TI-99/4a Home Comp and Adventure Module

Hey guys, just a question if, which has always interested me. I been realizing since 20ish years old that there has been quite a homebrew scene for old 8bit and 16bit home console and computers. But I remember one 16bit home comp that has not enough love in the homebrew community… The TI-99/4a. I remember when I was a kid in the 80’s and mid 90’s before shifting totally from a Sanyo IBM 550 to a 286 compy, I had a TI-99/4a. This was before I even got a Nintendo at 9 years old (that was in 1989 :stuck_out_tongue:)! I can remember the adventures were mostly text based. I also found out when I was 20ish there was an old text adventure maker for the Adventure module for the TI called the Tex-Comp Adventure Editor. I also found out that was unofficially superseded by the ScottCom at the ifarchive which was written by Bjorn Gustavsson and Stuart George. The cool thing is that it compiles notepad source files in it’s own high level language to the TI’s tape image file (*.fiad). I did some digging around and found that it is clearly possible to use a data compatible audio tape with a tape deck from my modern updated Linux x64 workstation to make literally a TI-99/4a readable cassette data medium… So I was wondering, just by entertaining the thought of making a service to provide “retro” (I hate that word oh so much) gaming along with a cheap pairing (optional and if requested) with the Adventure module for a module shipping and handling fee and possible like, maybe, I dunno, like 5 or 6 bucks for the Module do you think it is worth it? I also have knowledge (due that I am also an indie and self publish musician who also distributes cassette medium music) on dimensions of making A-Cards from just printing them, and possibly just making the label from printing as well would make the tapes fantastic if I can get an idea if this is an interesting venture. It’s by no means food on the table, but just a small hobby service I am considering to tackle and also a love for those by-gone times type games (and text adventures of course!). At the very least the games will be linked from a wix or facebook site visa-via dropbox for the fiad image, and the docs in pdf and png form. So what do you guys think? :slight_smile:

I have a special place in my heart for these games. The Pirate Adventure that came with the cartridge was my very first text adventure, and after I won that without hints, my uncle lent me the rest. I also won Voodoo Castle and Mission Impossible. I still prefer to play them in V9T9 running in DOSBox for that authentic TI-99/4A appearance, rather than just running them in ScottFree.
I also have a mostly-finished game I had intended to enter in the Year of Adventure jam last year, but the source code is in the SAC compiler format, so would probably require a major rewrite to be compiled by ScottCom.
But even I think this is probably too retro. I have in the past shelled out for Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom, The Shadow In The Cathedral, 1893, and Hadean Lands, but I would not pay for a new two-word-parser text adventure.

the idea is not to pay for the game, but only for the media shipping more for the game itself, and I think that’s like no more then 5 bucks at best for that. The Adventure module is what will be sold as a used cart though, due that it is not free to come up with (even though it is very common for those to be found on ebay) but I wouldn’t sold it used for no more then 6 bucks. So I figure the whole would be no more then 8 bucks if not 11 max dollars max with cassette and with the optional Adventure module cart. I understand that one would not pay for the two parser verb noun game, that is why I make those games free to download even on emulator. It’s just that the cassette creation is time consuming if anything and it does cost money for media mail to deliver. So I only charge mostly for s/h costs on tape. The binary download is free no matter what. I hope that clears the air and should be more or less understandable and reasonable to why I would charge for those kind of games.