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NEVER4.TXT
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2006-10-19
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER MARCH 1990
^^^^^^ NEVER RELEASED OFFICIAL TI MODULES:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^PART 4. -- GAMES
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group
WING WAR:
The title screen says "Texas Instruments presents Wing
War, copyright IMAGIC 1983." You see an elaborately
detailed underground cavern with stalagtites, stalagmites,
etc. A pair of birds descend from the ceiling, and the
speech synthesizer says in a very realistic voice,
"Adventures await dragon master." A dragon appears in the
lower part of the screen that you control with the joystick.
You make the dragon fly by flapping its wings, accompanied
by very realistic flapping wing sounds. The dragon can spit
out fireballs which will melt the rock walls of the cavern
and allow access to goodies that you can see imbedded in the
rock. There are holes in the top of the cavern, and the
dragon can fly out these holes to the open sky. Various
treasures and things can be found floating around in the
sky.
On screen instructions give you the following
information:
Collect crystals for power.
Obtain treasures from a cave.
Blast rocks in sky for gifts.
Wash crystals and treasures in the magic fountains (you
find lots of these in your travals around the caverns) and
then take them to your lair.
JS or keyboard.
To move press left or right.
To fly down press up.
To fire fireballs press down.
To fly up press firebutton.
Talk about confusing instructions! "To fly down press
up." I never did really get the hang of controlling the
dragon, mainly because the consfusing use of joystick
movements. Why not, for example, press the firebutton to
fire fireballs. Movement of the dragon responds
realistically to the earth's gravity. If you press the fire
button a couple of times (for up), the dragon will shoot up
even after you let go of the fire button. Its rate of
upward movement will gradually slow and then it will start
to sink unless you give it a few more jolts of "up" with the
firebutton. When set in motion left/right, the dragon will
continue to move after the joystick is released, but will
gradually sink to the bottom of the cave unless some "up"
force is also applied. These sorts of movements are just
what one would expect from analysis of vector physics on a
free moving body influenced by gravity.
According to the on screen instructions, scoring is as
follows:
Purified crystals..........10
Super crystals............100
Super super crystals......500
Eggs (game over)..........512
Lives (game over)........1024
Mate.....................1000
Treasures....multiples of 256
Fireballs (game over).......1
Presumably the word "Mate" above is a noun rather than
a verb. I have never found a mate in my bumbling around
with this game. When one of the creepy things in the cave
kills you and you lose a life, the computer says "Alas."
When you are down to your last dragon (life), the computer
says "No eggs left in lair, master." When your last dragon
bites the dust, the game ends with the computer saying "Our
glory is now only a passing memory."
MOUSE ATTACK:
The title screen reads "by Don Fitchhorn, copyright
1983 Sierra On-Line". This game is another PacMan look
alike for one or two players. The players are "plumbers"
who have to traverse every spot in the maze before moving on
to the next screen. There are three mice that float around
the maze. At specific times the plumber can catch mice for
extra points. At most times the mice chase and try to kill
the plumber.
At the beginning of the game, you are given the
opportunity to change defaults, as follows:
1 or 2 players
Keyboard or Joystick. If you chose the keyboard, you
are given the option of using the ESDX or the ESDF keys for
movement.
Music YN
Sound effects YN
Character speed 1= slow 9= fast
The ability to set the speed of each of the two
possible plumbers and each of the three mice individually is
a nice feature. You can set up this game so that any klutz
can get lots and lots of points. Just set your plumber
speed for maximum and the mice speed for minimum. It is
really hard to get killed this way, and the game can go on
almost forever. I have seen my 9 year old spend several
hours just piling up the points with Mouse Attack set up
this way.
SUB OCEANIC:
The title screen says "by Dominic J.^Melfi, copyright
1982 by Texas Instruments Incorporated. Press enter or
joystick fire to use keyboard or joystick."
You command a submarine and can move rapidly left/right
and up/down under water, or surface. You fire vertical
torpedos at an endless host of ships, planes of various
types, and helicopters that are out to get you. Your
torpedos pop right out of the water and up into the sky to
hit the planes. The opposition drops depth charge clusters
and rapidly falling vertical torpedos which you must dodge.
After you have been hit a few times you can't dive down as
far into the ocean, and eventually you must stay on the
surface. This brings the game to a rapid end, because on or
near the surface your reaction time to dodge the incoming
torpedos is greatly reduced.
There is alot of fast action and eye/hand coordination
in Sub Oceanic. It is your typical "shoot up the never
ending hords of bad guys" kind of game. The 1982 copyright
suprises me. Apparently this is not a module that was
abandoned by TI when they left the home computer market.
The 1982 date suggests that TI had previously decided not to
market this module.
PADDLE BALL:
"Copyright 1983 TI." Do you remember when TV games
first became popular? Just before the original Atari game
system was marketed the most popular TV game was PONG,
which resembled ping pong. This is TI's version of PONG,
with lots of possible variations. What I have is an EA5
file that will load and run out of a GramKracker in the
usual way and which can also be loaded and run using an
ordinary E/A module without a gram device or supercart.
After booting, if you just leave this module on the screen
without pressing keys the module will eventually shift into
a self demonstration mode and illustrate automatically all
of the following options.
1. Single ball
2. With central fog area
3. Center field blockades
4. 2 balls
5. Double blockades
6. 3 balls
7. Bomb with blockades
8. 2 bombs
9. Hole paddle on screen 3
10.^Hole paddle on screen 4
A center field blockade is a moving bar with a hole in
it near the center of the screen. The bouncing ball may go
through the blockade if it passes through the hole.
Otherwise the ball hits the blockade and rapidly bounces
back toward the paddle. A bomb is a ball that randomly
turns from green to red. When it is green, you are supposed
to hit it with the paddle as is normal. When the ball is red
you must AVOID touching the ball with the paddle or you
loose the turn. Bombs change color rapidly and randomly,
making game play very interesting.
This is my personal favorite of this bunch of never
released modules. The action is fast and there is lots of
variety. I think this would have been a commercial success
for TI.
SIMON SAYS!
That's what the title screen says, complete with
explamation mark. There is no copyright notice. This is
your typical SIMON game in which you are asked to exactly
repeat an ever increasing sequence of ESDX keypresses. Each
keypress generates a different tone. With each successful
try the computer adds one keypress to the end of the
sequence. There are four levels of difficulty, but I can't
tell what the difference in difficulty is. Each level seems
to play the tones at the same speed. If you make a mistake
you are given the opportunity to review the keypress/tone
sequence before continuing the game or starting another
game.
There is nothing fancy about SIMON SAYS!, but I like it
anyway. It is as fast, as colorful, and as pleasing to the
ear as any of the stand alone SIMON electronic games that
were sold a few years ago.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
In ending this series of "never released modules"
articles, I want to acknowledge the assistance of Mike
Wright (TI Sig, Boston Computer Society), and Gary Cox (Mid
South 99ers). These individuals provided me with much of
the software described in these articles.
.PL 1