Tornadoboy

I've thought of doing it as a dedicated Microsurgeon game, I've always thought it would be a cool game to play with dual Robotron-like joysticks. I figured I could get away with using an Arduino to automatically make it select the cartridge on boot and maybe take over a few of the keyboard selections automatically, perhaps use a keypad for some of the user inputs, dedicated arcade buttons for selecting the weapons and make the game work on a coin operated timer that locks out the controls, kind of like Exidy did with their Max-A-Flex system which used a stock Atari 400 as its base. Was going to call it the "Tex-A-Flex" system!

Here's some ideas/pipe dreams from me for perhaps the enhanced version: - As already mentioned, a reset button, internal 32k, speech synth, parallel port, VGA, etc. - Built in SD card interface, perhaps positioned so it can come out of the cartridge slot using a 3D printed filler plate/SD slot, which could also hold the reset button in a recessed spot to keep it from being pressed accidentally. Seems to me somebody has already designed an SD side car that's open source which you might be able to incorporate. If you need help with that I can design the filler plate and other 3D printed parts. - Ability to mount a TIPI internally. - Ditch the cassette port and pipe the VGA out through that spot since it's the right shape for that connector, if need be put in a mini-jack for cassette that uses the hole left from the original video out. - Simplified power input to maybe just 24 or 12 volts, that way we're not dependent on the original large wall-wart and can use common off-the-shelf replacements. Again maybe you could get rid of the cassette port altogether or at least leave an unpopulated spot for a jack if someone really wants it, put the power input with the original video out was, put a VGA port where the cassette port was then use the spot where the original power supply plugged in for other things such as the network jack for the TIPI. - EPROM for several permanent, built in ROMs for things people are always using like X-basic, Editor/Assembler, etc. - Soft power-on like modern PC power supplies. Not really that important, but it would get rid of the "bonk" when the power slams on with the normal switch and might be kinder to the hardware over the long term. - Ability to switch to an overclock mode. I don't know how practical that is for this chipset and overall design, but it would be cool to be able to kick it into turbo for particularly slow stuff, rather like you could with older PCs like a 486. - Built in ability to use a USB keyboard. That also might give one the ability to remove the original keyboard, put a 3D printed or CNC'd filler plate over it and use the space for other hardware? Or if you want to stick with the original keyboard make it so it can be mounted in a separate case and connected remotely either through simpler wiring or even a wireless connection. - Maybe a smaller, more reliable connector in the expansion port that perhaps has more abilities than the original and would be easier to get female connectors for. It would rule out using an original PEB (unless an adapter can be made... replacement PEB interface card that doesn't need the "fire hose?"), but people could design newer, better things to replace it with.

I like the idea someone mentioned earlier about using the button on joystick #2 as a second button for #1, that opens up all kinds of possibilities and people seldom use #2 anyway! As far as what hardware I'd like? The Geneve 2020 is the big thing I'm waiting on, I'm sure I've said all this before but there's been a lot of really cool developments in retro computing and arcade game hardware in recent years but the G2020 is the big thing I'm holding out for. For me I want something that can sit on my desk without taking ridiculous space, have a remote keyboard, share the same monitor as my other computers, be able to hold pretty much any and all software ever developed for the TI on a single SD and have perfect backward compatibility so I can take trips down memory lane whenever I feel like it and have everything run as it used to! Also having greater capabilities opens up all kinds of possibilities to see what knew things can be developed by the keyboard geniuses out there! I'd love it if the speed could be adjusted with software commands so otherwise good but impossibly slow basic and Xbasic games can be improved selectively without making game play too fast. Run super fast while booting or calculating something like the computer AI making a move in a game, loading the level, etc then slow it down a bit so moving characters aren't so fast it makes actually playing impossible. Other hardware ideas? Me just shooting from the hip: - Some kind of side port controller box to handle things like switching on and off motors and relays through software so the TI can be used to control devices like robot arms, etc, and be able to receive input from things like limit switches. Should be fairly easy and such a device might already exist and I just don't know it, I know I've seen at least one person somewhere on Youtube experimenting with a robot arm. - Some kind of upgraded joystick port to use more modern joysticks with analog output and multiple buttons.

When you talk other form, do you mean as part of sort of a "classic" collection for PCs and such?

I'm no genius at it but if you need anything for this designed for 3D printing I might be able to help. Other than that I have nothing to give but blood, sweat and tears

I recently tried it through the MESS emulator and I've got to say you absolutely NAILED it! I'm a fan of the Colecovision port and I even own an actual BNJ arcade cab so I know the game well, great work on your part!

Whomever owns the rights to MM2 ought to just release it perhaps not in ROM form but as part of a collection of unreleased atari prototypes that'll run on the PC, XBox, etc, unless the price is sick it would probably be a good seller, just letting the games collect dust isn't going to make them money anyway.

It'll seem strange but I'd pay someone to hack Microsurgeon so it had an attract mode, a 1-coin-per-play function, a high score list and a few other enhancements so I could build it into an arcade game, I always thought it would have been awesome with Robotron-like joysticks. There's a few other games I'd probably give the arcade treatment too as well, I love 80's style video games. As far as hardware? Not sure, maybe get a 99/8 or pay someone to do a run of repros, although it sounds like the upcoming Geneve 2020 will blow that thing out of the water anyway.

I'd like to see some of the last vaporware games see life, like Horse Racing, Dracula, Super Smurf and Skiing as shown on the Colecovision box.

I just remembered another one: "Mr. T" or maybe it was "The Game of Mr. T" which was in extended basic and pretty funny, if I remember it said on the title screen "I pity da fool who plays this game!" I can't remember if there were more levels but there was one where you had to get his head across the screen while avoiding scissors that were trying to cut his mohawk, and another where you had to run back in forth with something like a shopping cart to catch things that were falling, kind of like Atari's Kaboom.

I can't wait for the Geneve 2020 to come out, I want to load that thing up with every piece of software I can find for the 4a and just be able to stroll through the library rediscovering games I've forgotten and trying out new ones!

It seems to me I saw somewhere that it had been done, but I couldn't tell you where to find it.

Just thought I'd take a stroll down memory lane My list off the top of my head in no particular order... Basic - Tick World - Cars and Carcases - Frazzle - Maze of Ariel - TI Trek - Robot Jokes (we used to hack it in school to say all kinds of jokes it was never intended to ) - Mad Libs (same as above) - Jumping Jack - Motorcross - Camel - Chuckaluck (correct name? Yahtzee like game) - Close Encounters of the Simon Kind - Zap-A-Ball Xbasic - Meltdown - Bird Brain - Cavern Quest - Window Washer - Survival - Bladerunner - Mean Streets - Blackbeard's Treasure - Meteor Rescue - Bee Line - Tower

Thought I'd give this thread a kick and see if anything new is going on? COVID-19 is complicating a lot of things to say the least, lockdowns and sickness aside I imagine there are major supply chain disruptions to electronics and PCB fab.

Someone ought to make a Game Genie-type gizmo that goes between the cartridge and the port, then people can come up with whatever cheats they want for whatever cartridge, present and future. I don't know how viable that is with the hardware/software compared to an NES but it's an interesting thought.

Here's a bunch of really cool mods: http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/upgrades.asp

Taken from that page:

Pity it's probably not the same as Pit Fighter, that game might have finally been useful for something other than a door stop ?

Since I deemed it so! So nah nah! OK seriously, you're right this is starting to turn into a thread hijack, I'll refrain from discussing other games aside from MM.

Yep I haunt KLOV regularly Got the same avatar there too! God I hope you're right about Bouncer at least being in the hands of a collector, personally I had pretty much written that one off as extinct given all the work Chris at Turbosub.com has done trying with no luck to track one down. I implore the owner if he's out there to PLEASE back those ROMs up if you haven't already and if you don't plan to release them please release some decent video of the game play (even anonymously), us preservation fanatics would be VERY happy to know it still exists! I had heard about the Vertigo but wasn't sure if it was true or not, I make the same plea to him too, though at least it can be said it lives on to some degree with Top Gunner being preserved. Ms. Dynamite turning up was a shocker to me, I saw it nonchalantly pass by on camera in one of Jason Arcade's videos and just about fell out of my chair! I was like "WHAT?? WTF??????" before backing up on the video

Truth be told as much as I still consider it the holiest of lost ROM holy grails, Bouncer looks like a game that I would have probably gotten sick of pretty fast, games where you're getting attacked from all sides and it's a perpetual balancing act racing from one spot to another just barely in time get on my nerves, Birdiy is a good example of that game type. Gremlins except for the car scene frankly doesn't look like my kind of game either, looks very boring in fact, but that said it still depresses me they're probably both lost forever.

That's what I've heard too, but it's only part of it and really isn't useful for anything.

Do bother enduring that movie, here's a promotional video: I really hope I'm wrong, but I get the impression that game is gone for good , at least one guy has been doing pretty in depth research on it and has even spoken with former employees but still hasn't so much as found the ROMs, he has a webpage about it at www.turbosub.com

Bouncer from Entertainment Sciences is a pretty sad example of what was probably a ground breaking game going extinct because of financial problems rather than issues with the game, it tested good wherever they showed it and I bet would have been a huge hit if it was released, it's just that because of the hardware needed each unit was going to cost in excess of $4,000 when most games were going for around $2,000.

Very true, some of them look interesting but are probably terrible as far as actual play, Tattoo Assassins being a good example in my opinion. I bet if Spy Hunter II hadn't been released and all we had was a few photos to go on people would be bouncing off the walls for it to get dumped, but we'd all be in for a rude awakening when it did And games like Crazy Otto are really nothing but versions of an already available game, just with different graphics and a few minor tweaks. Regardless I think ALL games deserved to be protected, though Marble Man to me anyway looks like a genuinely fun game.