I have the MBX for the TI-99/4A. Mine was purchased in 1983 brand new from Parco Electrics in Devon. It plugs in to the cassette port and joystick port and gives a separate spech synthesiser, two amazing analogue joysticks, a touch pad, and speech recognition.
Just had to say I grew up in the 70's and 80's with my best friend, and his father worked at Texas Instruments in Lubbock Texas. He always had the new computers at the time.
4:17 Hunt the Wumpas is one of the first games I rember playing as a kid in the early 80s on a TI99. I think it belonged to my dad's boss and he lent it to us. I also remember that racing game at the beginning. I also remember the cat and mouse maze game at 11:34
Oh it gets better! In the fall of 1978 TI approach Mattel about using the same chipset for what would become the Intellivision. They wanted multiple compatible consoles on the market, starting with MB and Mattel. Mattel were interested, but wanted changes to the architecture and TI were unwilling to make them, so the deal never happened. You can see contemporary documentation of this on slide 5 of the document "Intellivision History and Philosophy" in the "other documents" section of PapaIntellivision.
I think the differentiation between the “home computer” and the “console” was a bit more blurry than we think off looking back. “It has a keyboard it’s not a console” is a way more developed idea. Back then I thought of the Ti and the Commodore 64 and all those basic home computers as a “games console” that could do other stuff… maybe, just a thought
Absolutely. It's an unpopular opinion, but as someone who remembers the early 80's clearly, I will always credit the exact product murkiness you describe as the PRIMARY cause of the "video game crash". (That, and the recession of 81/82 in second place, with the poor software argument actually coming in third..of the four main causes I can think of). Of course, we didn't realize it at the time, but it all seems VERY deliberate to me now in retrospect. Apple was making way more profit from their computers than anyone else was making with console hardware, so why wouldn't all the competing suits pivot their corporations over to the "home computer" (wink wink) side of the aisles instead? Unfortunately for them (and for many North American boys who didn't make the leap for a multitude of economic and psychological reasons) the circumstances just weren't right for PCs to dominate, and the jump to micros that happened in not-as-good-weather Europe didn't happen nearly as much here as I am sure the execs had hoped. I can recount it clearly...the average kid in Los Angeles, where I lived, attending private school, didn't go gaga for home computers in a mainstream way until Wolfenstein 3D came out...maaybe just a bit earlier. Home Computer gaming before 88/89/90 was the domain of above-average brains and pretty much no one else.
“TI Invaders” is the best game of it’s type from that era. Loved it. They were completely right to skip on the console release. Too much competition in a rapidly-changing market. As usual, Laird, you made a great video. I can’t help but think what COULD have been if Coleco and Texas Instruments collaborated on a computer. The Adam could have been a supercharged TI-994A instead of the mess we got. Of course, it would need a slot for Colecovision cartridges……..
The TI console basically was the Colecovision, it pretty much used the same CPU and GPU! I think there were 2-3 other consoles which used a similar setup! The TI994/a is a tragedy it was a huge step up compared to what was on the market when it came out but it was treated by TI as a stepchild when the first problems saleswise arose!
This was a great look at what could have been. Messing around with the TI-99/4A with dad are some great memories from my youth, especially playing MASH. Though the world never got a an actual TI-branded console, TI certainly left their mark in the home game space with the TMS9918 and it's derivatives and same with the SN94624, plus later in the arcades with the TMS320 series and TMS34010/34020. Not to mention how just plain cool the speech synth was, on the 99 and in all of those Atari arcade games. It would certainly be neat if any prototypes of this and MBX showed up at some point.
The MBX wasn't a prototype, they were available in 1983. My dad bought me mine from Parco Electrics in Devon. I've always been in to the TI since age 12 and the UK user group is still ticking along today 😁 THE best home computer of the era.
I worked for Milton Bradley for two years and u wouldn't even know they've ever made a video game if u visited the headquarters. They made monopoly for the NES which is actually a programming marvel with it mathematics and game rules. The Beverly Massachusetts plant had a small fire in 1997 and it destroyed a lot of the antiques/storage area. The only big piece of history that survived was the gold plated version u saw in the pretty woman movie and the monopoly board game that hit maps in the cardboard for pow in the world wars.
I played a version of one of these. I was in Lubbock going to school and a friend I grew up with worked at TI. The player was at his house in a pretty finished state as far as I knew. One of my favorite games on it had colonies of spiders popping out of blocks, it was very unique gameplay. I thought it was the best game I played at that time. I always wondered why this was never released. Unrelated, but at the time, TI had great temp part time jobs toward Christmas time. $10 hr for light assembly work. That was a mountain of cash to a college student at the time.
It seems unlikely that this would have set the gaming world on fire had it been released in 1979. Most American console gamers at the time were still happy with their "good enough" Atari 2600. Still, it's an interesting bit of history.
I loved my TI-994a as a kid... it felt like a real step up from my Atari and is still underrated. I never knew they had console plans but would have been very into it.
Well, anything is a step up from an Atari. Architecturally the TI 99 was an absolute mess, one of the most poorly designed home micros. It had a mixture of forward thinking ideas (the sidecar expansion bus) and utterly bizarre, brain-crippled decisions (the whole GROM architecture) which reduced a 16 bit chip to performance on par with a slow 8 bit computer.
Took the words right out of my mouth! Except it was my first anything and honestly looking back and comparing what was out there, it was horribly underrated!
@@cygil1 ah...the internet.... where dulalrds share their ignorance with like-minded idiots. Step up from the "Atari" - how to tell us you don't know anything about the time, or the systems out. LOL!!! Big step up except for.... speed, graphics, sound, memory, and software library.... TI wisely aimed this at the VIC 20, not Atari. Compared to the VIC it was indeed an excellent system, but in the end, they couldn't even compete with that. I owned an Apple 2e, TI 99/4a, 5200, 800xl......and in fact, still have the original systems EXCEPT for the TI. lol.
The colecovision really did feel like a supercharged TI so a console based around the same hardware seems superfluous... But I did spend enough time staring at the tv with my ti as kid to give myself myopia. It was a flawed system but competitive enough with the far more expensive Apple IIs at school that I didn't feel lacking
I'm always sad when I find out about what could have been. Of course, there are lots of stories of failure for every story of success (Coleco Amico, anyone?). I recently got a TI-99/4A cheap from eBay - No peripherals or power supply yet, but someday soon. All my friends/family had Atari 2600's and Commodore computers except one friend who had a TI. We played a few games on it from time to time, but generally stuck with the Commodore.
We also owned one with the speech synthesizer and expansion module with more memory (I think my dad had plans to get a floppy). Our upgrade was to the Tandy 1000 EX.
My first computer was a TI99/4A. Can't say a used it a hell of a lot back then but I certainly have more than made up for that within the last couple decades. Especially since I was finally able to get all of the peripherals and games that were prohibitively expensive back then. I never knew they had planned on a game console and different level computers. I know they were going to release the successor to the TI99/4a, the TI-99/8. It was developed and show to dealers but cancelled before any release when Texas Instruments decided to leave the personal computer market. A system that had similar aspects to the unreleased TI-99/8 was the Tomy Tutor.
I wouldn't say the software or hardware is more affordable now, if you're looking at new or nearly new. Anything sealed, brand new (now, on eBay) costs as much or MORE than it did "back in the day". When eBay first started and people realized they could "get rid of" their TI-99/4A stuff without having to hold a garage sale... you could buy everything SO INEXPENSIVELY!! I don't think I need to tell anyone what 99/4A gear (new OR used) costs on eBay today, with the "retro" craze in high gear! 🙄
When I was a kid I remember trying the flight commander demo in a store. I've always wondered what it was called cuz I do not remember seeing it since that time until this video. I even thought that it was never sold.
I guess it is hard to tell if it was a good idea to release that console. They cripled the TI99/4 to reduce costs (8 bit memory for example while the cpu was 16 bit) and still that wasn't the cheapest way to make a computer. So making a console that way would result in not the cheapest one compared to the others at that time. Going for full 16 bit at that time was out of the question, but if they made something with a Z80A and their own chips could have been worked. That is more or less what the MSX1 used, and there are plenty good games for it.
I think Texas Instruments (TI) was banking on being able to use mostly their own chips to control costs. It is a shame that they crippled the result by bottlenecking the ram and peripherals that way, though. They should have considered a design that would have permitting extending at least the main ram to 16-bits later on if you were willing to spend the money.
To answer your question posed: In retrospect TI and then MB probably made the right call to not proceed with the game system. If they had gotten it out a full year or more before the collecovision it might have worked out. But if they came out after the Collecovision, it would have flopped like a few Japanese systems you have covered ( Bandai's). I wonder, being that I was a 3rd grader or so, were there any business analysts predicting a North American Video Game bubble... prior to the crash? Was the NA video game crash a total shock to everyone? It seems in hindsight.. the indicators were there. TI employed some pretty bright people. They are currently around 200 on the Fortune 500. It seems they saw the future was brighter in analog controllers used in many weapons systems including Javelin. But I think they sold that to Raytheon. Even more interesting in TI history is the major role they played in the Apollo program, including Apollo 11. They still have a joint partnership or two with NASA. All that puts into perspective cancelling a game console a little bit. It doesn't seem to have hurt them. Although it would have been cool to see what they would have done if they stayed in Games.
That MBX joystick looks just like the Atari 2600’s Pro controller except with three buttons instead of just one. I wonder what the story behind that is?
It's the same joystick, MB released it for the 2600 later, I did briefly mention MB's late and short-lived Atari ventures in the video but perhaps I should have talked about that a bit more.
Well i wish the mbx was released as a standalone console but instead it was released in limited quantities as an addon for the ti99, Well that texas instrument game console was cancled,is not a problem since the ti99 4 and 4/A serves as both a game console and computer,look what atari did they did came as apposed to texus instruments with waaay too many systems with similar technology but targetting different markets such as the atari 400 & 800, atari 5200,atari xe and atari 65xe,wich only flooded the market and probably caused confusion among consumers,phew🤣
Have you done a story on the debacle of the Konix console? I remember reading about the ever increasing specs and features in computer mags when I was a kid
This console sounds awfully similar to Atari's attempt to make it's Atari XE computer into a Videogame Console in the Atari XEGS. I owned a XEGS as well and I must admit it had the best version of Donkey Kong for home consoles. Even better than the Colecovision's version. The Atari XEGS had the Donkey Kong intro screen where Kong jumps up and down shaking the rafters into the walkable path. It also had all the Donkey Kong levels which most version don't have.
Hard to believe the MBX had hardware real-time ray/path tracing with 240 frames per second 8K rendering. Talk about being obviously technologically superior to the VCS/2600! J/k
I owned one of these.. Was so disappointed in all of it. Speech and joystick wasn't compatible with anything but their crap. I played a lot of baseball but not much else
Ironically, the games Atari released for the 99 4/a are some of the best on the computer. TI was so angry that Atari went around their licensing -- they released that beige version of the TI that locked out the Atari carts.
I just came across over the holiday weekend a collector who asked me to see his private collection and what i saw blew my mind. Did u know theres a russian game and watch clone game(i dont know name) that has a radiation dosimeter built into it? I tried to buy it, he said no. I said how much would make him think differently aboust selling it and he said 1000. God i was tempted. Have you heard of this game and watch of which i speak
Texas Instruments isn't exactly a company or microcomputer (I believe it has a different name but usually I see people refer to it as a Texas Instrument) I have much familiarity with but I do love hearing trivia about consoles that could have been. 1:37 - Consider me intrigued indeed. 3:40 - It did seem like they were spreading themselves a bit thin with 4 different systems all at once. I would have thought the more sensible idea would have been to release a micro-computer and then later make the console based off it's architecture when the prices went down (plus, not having to worry about the OS and other computer-focused features). 4:28 - Oh, so exactly like I was thinking except they are doing it backwards with the console first and then building upwards. Given the console never came to be, this is an interesting starting point. 7:04 - So how does the Atari 400 and 800 scale compared to the Atari 5200? It seems like the latter could have been an easier, more affordable and more expansive console (if it was made compatible with 400/800 games) if Atari had returned to this route. Also, in regards to the Milton Bradley involvement, did they already have the Microvision out at the time with Texas Instruments wanting to partner with them? 8:48 - He had good sense about the crowded market thing. It would explain why Milton Bradley would get involved with the more distinct and unique Vectrex. (Hilariously, I typed out this comment before I saw the 9:02 moment. What a prediction).
This was just before Microvision, although as that came out in 1979 both would have launched around the same time. The 5200 is just a 400 with a different ROM, different controller and different cartridge slot. They would have been much better off with a XEGS like system instead IMO.
Thanks for the answer; I find it tricky remembering the dates for the numerous Gen 2 systems. So The Atari 5200 was a scaled down 400 then? Was it compatible with the same software then?@@TheLairdsLair
No, as I said the 5200 has a different ROM, different cartridge slot and analogue controllers. So despite the actual hardware being identical to an Atari 400, those small changes made it incompatible. Hence why I think a XEGS like console in 1981 would have been a MUCH better option.
Thank you for an interesting video on both Tech and Videogame history I was not even aware of!!
I have the MBX for the TI-99/4A. Mine was purchased in 1983 brand new from Parco Electrics in Devon. It plugs in to the cassette port and joystick port and gives a separate spech synthesiser, two amazing analogue joysticks, a touch pad, and speech recognition.
Just had to say I grew up in the 70's and 80's with my best friend, and his father worked at Texas Instruments in Lubbock Texas. He always had the new computers at the time.
4:17 Hunt the Wumpas is one of the first games I rember playing as a kid in the early 80s on a TI99. I think it belonged to my dad's boss and he lent it to us. I also remember that racing game at the beginning. I also remember the cat and mouse maze game at 11:34
In that commercial with Cosby, it doesn't seem possible for the computer to display the "Texas Instruments" logo and text that it appears to show.
Oh it gets better! In the fall of 1978 TI approach Mattel about using the same chipset for what would become the Intellivision. They wanted multiple compatible consoles on the market, starting with MB and Mattel. Mattel were interested, but wanted changes to the architecture and TI were unwilling to make them, so the deal never happened. You can see contemporary documentation of this on slide 5 of the document "Intellivision History and Philosophy" in the "other documents" section of PapaIntellivision.
Very interesting! I didn't find anything about that in my research, I shall have to investigate more!
I think the differentiation between the “home computer” and the “console” was a bit more blurry than we think off looking back. “It has a keyboard it’s not a console” is a way more developed idea. Back then I thought of the Ti and the Commodore 64 and all those basic home computers as a “games console” that could do other stuff… maybe, just a thought
Absolutely. It's an unpopular opinion, but as someone who remembers the early 80's clearly, I will always credit the exact product murkiness you describe as the PRIMARY cause of the "video game crash". (That, and the recession of 81/82 in second place, with the poor software argument actually coming in third..of the four main causes I can think of). Of course, we didn't realize it at the time, but it all seems VERY deliberate to me now in retrospect. Apple was making way more profit from their computers than anyone else was making with console hardware, so why wouldn't all the competing suits pivot their corporations over to the "home computer" (wink wink) side of the aisles instead? Unfortunately for them (and for many North American boys who didn't make the leap for a multitude of economic and psychological reasons) the circumstances just weren't right for PCs to dominate, and the jump to micros that happened in not-as-good-weather Europe didn't happen nearly as much here as I am sure the execs had hoped. I can recount it clearly...the average kid in Los Angeles, where I lived, attending private school, didn't go gaga for home computers in a mainstream way until Wolfenstein 3D came out...maaybe just a bit earlier. Home Computer gaming before 88/89/90 was the domain of above-average brains and pretty much no one else.
Well if its good enough for bill cosby.........
Use of drugs was required to enhance the graphics back then. Cosby sure knew his drugs...
Later Bill Cosby poured the computer a drink.
Love these sorts of stories. Thanks for the video.
“TI Invaders” is the best game of it’s type from that era. Loved it. They were completely right to skip on the console release. Too much competition in a rapidly-changing market. As usual, Laird, you made a great video.
I can’t help but think what COULD have been if Coleco and Texas Instruments collaborated on a computer. The Adam could have been a supercharged TI-994A instead of the mess we got. Of course, it would need a slot for Colecovision cartridges……..
The TI console basically was the Colecovision, it pretty much used the same CPU and GPU!
I think there were 2-3 other consoles which used a similar setup!
The TI994/a is a tragedy it was a huge step up compared to what was on the market when it came out but it was treated by TI as a stepchild when the first problems saleswise arose!
This was a great look at what could have been. Messing around with the TI-99/4A with dad are some great memories from my youth, especially playing MASH. Though the world never got a an actual TI-branded console, TI certainly left their mark in the home game space with the TMS9918 and it's derivatives and same with the SN94624, plus later in the arcades with the TMS320 series and TMS34010/34020. Not to mention how just plain cool the speech synth was, on the 99 and in all of those Atari arcade games. It would certainly be neat if any prototypes of this and MBX showed up at some point.
The MBX wasn't a prototype, they were available in 1983. My dad bought me mine from Parco Electrics in Devon. I've always been in to the TI since age 12 and the UK user group is still ticking along today 😁 THE best home computer of the era.
He means the MBX console, not the add-on.
@@TheLairdsLair Yes, I was talking about the stand-alone console from MB that they abandoned in favor of the TI-99 expansion MBX.
I worked for Milton Bradley for two years and u wouldn't even know they've ever made a video game if u visited the headquarters. They made monopoly for the NES which is actually a programming marvel with it mathematics and game rules. The Beverly Massachusetts plant had a small fire in 1997 and it destroyed a lot of the antiques/storage area. The only big piece of history that survived was the gold plated version u saw in the pretty woman movie and the monopoly board game that hit maps in the cardboard for pow in the world wars.
I played a version of one of these. I was in Lubbock going to school and a friend I grew up with worked at TI. The player was at his house in a pretty finished state as far as I knew. One of my favorite games on it had colonies of spiders popping out of blocks, it was very unique gameplay. I thought it was the best game I played at that time. I always wondered why this was never released.
Unrelated, but at the time, TI had great temp part time jobs toward Christmas time. $10 hr for light assembly work. That was a mountain of cash to a college student at the time.
Sounds like The Attack, which I featured in my TI99 exclusives video that is linked in the description.
It seems unlikely that this would have set the gaming world on fire had it been released in 1979. Most American console gamers at the time were still happy with their "good enough" Atari 2600. Still, it's an interesting bit of history.
Thank you so much for this video ! I never heard of this console before, it could have been great ! Parsec is such a great shoot 'em up !
I nevwr saw any of those ti 99 4a ads because i was born in 82 and no one i knew had a computer in the 80s.
"This is the one" Bill Cosby
---As he sllips a quaalude in her wine.
The Apple 1984 commercial may be ironic in retrospect but at least they didn't get a sexual predator in their ads lol
I loved my TI-994a as a kid... it felt like a real step up from my Atari and is still underrated. I never knew they had console plans but would have been very into it.
Well, anything is a step up from an Atari. Architecturally the TI 99 was an absolute mess, one of the most poorly designed home micros. It had a mixture of forward thinking ideas (the sidecar expansion bus) and utterly bizarre, brain-crippled decisions (the whole GROM architecture) which reduced a 16 bit chip to performance on par with a slow 8 bit computer.
Took the words right out of my mouth! Except it was my first anything and honestly looking back and comparing what was out there, it was horribly underrated!
@@cygil1 ah...the internet.... where dulalrds share their ignorance with like-minded idiots. Step up from the "Atari" - how to tell us you don't know anything about the time, or the systems out. LOL!!!
Big step up except for.... speed, graphics, sound, memory, and software library.... TI wisely aimed this at the VIC 20, not Atari. Compared to the VIC it was indeed an excellent system, but in the end, they couldn't even compete with that.
I owned an Apple 2e, TI 99/4a, 5200, 800xl......and in fact, still have the original systems EXCEPT for the TI. lol.
The colecovision really did feel like a supercharged TI so a console based around the same hardware seems superfluous... But I did spend enough time staring at the tv with my ti as kid to give myself myopia. It was a flawed system but competitive enough with the far more expensive Apple IIs at school that I didn't feel lacking
I can't remember if my first game system was TI99 or Atari 7800 .. but definitely among my earliest memories
I'm always sad when I find out about what could have been. Of course, there are lots of stories of failure for every story of success (Coleco Amico, anyone?).
I recently got a TI-99/4A cheap from eBay - No peripherals or power supply yet, but someday soon. All my friends/family had Atari 2600's and Commodore computers except one friend who had a TI. We played a few games on it from time to time, but generally stuck with the Commodore.
S.T.U.N. Runner. Wow that takes me back.
Fuck yeah bet you could get Super Hunt The Wumpus 3D for this thing
we had the ti-99 than upgraded to a c64, alpiner is stained in my memory
We also owned one with the speech synthesizer and expansion module with more memory (I think my dad had plans to get a floppy). Our upgrade was to the Tandy 1000 EX.
My first computer was a TI99/4A. Can't say a used it a hell of a lot back then but I certainly have more than made up for that within the last couple decades. Especially since I was finally able to get all of the peripherals and games that were prohibitively expensive back then.
I never knew they had planned on a game console and different level computers. I know they were going to release the successor to the TI99/4a, the TI-99/8. It was developed and show to dealers but cancelled before any release when Texas Instruments decided to leave the personal computer market. A system that had similar aspects to the unreleased TI-99/8 was the Tomy Tutor.
I talked about the Tomy Tutor in the TI99 Amazing Facts video, which is linked in the description.
@@TheLairdsLair Sounds good. I'll give it a go.
I wouldn't say the software or hardware is more affordable now, if you're looking at new or nearly new. Anything sealed, brand new (now, on eBay) costs as much or MORE than it did "back in the day". When eBay first started and people realized they could "get rid of" their TI-99/4A stuff without having to hold a garage sale... you could buy everything SO INEXPENSIVELY!! I don't think I need to tell anyone what 99/4A gear (new OR used) costs on eBay today, with the "retro" craze in high gear! 🙄
Interesting joystick design. Good video.
With hind sight and the US market for consoles about to go all pear shaped, I think not going forward with this project was the best thing to do.
When I was a kid I remember trying the flight commander demo in a store. I've always wondered what it was called cuz I do not remember seeing it since that time until this video. I even thought that it was never sold.
I guess it is hard to tell if it was a good idea to release that console. They cripled the TI99/4 to reduce costs (8 bit memory for example while the cpu was 16 bit) and still that wasn't the cheapest way to make a computer. So making a console that way would result in not the cheapest one compared to the others at that time. Going for full 16 bit at that time was out of the question, but if they made something with a Z80A and their own chips could have been worked. That is more or less what the MSX1 used, and there are plenty good games for it.
I think Texas Instruments (TI) was banking on being able to use mostly their own chips to control costs. It is a shame that they crippled the result by bottlenecking the ram and peripherals that way, though.
They should have considered a design that would have permitting extending at least the main ram to 16-bits later on if you were willing to spend the money.
To answer your question posed: In retrospect TI and then MB probably made the right call to not proceed with the game system. If they had gotten it out a full year or more before the collecovision it might have worked out. But if they came out after the Collecovision, it would have flopped like a few Japanese systems you have covered ( Bandai's). I wonder, being that I was a 3rd grader or so, were there any business analysts predicting a North American Video Game bubble... prior to the crash? Was the NA video game crash a total shock to everyone? It seems in hindsight.. the indicators were there. TI employed some pretty bright people. They are currently around 200 on the Fortune 500. It seems they saw the future was brighter in analog controllers used in many weapons systems including Javelin. But I think they sold that to Raytheon.
Even more interesting in TI history is the major role they played in the Apollo program, including Apollo 11. They still have a joint partnership or two with NASA.
All that puts into perspective cancelling a game console a little bit. It doesn't seem to have hurt them.
Although it would have been cool to see what they would have done if they stayed in Games.
The Colecovision basically was a TI994/a in console form!
That MBX joystick looks just like the Atari 2600’s Pro controller except with three buttons instead of just one. I wonder what the story behind that is?
It's the same joystick, MB released it for the 2600 later, I did briefly mention MB's late and short-lived Atari ventures in the video but perhaps I should have talked about that a bit more.
0:24 the little swastika's in the maze are a hilarious oversight by the game artist. I hope it's an oversight anyway.
Well i wish the mbx was released as a standalone console but instead it was released in limited quantities as an addon for the ti99,
Well that texas instrument game console was cancled,is not a problem since the ti99 4 and 4/A serves as both a game console and computer,look what atari did they did came as apposed to texus instruments with waaay too many systems with similar technology but targetting different markets such as the atari 400 & 800, atari 5200,atari xe and atari 65xe,wich only flooded the market and probably caused confusion among consumers,phew🤣
Have you done a story on the debacle of the Konix console? I remember reading about the ever increasing specs and features in computer mags when I was a kid
Not yet, purely because the subject is so complex I didn't know how to approach it!
There were certainly a lot of moving parts
This console sounds awfully similar to Atari's attempt to make it's Atari XE computer into a Videogame Console in the Atari XEGS. I owned a XEGS as well and I must admit it had the best version of Donkey Kong for home consoles. Even better than the Colecovision's version. The Atari XEGS had the Donkey Kong intro screen where Kong jumps up and down shaking the rafters into the walkable path. It also had all the Donkey Kong levels which most version don't have.
Hard to believe the MBX had hardware real-time ray/path tracing with 240 frames per second 8K rendering. Talk about being obviously technologically superior to the VCS/2600! J/k
I owned one of these.. Was so disappointed in all of it. Speech and joystick wasn't compatible with anything but their crap. I played a lot of baseball but not much else
Ironically, the games Atari released for the 99 4/a are some of the best on the computer. TI was so angry that Atari went around their licensing -- they released that beige version of the TI that locked out the Atari carts.
1:55 Why'd you do that to those women Bill, why???
Yes...but can they run Crysis? Obviously I'm joking, this is pretty neat.
the WHOOOLE WOOORLD XD :D
I just came across over the holiday weekend a collector who asked me to see his private collection and what i saw blew my mind. Did u know theres a russian game and watch clone game(i dont know name) that has a radiation dosimeter built into it? I tried to buy it, he said no. I said how much would make him think differently aboust selling it and he said 1000. God i was tempted. Have you heard of this game and watch of which i speak
No idea, never heard of that!
Texas Instruments isn't exactly a company or microcomputer (I believe it has a different name but usually I see people refer to it as a Texas Instrument) I have much familiarity with but I do love hearing trivia about consoles that could have been.
1:37 - Consider me intrigued indeed.
3:40 - It did seem like they were spreading themselves a bit thin with 4 different systems all at once. I would have thought the more sensible idea would have been to release a micro-computer and then later make the console based off it's architecture when the prices went down (plus, not having to worry about the OS and other computer-focused features).
4:28 - Oh, so exactly like I was thinking except they are doing it backwards with the console first and then building upwards. Given the console never came to be, this is an interesting starting point.
7:04 - So how does the Atari 400 and 800 scale compared to the Atari 5200? It seems like the latter could have been an easier, more affordable and more expansive console (if it was made compatible with 400/800 games) if Atari had returned to this route. Also, in regards to the Milton Bradley involvement, did they already have the Microvision out at the time with Texas Instruments wanting to partner with them?
8:48 - He had good sense about the crowded market thing. It would explain why Milton Bradley would get involved with the more distinct and unique Vectrex. (Hilariously, I typed out this comment before I saw the 9:02 moment. What a prediction).
This was just before Microvision, although as that came out in 1979 both would have launched around the same time.
The 5200 is just a 400 with a different ROM, different controller and different cartridge slot. They would have been much better off with a XEGS like system instead IMO.
Thanks for the answer; I find it tricky remembering the dates for the numerous Gen 2 systems.
So The Atari 5200 was a scaled down 400 then? Was it compatible with the same software then?@@TheLairdsLair
No, as I said the 5200 has a different ROM, different cartridge slot and analogue controllers. So despite the actual hardware being identical to an Atari 400, those small changes made it incompatible.
Hence why I think a XEGS like console in 1981 would have been a MUCH better option.