 years and we rarely wrote down instructions as we made up a different set of rules every time we played. included is the programs written in turboBASIC XL, lots of the reports, the databases with some of the shows we created and all runs on an Atari 8-bit with 64k.  this is posted for entertainment purposes only. the programs seems to all work but i'm too lazy to run a full season to really test it. The game is posted on Atariage so you need an Atariage account to download it. The-TV-Game