Airshack

So why do you figure Pole Position is so ugly when their other ports are good looking? Did TI in-house programmers do the Atarisoft ports under some kind of arrangement?

Which one(s)?

This has the video modulator output and joy ports on the bottom so are we looking at the 1040 STFM model?

Just picked up a 1040ST and... 1. Planned to see if it works — CHECK! 100% functioning to include good video/sound and formatting a floppy drive. I didn’t get any diskettes with the system so testing was limited. Where can I find that BASIC program language disk? Is there a modern replacement? 2. Started tearing it down for retro-bringing the sun damage — CHECK! Case damaged reduced but back out for now because I detect a slight amount of oxidation remaining. 3. Tore it down to clean the system... Anything revealing here about the revision? Epson floppy 720k (?) seems fine — common? 4. Thinking I need that OLED GoTek in place of this floppy drive. Agree? How do I prep a thumb drive for the ST+GoTek? How about the UltraSatan device? Any one better than the other? 5. Noticed 256k memory modules. Will this system support 1GB modules? If so where do I find them online? 6. What does the handwriting on these labels mean? Are these some sort of upgradable ROMs? Atari socketed them! Your help with my restore/upgrade project is appreciated. - James (from the TI-99/4 Group)

True. Along with Wumpus being another early release. Football plays like it was probably a graphical front end added to the popular mainframe text-based football simulator also found on early 70s time-share systems. I’ll bet the early TI game programmers played variants of the early computer sports and adventure games in college. Fun Facts: ”During the 1960s, Dartmouth’s membership in the Ivy League revolved around its football team. In 1962, computing students under the tutelage of Kemeny and Kurtz named one of the college’s homegrown compilers the problematic acronym SCALP. The Kiewit Center brought the same rough-and-tumble masculine bonding into the teletype room again with sport- and war-oriented computer games, including at least three versions of computer football games (FTBALL, FOOTBALL, and GRIDIRON). In fact, Dartmouth distinguished itself from most other universities by actively encouraging student gaming and recreation on the network.” TI Football is probably a port of these older style games. Dartmouth is also where BASIC was invented in 1964. ”In the 1960s, Dartmouth College became ground zero for the coming explosion in American computing after college mathematics professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed a new programming language that was relatively easy to learn: Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC. Kemeny and Kurtz wanted to a create a novice-friendly computing entry point that would attract young talent for the college’s newly developed Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, a network of teletype terminals located across New England colleges and high schools that connected, via telephone lines, to a mainframe General Electric computer at Dartmouth.”

Intellivision Baseball, Football, and Hockey were all IMHo fabulous. Baseball was the best of the lot. Intellivision later released single-player v AI versions of Baseball and Football. Significantly better than Odyssey2 and Atari VCS. The Odyssey2 sports titles are in the middle between Atari and the Intellivision 1970s benchmark.

Nobody defends TI’s gutless non-action sports sim known simply as...Football. An obvious translation of some kind of stats based board game or teletype text game. On a system with great graphics and sound there’s no excuse for something this void of joy. Zero player control over gameplay? It should be called Football Coach. Every console from the 1970s had a better football game. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

This is probably why: “ It has been cited as an early example of the survival horror genre, and was listed in 2012 on Time's All-Time 100 greatest video games list. The Wumpus monster has appeared in several forms in media since 1973,” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

TI’s Hunt the Wumpus is a remake of an early text based mainframe computer text game. They put a nice graphical front end on this famous game. It came out on cartridge because it was wildly famous before microcomputers were a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_the_Wumpus Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Did he ever talk to TI-99/4 game programmers? Links? Thx. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Perhaps an extremely cautious rip-off? I do need to play it more based on your recommendation. Always, I figured it was uglier therefor not as much fun to play. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

When I finish the UAV mod on my 5200 I’ll let you know how it went. I’ll also need to do the power mod as I have the old style power/RF combo. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Play Qix on your 5200. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Get this and load the entire TI game library onto one menu driven cartridge. A massive savings in money and space: https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/?page_id=11#!/Finalgrom99-assembled-board-with-low-profile-switches-PREORDER/p/95933522 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Thanks Omega. My store was out. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

The best scores here should be in Yesterday’s news for sure. Too bad Sparkdrummer doesn’t read this thread. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Happy 168th Birthday Sparkdrummer! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

...everybody dies! Ha! True. It looks like the artwork was finished but the gameplay was maybe 50% complete. I’d like to know the back-story on this one. Notice how even the name of the game is screwed up. Label says Super Demon Attack yet it’s just Demon Attack when you plug it in — title screen? Definitely not a finished game. How on earth did this one make it to market? As if someone sent TI old incomplete code or they decided to ship a beta version during the panic of 1983? Fun Fact: Imagic’s Atari 2600 Demon Attack won the 1983 Arcade Award for "Best Videogame of the Year", with the judges commenting that the game had "turned out to be yardstick against which gamers measured the quality of each new cartridge during 1982". The TI “Super” version was programmed by Bill Mann with credits to TI, not iMagic. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Texans like planning upon napkins. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Unfortunately, once you get it working you will soon discover super Demon Attack isn’t super at all. In fact, it’s a rushed to market incomplete game which is impossible to play beyond the second boss level. Someone decided to produce those cartridges before the game was finished. One of the worst TI cartridges IMHO which is a shame because it has beautiful graphics. https://youtu.be/XsMazOJZSwA Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

He counter-offered $250 for the 99/4. So much in this ad is not working yet he’s asking top dollar. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Shiner Bock and Texas BBQ gets my vote. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I just offered $100. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I feel I need to discover the problem with an acceptable level of certainty before I try this. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I am interested yet I’d be more enthusiastic about the RAM mod if I knew it was most likely a RAM problem. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro