PixlBit

After our TRS-80, our family's next home computer was the TI-99/4A, which my dad bought in 1981-82. The TRS-80 belonged to my mother, the TI belonged to my dad. My dad was less open to allowing me to play with his computers since he used them for work, so it was a treat to get to play this one.

The TI-99/4A, famously advertised by Bill Cosby, was billed as the first 16-bit computer ever. Unlike the TRS-80, it had color graphics and sound. It hooked up to a color TV instead of requiring its own proprietary monitor. It came with two joysticks that plugged into a standard 9-pin Atari-style jack. In addition to floppy disks and cassettes, it also took its own cartridges (called "Command Modules"), most of which were games but some of which were business and finance software. Imagine a home finance spreadsheet on a cartridge and there you have it. Of course, I was mostly interested in the games... and here they are.

Tombstone City: 21st Century

This was a somewhat novel idea for a game. Set in a computerized Arizona landscape, you had to deal with aliens that were birthed from mated pairs of saguaro cacti. Shooting the aliens would turn them into cacti, but if three cacti were together at a time, they'd be wiped out, decreasing the number of alien spawning areas. Eventually, if you didn't act fast, you'd be overwhelmed with aliens. You could shoot tumbleweeds for bonus points as well.

Car Wars

Car Wars was a Texas Instruments-made clone of Dodge 'Em for the Atari 2600. You drove a car through a symmetrical maze collecting dots while trying to avoid one to three enemy cars trying to ram into you. You could not turn around, only change lanes. It actually had pretty good sound effects for an early 80s game.

TI Invaders

Yep, another Space Invaders clone, albeit in color. The starting aliens were even the exact same as Taito's arcade game. As far as I know, Taito never sued Texas Instruments over this game though they might have been able to win. However, the game would add new aliens as you cleared stages while older and less valuable aliens were phased out.

Munch-Man

Guess what this is? It did have a few twists on Pac-Man, though. Instead of eating dots, your green Munch-Man would lay a chain behind him and your object was, of course, to chain the entire maze. The four monsters, red, yellow, blue, and black, changed shape every level. The mazes had a pseudo 3-D perspective look to them, and the power pellets were the letters "TI" alternating with silhouettes of the state of Texas.

Beginning Grammar

A little edutainment title that I was well familiar with, being that I was of the right demographic (4 or 5 years old) for it at that time in my life. I guess that my dad bought it for me. It had little games that taught you about the different parts of speech. I think I did learn a fair bit from it, though it was a few years before I understood adverbs.

Later in its life, the TI did get officially licensed versions of popular Namco, Williams, and Nintendo arcade games through licensees like Parker Bros and Atarisoft, which was Atari's arm for publishing titles on non-Atari hardware. I had Defender, though it wasn't as good as the Atari 130XE version.

I also dabbled in BASIC on this computer as well, typing in cheesy little game programs from books on BASIC and computer magazines and saving them on cassette tapes.

The TI was a short-lived computer, with software being pretty much nonexistent for it by 1985 or so. But by then, my family had moved onto its next computer - the excellent Atari 130XE. Stay tuned...