A Blast from the Past

I was reading an article from IGN about the 10 Worst Controllers of all time and I stumble across a console from my past the TI-99! It's controller (if you'd call it that) managed to make 6 on the list.

6. TI-99 Joystick

Computers in the 80s weren't meant for the gaming market, but let's be realistic: that's all we really used these things for anyway. Texas Instruments' TI-99, a computer with an optional disk drive twice as massive, jumped on the gaming market early with a bunch of classic games like…um…M*A*S*H…and, um…some Pac-Man clone… Anyway, you had the choice of controlling these games with either A) the keyboard, or B) one of the crappiest, most unresponsive, piece of junk joysticks ever produced. But hey, there were two of them!

Brought back some font memories... How could you forget this home page!
Some of the games were pretty advanced for their time. My favourite was Parsec a side scrolling space shotter that I spent hours playing with my Dad trying to get to the end... Don't think we ever did!

The system had a speach module that was unheard for in a Home Computer, I think we even the text to speech engine for it. Not only that but the fact it had a Disk Drive... not just tapes and cartridges... a REAL Disk Drive... sure it was the same size as a mini tower, but it was there..

So despite it's competely useless joystick it was a heap of fun... I'm going to hold the TI completely responsible for my current gaming addiction... That's right the fact that I bought a Gameboy Micro yesterday is completely the fault of the TI99/4A...