The Texas Intstruments TI-99/4a was the second, more successful iteration of the world's first 16-bit home computer. Here's a look at one of its most iconic games. Tombstone City is a multidirectional shooter set in a futuristic Arizona, where you must attract new residents by battling aliens spawned by mated pairs of saguaro cacti.
My public schools must've had really poor funding because we didn't get a computer lab until I was in middle school. And then it was a bunch of C64s. Keep in mind this was in the late 80s and early 90s. Those were already considered obselete by then. I remember one classroom in middle school also had a computer, and it was that TI computer that you were talking about in this video. It had some educational games on it, but I don't remember which ones it had. Heck, it took until I was in high school before we ever got any fairly revelant computers. Heck, my typing class in high school still used typewriters!
My only other memory of that TI computer that you were talking about was I think our next door neighbor owned one. I remember going to their house sometimes as a little kid and their mom would let me play on theirs. One time she even hooked it up on their big screen TV in their bedroom for me to play. I thought that was really cool. The only game I played on it was Munch Man, though. It was, of course, a Pac-Man clone.
The only other big things I remember Texas Instruments for was they made a lot of calculators. And when my dad was done with his time in the military in El Paso, we moved to Dallas and he had two job offers. One was with Texas Instruments and one was with Mostek. He took the Mostek job. But at Mostek he made and sold circuits that were used in Atari game cartridges. So I guess gaming runs in he family, kinda sorta.
I had Munch-Man. It was one of the better Pac-Man clones. The pseudo 3D mazes and shape changing monsters kept it interesting, and it was really fast. My dad bought the TI in 1983 when they were winding down production of the computers.
TI is actually a huge company. They made those $200 TI-83 graphing calculators my college math professors wanted everybody to have. They mostly do behind the scenes work, like chips for Apple and such.
I grew up with high schools requiring decently expensive TI calculators, and honestly I think that began in Jr. high.
It vaguely reminds me of Centipede but where you can freely roam the screen.