Toucan

This is a bad day indeed. I contacted him in 1999 and he shared some neat info on the TI. Such as this e-mail: Dear Bryan -- The "Star Trek" manual that was on the cover of the July 1983 issue of "Enthusiast 99" magazine was from a prototype e-prom module that I received from Sega. I only know of 3 copies. One was sent to T.I., the second was sent to the IUG for our evaluation and the third was sent to Jack Carroll who worked for me at that time. Jack; if I remember correctly re-burnt 4 other copies for other IUG employees. The game was almost identical to the Atari 800 version except it ran much faster on the 99/4 and had better sound qualities. Jack, once he broke the source code, added some "text-to-speech" features to his copy. I am not sure where any of the modules are today. My ex-wife still has all of the hardware and software we salvaged from the bankruptcy of the IUG. My son who is now has his MBA, and is webmaster for a large bank on Tulsa still plays with the 99/4 when he visits his mother in Oklahoma City. I will ask him if he has seen the "Star Trek" module lately. In November of 1983 I approached T.I. in an effort to purchase the entire remaining inventory of hardware and software. I had some very strong financial backing for an OKC bank. While considering my offer I was given 1 each of the current module inventory and 17 unreleased projects from T.I. and third party producers, none which ever reached the consumer level. If I remember correctly all but one was on e-prom. Several of the projects were from Milton-Bradley; some from Creative and some from Sega, only one was from Activision. Needless to say T.I. was unwilling to sell us their remaining inventories, under our terms, and chose to use another source to dispose of their remaining product. Bound by copyright laws ( by this time we had enough legal problems, Guy Romono was suing us for 1 million dollars) we did not attempt to copy and distribute any of the prototype product in our possession. We did, however make copies of all except the Activision project for internal use. Some where someone may still have copies of all of these. I will ask Bill Gronos who worked for me if he still has any of the ones we burnt off, if not he may have the original source code. He is a pack rat by nature." -- Sincerely, Charlie La Fara

Come on people....Slymoids Interestingly enough, Slymoids is a side-scroller like many of the later gaming systems' mascot games (Super Mario Bros and Sonic)

That's Pot Shot from the Video Games 1 cart.

My guess is that desert scene is from some type of Math game or such. well Fab, what is it. You stumped me on that one.

Yeah, the castle in the collage is from the title screen of Personal Real Estate. An elaborate title screen for a productivity cart. Should have been used in a game of some kind! I also think it's possible that Slymoids might be represented as well. Next to the left pyramid that almost looks like a yellow version of the Slymoids mountain background.

Well, here's what I can see, from left to right: Dig-Dug Defender Hunt the Wumpus Alpiner Jungle Hunt Video Games 1 (Pot Shot) Frogger Wing War Popeye Personal Real Estate Tunnels of Doom Parsec Number Magic Rabbit Trail Junkman Jr. Moon Patrol Donkey Kong Congo Bongo Hopper Buck Rogers Centipede Dragon Mix Car Wars MASH TI Invaders Hen Pecked Treasure Island Peter Pan's Space Odyssey Pac-Man Topper Super Demon Attack Meteor Multiplication Burgertime Tombstone City I don't know where the palm tree/desert scene is from though.

What's interesting is that I talked with Barry Friedman from ICG (International Computer Group) who did some of the Atarisoft TI conversions and they actually produced them themselves at their production line in Hong Kong. Centipede was one such title. It should say "Made in Hong Kong" on the cart. Also, they printed the manuals and boxes. This is why the manuals for Dig-Dug, Centipede, and some others look different. The ones made by ICG were those white manuals with the title written across (http://www.videogamehouse.net/CentipedeM.jpg). Anyway, the ICG made carts have a screw under the label. He did mention that it should say "ICG" in the screw hole if anyone wants to open Centipede or Dig-Dug up and confirm I don't remember which others they did, but if the manual looks like the Centipede one in the link, it's ICG. Just some neat trivia! BTW, these guys were working on Battlezone for Atarisoft on the TI as well. I'd say Atari got a good deal with these guys as ICG did everything, programming, production, and all. All Atari had to do was market the games.

Oh, well in that case they would most likely be text based. I didn't realize they were aftermarket releases put out by Tex-Comp. That's probably the reason for the 1988 copyright on that screenshot above since I guess that's when Tex-Comp put them out.

Ah, here's an auction for one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-NOS-Texas-Instruments-TI-99-TI99-4A-Game-Sorcerer-of-Claymorgue-Castle-Disk-/221538386312 If you read the back of the box it says "Scott Adams' Graphic Adventure" and in terms of graphics it says "yes on disk versions, no on tape versions, unless otherwise noted on the package". For $94 I might scoop this one up as it's a good price as far a boxed new Adventure International TI-99 games go.

While true, that 1988 date on the screen makes me think this could be a Tex-Comp conversion possibly? I know the original was from 1984 by Adventure International when sold for the TI.

Do you know if Adventure 13, "Sorceror of Claymourge Castle" had graphics on the TI? I ask since I noticed on eBay it said on the back of the box that cassette versions of the game were plain text, while the disk versions had graphics. Was wondering if this was true for Sorceror of Claymourge Castle. I don't see the disk version come up too often, the one from Adventure International and not Tex-Comp, so I don't know if anyone has an original copy of the Adventure International disk version of this one for the TI.

Does anyone out there have a Commodore PET 2001-N they would be willing to sell? I am interested in getting one as well as a disk drive and tractor printer. Thought I would shoot this message out there to see if any AtariAge guys have one. Thanks!

Ah no, these carts were not from LaFara, but that was a good guess. I forgot about those pics, if only Virginia would have given up her stash

Ah yes, River Rescue by Thorn-EMI! In case you were interested, the Thorn-EMI carts were actually side port carts like Tigervision. Check out my Thorn-EMI gallery: http://atariage.com/forums/gallery/album/1450-ti-thorn-emi-games/

Those are all the ones I have. However, what is meant by rumored? I have scans of pamphlets from the January 1984 CES where Tigervision advertised Changes, Sky Lancer, and Super Crush along with part numbers for the TI and other systems. They probably should be listed with the same rarity as Polaris and River Patrol since those too have only been seen in ads/announcements. I'm assuming when you said Rumored it means that people in the TI community heard it was planned but there were no physical traces that it indeed was in the works.

Interesting. Back when I first got into TI collecting in 1998 I always saw Polaris and River Patrol listed as unreleased TI games from Tigervision. However, through the years nobody was able to verify where they saw that these two games were in the works for the TI. Therefore, I stopped including them in my TI lists. However, I just today came across this German Springer ad that does indeed show River Patrol and Polaris to be planned for the TI. By the looks of the ad, it seems to be claiming that Polaris and Springer were available, but that River Patrol was to come out in December 1983. It also looks like Espial was not yet being advertised at this time, since it was a 1984 release. Anyway, I linked to the ad below and thought it was something interesting. I have now added Polaris and River Patrol back to the TI rarity lists, since we know have a source that says they were in the works. http://www.atarimania.com/pubs/hi_res/springer_ad_german.jpg Also, one from Electronic Games Magazine: http://www.atarimania.com/pubs/hi_res/polaris_ad_v2.jpg

These posters were made by me from manual scans. Unless you are standing right up against it, it's hard to see any noticable graininess. The last person I sold a poster to said it was "Wicked!", which is a complement in the sense that he used it. So you should hopefully be satisfied with it Anyway, I can sell you a Parsec poster for $14.99 and thow in a Tombstone City poster for free. As a matter of fact, if anyone else wants a poster, the same 2 for the price of 1 would apply. Neat tidbit, Paul Urbanus, one of the Parsec programmers, bought the Parsec poster a few years back. Maybe I should have promoted the fact that one of the Parsec creators has this very poster on his own wall!

Any word on Mario Bros. for the TI? I noticed that it was a recent revision for the Wikipedia entry and was wondering if there was some type of discovery that it was in the works back then.

I like the true lowercase letters on the screen in Parsec on the 99/5, looks like the 99/5 supports true lowercase letters like the 99/8.

BTW, if anyone is curious, Ron Wilcox was the name of the engineer where Erik Olson got the 99/5 things from. Just another potential lead for you.