ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER APRIL 1990 ^^^ NEVER RELEASED OFFICIAL TI MODULES - PART 5 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group I'll bet you thought that last month's PART 4 would be the last of this series. Well, so did I. However, some additional "never released" software has been made available to me (thanks in part to Gary Taylor of the Pittsburg UG), and I have found some more literature references to the never released material. The day that this article was being polished up for the last time, prior to newsletter publication, I received some more never released official TI software in the mail from Gary Taylor. This means that next month there will be a "Part 6" to this series. SOME MORE HISTORY: This is an "official" description of WINGWAR (described in part 4 of this series) contained in a booklet that was packaged in a TI module purchased in early 1984. The booklet says "copyright 1983 TI" and bears the number 1056414-1. "You're a great dragon in a world of primordial beasts, magic crystals, and powerful demons. Battle these menacing foes with fireballs, inner strength, and superior strategy. Speech Synthesis optional." The SUMMER 1983 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW in Chicago, as described in the August 1983 issue of COMPUTE! may go down in history as the show where the most "orphans" were initially introduced. Computers first displayed for the public at this show include the Coleco Adam, the Atari 600XL 800XL 1400XL and 1450XLD, the North American version of the Sinclair ZX Spectum called the Timex Sinclair 2048, and the Mattel Aquarius and Aquarius II. Some of these machines never actually made it to market. The rest are now all orphans. The same August 1983 COMPUTE! article talks about the rumored near release of the TI 99/4B. "The 99/4B, they say, will fall somewhere between the 99/4A and the 99/8 in features and price." COMPUTE! says that at this Summer 1983 show, "TI introduced....six educational packages, including three games based on E.T. the Extra Terrestrial." What were these E.T. games? Were they really released, or just displayed, or perhaps only mentioned in promotional literature given out at the show? Read on. This comes from page 35 of the June 1983 issue of 99ER HOME COMPUTER MAGAZINE. "The remaining 5 (educational) packages for 4th quarter release include 3 E.T. based educational software games from Looking Glass Software, and 2 vocabulary/grammar games from Development Learning materials Inc. All game and education cartridges carry a $39.95 SRP." I wonder if one of these DLM modules is VERB VIPER, described in part 2 of this series. The only Looking Glass Software educational game that I know of is ET AT SEA. The ET game module, described later in this article, is an in house TI game (non-educational) that does not mention Looking Glass software. Does anyone know anything about the other two Looking Glass "E.T. based educational software games"? This quote concerning TI's own E.T. module is from the INTERNATIONAL 99/4A USER GROUP NEWSLETTER dated Nov. 15, 1982. "TI is expected to announce a new Command Module which will feature the familiar E.T. space creature. The new E.T. Command Module is due to be ready some time in the second quarter of 1983." PINOCCHIO'S GREAT ESCAPE: According to the title screen, this is another "WALT DISNEY PERSONAL COMPUTER SOFTWARE DESIGNED EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE TEXAS INSTRUMENTS COMPUTER." No copyright date is indicated, but I suspect that the date would be 1983. This is a language arts module designed to teach children how to recognize and pronounce long and short vowel sounds in printed words. Speech Synthesis is optional but highly recommended. Pinocchio is in a cage suspended from the ceiling. His friend Jimminey Cricket has to get him out by making a stairway to the cage, climbing the stairs, and unlocking the cage's padlock. Each correct answer adds one additional stair. The first menu says: CHOOSE THE VOWEL SOUND: 1) SHORT VOWEL SOUNDS 2) LONG VOWEL SOUNDS Whichever choice you make, you are then advanced to the second menu: CHOOSE THE LEVEL OF GAME PLAY 1) BEGINNING 2) INTERMEDIATE 3) ADVANCED When you make your choice of difficulty level, the game begins. If you choose long vowel sounds, Pinocchio suspended in his cage may say "Jimminey, choose the word with the long o sound, as in goal." Five words are then displayed, such as NIGHT BLACK TRUE FLASH and HOSE. You move Jimminey next to the one correct word (using the EX keys or the joystick) and then press Q or the fire button. Jimminey touches the indicated word with his umbrella. If the guess is correct, Pinocchio asks for another vowel sound and 5 new word choices are displayed. You always get a different selection of 5 word choices because the module has a vocabulary of 1000 words, each 2-5 letters in length. I know this to be true because I used my GramKracker to display the contents of the GROMS in order to read and count the words. For each game Jimminey gets 3 umbrellas. The game is over if all 3 are used up before Pinocchio is released from the cage. You get points for each correct answer, and another stair is added to the staircase leading to Pinocchio's cage. If Jimmeney guesses incorrectly, you are told that the guess is incorrect and given unlimited additional opportunities to guess the correct word with no loss of points or umbrellas. Each attempt is timed, with a timer displayed at the top of the screen. If time runs out there is no loss of points or umbrellas. Instead, the correct answer is indicated and you are then presented with another problem complete with five new words from which to choose. The three difficulty levels differ from each other in two respects. At each successive difficulty level there are increasing numbers of mice running around and they move faster. If Jimminey touches a mouse while attempting to touch a word with his umbrella, he loses the umbralla. This is the only way to lose umbrellas and possibly terminate the game unsuccessfully. Also, the word choices are more difficult at each successive difficulty level. At the BEGINNING level, there is only one word displayed that contains the correct vowel, so selecting the correct answer is a piece of cake. At INTERMEDIATE there are either two or three of the 5 displayed words with the correct vowel, but only one of these has the desired vowel sound. At the ADVANCED level all of the displayed words include the desired vowel but again only one of these words has the correct vowel sound. After 6 correct answers the stairway is complete. Pinocchio says, "You did it Jimminey Cricket, you did it!" Jimminey climbs the stairs and unlocks the padlock. Pinocchio comes down to the bottom of the screen and dances to the music singing "I'm free! I'm free!" When you get tired of watching him dance press . Pinocchio bows, and you are given the opportunity to play another similar game or return to the first menu to select a different set of paramaters for the next game. This module truely is "self teaching". As long as the student is capable of reading the 2-5 letter words that make up the possible choices, the student should be able learn all about long and short vowel sounds from scratch without intervention from a human teacher. Remember, I said that when time runs out the correct answer is indicated and there is no penalty. Students unfamiliar with the concept of long and short vowel sounds can just sit in front of the monitor as the computer pronounces (using speech) vowel sounds and then correctly shows words that contain the just pronounced sound. The module provides rewards for positive effort without penalizing mistakes. The only way to mess up and terminate the game without rescuing Pinocchio is to allow Jimminey to touch too many mice while trying to guess the correct answer. This is strictly an eye/hand coordination thing unrelated to getting correct answers and learning about long and short vowel sounds. I give PINOCCHIO'S GREAT ESCAPE my highest rating. Its use of color bit map graphics, music, and sound are excellent. The game is fun. A lot of careful thought went into the "self teaching" design of this module. STARSHIP PEGASUS: Copyright 1983 by Milton Bradley Co. This game reminds me of some of the "junk extended basic" games that form part of the early history of the TI, games such as those in the early part of the libraries of the International Users Group or the Amnion Free Access Library. In speed, graphics, and the use of sprites, Starship Pegasus really does resemble an extended basic game rather than an assembly language game. Your starship is in the middle of the screen and there it stays. You have guns top/bottom and left/right which you can shoot with the joysticks or arrow keys. If you shoot a second bullet before the previously fired bullet goes off the edge of the screen, than the previous bullet disappears! Only one of your bullets can be on the screen at a time. The bad guys, looking very much like magnified XB sprites, wander onto and off the screen using more or less random motion. They shoot at you and you shoot at them with your four fixed position guns firing outward from the center of the screen. If you get hit with a bad guy bullet you explode and the game ends. You are then given the opportunity to play again. BORING!^^I can understand why Milton Bradley never released this one. In fact, considering the neat stuff that Milton Bradley has produced for the TI (such as the MBX system and associated modules), I am surprised that the company would allow its name to be used with this game in the first place. E.T. Copyright 1982 by Texas Instruments. The XB module dump version of this game calls it ET GO HOME. This is yet another in a long line of "frogger" type game. In fact, in addition to crossing the freeway etc., ET must also hitch a ride on a frog in order to get from the bottom to the top of the screen. You need to get three different ET's to the top of the screen in order to win the game. Each ET is deposited in a bicycle which then moves to the space ship. Each attempt is timed from the "press any key to begin" to the successful placing of an ET on his bicycle. I think the "frogger" theme can only be taken so far before there is nothing new in the game. There are several extended basic "frogger" type games for the TI in our group library that are, in my opinion, every bit as good as TI's E.T. If I were a game enthusiast, I wouldn't spend my money on E.T. Probably TI realized this too and that is probably why ET was not released in the second quarter of 1983 as was originally expected. .PL 1