Thorn EMI cartridges

[+Ksarul]

There was some discussion lately on whether or not there were true cartridge releases of the Thorn EMI titles. I was rooting through my archives today and found these pictures, which showed two of the titles in their original packaging. Note that the cartridge cases are very different from those supplied by the other cartridge vendors. Note also that they both have part numbers on them: River Rescue is THB 32001 and Submarine Commander is THA 32003.

Edited July 8, 2016 by Ksarul

[+OLD CS1]

Neat. They look VHS-sized, maybe to hide out on the same shelf as the movie collection?

[ti99iuc]

Yes, i have the same pictures in my archive on Hard Disk they are very rare to found, i know only one person that have them and never seen in ebay auctions and internet.

Very nice package anyway. i would like to have more details and pictures and scans about them.

[Jess Ragan]

What the heck WAS Thorn EMI, anyway? Their games were always so weird, like Fourth Encounter and Mutant Herd.

[+Ksarul]

I have only ever seen the pictures. I've also never seen a dump of the cartridge contents. We have the files Tenex released, but only one of those was built to run out of cartridge space. It would be nice to get cartridge-space dumps of the other two.

[PeBo]

I've always thought of Thorn EMI as a Music company (a massive one at that) At one point they even bought Virgin Records! They had a couple of minor artists you may have heard of (like The Beatles, the Beach Boys and Pink Floyd).

 

"But wait, there's more..."

 

They also owned the British television network Thames Television, were a defense contractor, and distributed movies on VHS (The Terminator and the Evil dead series might ring a bell).

 

Aside from River Rescue, Submarine Commander and Computer War, I was never really familiar with their video games, but those 3 were great games (especially River Rescue)

[oracle_jedi]

The plastic cases used by Thorn EMI were identical to the hard plastic clam shell cases used for Betamax tapes.

 

Looking at those images, they look like the cartridges might have plugged into the expansion port like the Tigervision cartridges.

[+acadiel]

https://books.google.com/books?id=xy8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=thorn+emi+ti-99/4a&source=bl&ots=00vHk0aQbM&sig=VVf-wDbcLBf3r3dV-BS8tfli5Y0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy-7Gq3-zNAhWMQyYKHbaeCFQQ6AEIPDAF#v=onepage&q=thorn%20emi%20ti-99%2F4a&f=false

 

"Thorn EMI claims it has cracked TI's GROM" (Page 1)

 

:-)

 

[+OLD CS1]

Speaking of: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 131876462636

[PeBo]

Actually Blaine just posted a bunch of interesting disks.

 

Don't think I've ever seen Rubik's Cube or Star Cadet. Would the mass transfer program be useful for use with an HDX mod??

[+OLD CS1]

Yeah, I saw those other ones. Interesting, indeed.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Would the mass transfer program be useful for use with an HDX mod??

Mass transfer 3.5 is an old iteration. The latest version released by the author was version 4.3. There are some later versions updated in conjunction with S&T BBS, version 7.0 being one of the latest. Fred's HDX-aware utilities would be much more useful.

 

Some of the other listed programs are readily available elsewhere and later revisions. For example, Funnelwriter v3.1 is a much older version than the final version released by the author.

[+arcadeshopper]

Actually Blaine just posted a bunch of interesting disks.

 

Don't think I've ever seen Rubik's Cube or Star Cadet. Would the mass transfer program be useful for use with an HDX mod??

 

hdx mod means you don't need a term program you just use a disk manager

[Omega-TI]

 

hdx mod means you don't need a term program you just use a disk manager

 

Greg, do you think a video of all aspects and capabilities of the HDX would be helpful for newbies? I have a few small videos covering a couple of aspects of the HDX, but maybe I should take them down and make a 10 minute 'infomercial' on the HDX.

[blackbox]

Thorne modules did indeed plug into the right hand edge of the console. I had one plugged into my console once- the PCB had a very neat surface mount white ceramic chip. The TI version modules were finally liberated from Thorne- after they had stopped trading- by Howard Greenburg of Arcade Hardware (Manchester), who took them to the USA for subsequent release on disk and then as stated here on third party module.