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SteveW

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Posts posted by SteveW

  2. Posted

    I've only got overlays for two of my three games, that's because I bought Armor..Attack and Clean Sweep boxed at OVGE last year. I found that the overlays didn't really add anything to the gameplay, so I never bothered after the first time using it.

  4. Posted

    also, im suprised that no weapons from the phatasy star online universe are in there... i mean there were body parts on poles for gods sake.

    Hildebear's Cane. A blue Hildebear's decapitated head on the end of a stick, and it would not only howl when you'd attack with it, but it would also shoot fireballs out of it's mouth. Plus, it's a lot of fun to carry something's head around on a pike. :)

     

    One of my favorite weapons was the SPNK-R missle launcher from Marathon. Unbearably sweet to run up behind someone in multiplayer mode and blast them into chunks, with all the sound effects that are involved.

  5. Posted

    I seem to recall reading something somewhere about Tomy Tutor/Pyuuta titles that someone ported to the TI-99. Does anyone know about this and where they can be downloaded. I would love to have a multicart for the TI-99 with all these hard to find titles on it.

    Toucan was selling a floppy for the TI that had Tomy Tutor games on it. I don't see how it'd play, considering the Tutor/Pyuuta used a faster processor running at 2.2Mhz (clocked down from the TMS9640's native speed of 10.2Mhz) and a more advanced video processor. Toucan was also selling a floppy with Colecovision games on it, which is another one I have a hard time imagining working well. The TI and Colecovision used the same video chip, but not the main processor. The Colecovision's Z80 was supposed to be faster and more efficient than TI's TMS9900 CPU.

  6. Posted

    Also, is there a composite video hack so I can get rid of the RF box and enjoy a super clear picture?
    No hack needed; the A/V jack already gives you audio and video signals. If you have the right cable, there's no need to open the machine or use the touchy RF modulator. Here is a website with pinouts and instructions on how to build your own cable, or if you don't feel like building one yourself, new cables show up on eBay fairly frequently.

    The VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Atari 800 all used the same type of connector as the TI. I had a universal monitor cable from back in the day that had three RCA jacks on it. Depending on which computer you owned, you'd use one for video and one for audio. There was a decent amount of compatibility across the platforms video cable wise. So hopefully, you can locate a Commodore video cable and see if that will work. If it's not immediately compatible, the TI won't start up. That's what would happen if I tried plugging in the wrong RCA plug to a television. Nothing but a black screen. You'll have to open up the cable and hack it.

  8. Posted

    I bought my TI 99/4a to play Moon Mine - a great shooty game that I enjoyed in school as a kid. I only have a few games, but I also get a kick out of Hunt the Wumpus. :)

     

    Your Favorite TI game? <--- Another thread over at Particles.org

    Hmmm, the thread author's name sounds familiar... :D

     

    An interesting game that nobody ever mentions was Slymoids. It was a pretty nice game, but nobody seems to recall it. I guess it's not a very common game, since it was released the same month that TI announced it was getting out of the business.

  10. Posted

    Another one of my Holy Grails would be a Tomy Tutor. I've always been a TI Home Computer user, and the Tomy Tutor is kind of related to the TI-99/8 Computer that TI cancelled before full production. The technology inside is very similar, although I think the Tutor had an upgraded video chip. There's some theories stating that TI might have had a hand in the design for Tomy.

  11. Posted

    I didn't know you were selling the Vectrex carts in the Marketplace, I missed my chance to buy them off you. :(

     

    I went to a different flea market today, the only thing I saw out there videogame related was a bare Genesis model 2 and an Action Max with three tapes. Of course, it was so oppresively hot, there were almost no vendors out there, and I only saw about 5 other visitors. Left empty handed.

     

    Haven't hit the thrifts in a bit, so I went to a couple of stores. All I found was a Timex/Sinclair 1000 16K Memory Pak, boxed (with the $49.95 K-Mart price tag still on it) for 99¢. I passed on an Atari 2600 4-switch Woody with all the gear and a big ol' sack of cartridges for $39.99. I looked at the carts, and the only one I didn't have already was a copy of M.A.D.

  12. Posted

    The 99/8 might've been more competitive(it had signifigant system RAM instead of just video RAM!), but I dunno if the video hardware was updated.

    According to the old-computers website, the TI-99/8 was going to use the TMS9918A, so it was pretty much the same chip as the TI-99/4A. Which made it downwardly compatible, so you could pop in your Munch Man cartridge and still play it, but because of the upgraded CPU, would play incredibly fast. I'd love to play Tunnels of Doom on a TI-99/8, it'd be great to zip through it.

  14. Posted

    Coleco also had the good sense to use a mainstream CPU like the Z80, which is what TI probably should have chosen for the 99/4A.

    The TI-99/4A was originally designed with a different processor in mind. The original processor couldn't make it out of development and into production, though. It had some flaws that kept it from ever being manufactured. So TI used a different processor that wasn't the best suited for a computer. That's why the TI was such a strange design, with nearly all the system memory going through the video processor instead of the CPU. And there's a lot of information that says that the TI was originally designed with Milton Bradley to be a game console. And the design also included wireless joysticks! The Call Joyst command still has the numbers in it for controlling the wireless controllers, but the hardware was taken out of the specs before the 99/4A went into production.

  15. Posted

    Metal Mutant is a completed, commercial-quality shooter that was coded by a French development team in the early '90s. Although the company never released any pre-release info, and it never appeared on any release lists, it appears that Metal Mutant was ready for release shortly before being permanently canned for unknown reasons. Several years ago, the company's former CEO (team leader?) confirmed the status of Metal Mutant as a finished Lynx title, but stated that he had lost the only completed code some time ago. He couldn't confirm the possibility that other completed code existed...somewhere. There are some Metal Mutant threads in the Lynx forum, but there are very few verifiable details available about this intriguing title.

     

    Metal Mutant wasn't a shooter exactly. I'm basing that on the Amiga version which I used to have. It was a side scroller where you'd have to go screen by screen eliminating or getting around obstacles to advance. Some monsters would be impervious to laser fire, but not to missles. Some screens would require precision jumping. It was like a side scrolling action/puzzler. I don't remember getting too far in it. I do remember that it had nice graphics and sound effects.

  18. Posted

    The Colecovision and TI-99/4A both use the same kind of plug, but they're wired totally different. If you try using a TI power supply on a Colecovision, it'll kill it dead as hell. I don't know if a Colecovision power supply would do the same to a TI. Hopefully you didn't harm it.

  19. Posted

    The C64 went through 3 iterations of the chip, the latest version in the Hummer Steering wheel - an unauthorized product that Mammoth was selling and never got approval from DC Studio's for use of the chip, actually has the most accurate C64 chip in it and also has input for analog paddle input, the background issues and color pallete issues were all corrected.

     

     

     

     

     

    Curt

     

    I picked up two of those on closeout at Radio Shack the other week. On a related note, also picked up all the console/tv switch boxes (for older non autoswitching systems) since they're closing out of those as well.

     

    I'm going to have to hit my local Radio Shack now, and see if I can find one of those Hummer Steering Wheels. I don't need any console/TV switchboxes, since I not only picked up a whole pile of them at a 99¢ store last year, I also picked up some of the direct-connectors from Albert at last year's Dallas VGXPO.

  20. Posted

    Well, considering that in 1971-1972 the Magnavox Odyssey was the very first home videogame ever, and there was no pre-existing template for what a videogame was supposed to be, I think it did a pretty good job. The overlays helped to put the games into context, since the public didn't know what a videogame was supposed to represent or how to play it. And I believe that the Odyssey games came with two different sized overlays to fit the television screen sizes that were fairly standard back then.

     

    This is not mistaking it for the Odyssey2, which was a competitor for the Atari 2600. It wasn't much to jump up and down about, either.

  21. Posted

    I know that occasionally, Atari cartridges can go 'bad', due to static electricity or other reasons. But I don't recall hearing much about any later generation cartridges going bad. I haven't come across any NES, SMS, TG-16, Genesis, etc. cartridges that have stopped working. I just assumed that game companies learned to build cartridges better than the way they were constructed during the Atari era. So, here's the question.... do any of you have any carts that have gone bad?

  23. Posted

    And the name on the cart is "Atari". From the name, I'm guessing it's a simulation game about running a multi-million dollar corporation into the ground through incompetent management, and selling it off to an even more incompetent management company.

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