Milton Bradley MBX Resources, Manuals, Materials, and History

[+pixelpedant]

I'm creating this as a gathering place for various MBX materials I've been accumulating/creating/scanning recently, on the principle that it would be nice to have one place where these things are collated.

 

More things will likely be added over time.  I still have some items I need to scan.

 

Released MBX Titles

 

 

MBX Manuals: Arcade Plus Series

 

Championship Baseball Manual.pdf

Bigfoot - New.pdf

Superfly.pdf

Space Bandits.pdf

Sewermania.pdf

Meteor Belt.pdf

 

MBX Manuals: Bright Beginnings Series

 

I'm Hiding.pdf

Terry Turtle's Adventure - New.pdf

Honey Hunt.pdf

Soundtrack Trolley.pdf

 

MBX Manual: The MBX Itself

 

MBX Manual - New.pdf

 

MBX Overlays - Touched Up for Printing

(Note: dimensions are 15cmx16cm on the printed surface)

 

 

Images - Milton Bradley Expander as shown at Winter CES 1983:

 

 

Images - The MB Gemini prototype that turned into the Expander/MBX:

 

 

Other Images - MBX Promotional Materials

 

 

Third Party Catalogues/Ads:

 

 

First Party Catalogues/Ads:

TI Home Computer Program Library 1983.pdf

 

Further Reading - Bill Gaskill and Bryan Roppolo on Milton Bradley's relationship with TI and the history of the MBX:

 

mbx-gaskill.pdf

 

Development Tools - Barry Boone's source/notes on MBX diagnostics and XB CALL LINKs:

 

mbx-boone.zip

 

Gameplay for MBX Only Games:

 

 

Updates:

- 1983 TI Home Computer Program Library scan, containing MBX promotional materials.

- Terry Turtle's Adventure scan.

- Bigfoot manual scan.

- Terry Turtle, I'm Hiding and Championship Baseball gameplay.

- I hadn't originally included the Honey Hunt manual.  Oops.  Fixed.

- Soundtrack Trolley manual.

 

 

 

[Omega-TI]

Freaking awesome post!  I linked to it  << HERE >> so people will be able to easily find it years from now as it goes down the list.  Good job!

[videofx]

Great job thanks!

 

How best to print the overlays?

 

I only have original Championship baseball. Are the other games available for download? will they work with finalgrom or do I need something else?

 

Thanks

[+pixelpedant]

The (original) overlays are very thinly laminated, with 16cm x 15cm dimensions on the printed surface.  I've printed the ones I've printed using matte photo paper, then laminated with 3mm laminate sheets.  I actually like the result better than the original.  But granted, the replacement isn't 40 years old.  Here's an example:

 

 

On 10/6/2020 at 7:49 PM, videofx said:

Are the other games available for download? will they work with finalgrom or do I need something else?

 

As far as I know, there are no fully functional dumps/conversions of the MBX-only games (Terry Turtle, Championship Baseball, I'm Hiding) which will run from a FinalGROM.  Apparently they have some on-cart RAM and use a bank switching scheme that might or might not be supported by the FinalGROM.  Honey Hunt and Soundtrack Trolley seem to work for me via FinalGROM both with and without MBX, though. 

 

[+pixelpedant]

Incidentally, the late 1983 TI Home Computer Program Library pamphlet I've now scanned and uploaded there in the original post (as the MBX and its library are featured prominently) is of particular interest.  Includes a blurb for Imagic's Wing War and lots of promo for the MBX.  And has the "modern" style covers for Golden Voyage and Tunnels of Doom on the cover.  I've now as well added the Terry's Turtle Adventure manual.

[eebuckeye]

Best thread idea ever.. I always wanted one back in the day and finally got on about 10 years ago.  If only it had been used more..

[+pixelpedant]

For a system that was effectively cancelled two weeks before it was going to be released I really can't complain about the library, though.  I consider Championship Baseball, Bigfoot and Superfly genuinely good and enjoyable games, at least.  And I figure (at least) three good games is above par, for systems that are cancelled before they're released. 

 

That having said, I do hope that we can see more development, at some point.  Barry Boone's library of (possibly functional) routines are a good starting point, anyway. 

[+OLD CS1]

6 hours ago, pixelpedant said:

Barry Boone's library of (possibly functional) routines are a good starting point, anyway.

I recall seeing a working demo built around those routines many years ago.  No idea where it is.

 

The MBX games are fantastic and most work well without the MBX, just lacking in some enhanced functionality (SuperFly, for instance, benefits from the rotating controller.)  I wrote a while back that I find the speech from the TI Speech Synthesizer superior to that of the MBX.  Thus, I prefer to play the games without the MBX attached.

 

Notice the odd-looking Baseball overlay in the CES show photos.

[+pixelpedant]

4 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

Notice the odd-looking Baseball overlay in the CES show photos.

 

Indeed, and yet another alternate version is visible in the final promotional poster, in the top centre:

 

 

 

Which is kind of funny, given the final overlay is pictured several inches below.

 

 

 

[kl99]

very nice thread. when i won the auction about the ti-99/8, it came with a mbx "prototype", which was the model they used in the TI labs.

http://www.ti99.eu/?page_id=1218&lang=en

[Toucan]

3 hours ago, pixelpedant said:

 

Indeed, and yet another alternate version is visible in the final promotional poster, in the top centre:

 

 

 

Which is kind of funny, given the final overlay is pictured several inches below.

 

 

 

Interestingly enough, there is a variant of the overlay in press materials that looks like the final one, but has one extra button for "Screw Ball". It has an additional orange button so instead of one button in the second row of orange buttons, there are two, with a gap in the middle where the final "Curve" button is located. It's actually in that image that you called the "final overlay", so I guess neither of those overlays are the final ones  Also, note the "Time Out" button on that one.

 

Bill Gaskill made the joke that I should have become a detective when I grew up (I was 14 in 1998 when I was looking up all this TI info with him), since I would spot those little details.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Toucan

[Toucan]

Fun Fact:

The kid in the brochure for the MBX was Stephen Langieri, son of Mike Langieri who was one of the VP's of MB's Advanced R&D, who was involved with the MBX project. You'll notice the name "Stephen" used in some promo screenshots. I also believe the other names used in the other game screen shots were of others involved in the MBX project. 

 

Mike is a big Yankee's fan, not Red Sox like you might think.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Toucan

[+pixelpedant]

I would like to note: I do not know of a source for a full scan of the Soundtrack Trolley manual, and do not have the manual myself, to scan (the only MBX game for which I don't). 

 

So if anyone has this available to scan, it would certainly be helpful (and would complete the set, for materials associated with released titles). 

[+OLD CS1]

I have all manuals which I stored from new-in-box condition (I bought them all unopened, ostensibly.)  To get a proper scan I figure I would need to dissect it, unless someone has a better plan.  I suppose I could scan as tiff and crop the pages as-needed, then combine into pdf.

[+pixelpedant]

Or if you can scan the pages (to any image format) and post the page images, I will crop and combine into a PDF.

[+OLD CS1]

31 minutes ago, pixelpedant said:

Or if you can scan the pages (to any image format) and post the page images, I will crop and combine into a PDF.

I will work on that tonight or tomorrow.  Not feeling too well today.

[+Ksarul]

9 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

I will work on that tonight or tomorrow.  Not feeling too well today.

Get well soon, my friend. . .

[+pixelpedant]

4 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

I will work on that tonight or tomorrow.  Not feeling too well today.

Sorry to hear that.  But thanks so much for offering, and by all means, take your time.

[hloberg]

going to create a section on TI99RESOURCES for MBX this weekend.  downloading everything off this page. downloading games from WHTECH. linking to @pixelpedant

update:

it's added.

[+OLD CS1]

ScanImage02_page_0001.tif ScanImage02_page_0002.tif ScanImage02_page_0003.tif ScanImage02_page_0004.tif ScanImage02_page_0005.tif ScanImage02_page_0006.tif ScanImage02_page_0007.tif ScanImage02_page_0008.tif ScanImage02_page_0009.tif ScanImage02_page_0010.tif ScanImage02_page_0011.tif ScanImage02_page_0012.tif ScanImage02_page_0013.tif ScanImage02_page_0014.tif

[+pixelpedant]

Thanks!  I've updated the original post to include the paginated/OCRed Soundtrack Trolley manual PDF.  Which means that's all of them, for the released MBX titles and hardware.

 

 

[TeddyBear89]

Just a "thank you" to all who contributed to this thread.  I came across Bigfoot today on Ebay, got intrigued, started wondering what in the hell a MBX was and finally found this thread.  Knowing that having a MBX is not a requirement to play this game was very helpful.

 

Cart will be on its way, manual is already printed and I do have a speech synthesizer .........

[+pixelpedant]

Nice!  Yeah, it's a great game, and really doesn't require the MBX at all. 

 

Only advantage with the MBX is that all the speech samples always play without interruption when playing via MBX and they sound a little better than the TI samples to me. 

 

But on the other hand, to me it doesn't make any sense to play with the MBX joystick, since the game is strictly four-directional.

[+Airshack]

On 10/7/2020 at 1:20 AM, pixelpedant said:

I do hope that we can see more development, at some point.  Barry Boone's library of (possibly functional) routines are a good starting point, anyway. 

Would love to do so if I could find some documentation to these routines. Boone’s code seems like the much needed MBX Rosetta Stone. Would really enjoy seeing these routines deciphered and documented. 

[+acadiel]

Here's a disk with most of the cartridges dumped (HSGPL images - which CAN run MBX carts).  

 - see post #5.