My cousin had this, and it took me and him about a week to figure out how to get through the fueling tunnels!!! But yes, played this all the time, and I think the other games were tombstone city, and alpine
This was my second video game system. I was the proud owner of an Odyssey system by Magnavox! Parents were early adopters... then they later wondered why I played so many video games while a teenagerl
Watching this and my brain is thinking... please don't traumatize me again! It was a game i played until i conquered the 16th level and then just played to get to a million score after that. Great memories, and the TI taught me programming as a teenager.
God, how I hated those refuelling tunnels, then I discovered how to change your 'lift' Then I still hated them, merciless pixel perfect collision detection.
@@TheRainHarvester you can press 1 2 or 3 to adjust lift speed(up down speed) with 1 being the slowest. Helped alot getting through the fuel tunnels but they were still brutal.
It's actually just digitized speech, not synthesized speech. A young lady called Aubree Anderson recorded the audio, doing her best to sound like a synthesized voice.
@@scriptguru8 I can explain that one. The TI main processor needs the TMS5220 coprocessor located on the synthesizer module to do the LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) decoding and DAC (Digital-to-Analogue conversion.) The first could be done in software, but it would be expensive.. Tthe seocnd can't. The anolgoue signal is then placed on an analogue pin and fed back into the TMS9919 sound chip where it's multiplexed onto the output video signal and sound jack. Since you brought it up.
This is really great-- thank you for sharing this! I played Parsec (and Alpiner, and A-Maze-Ing, and various others) as a young girl thanks to my engineer dad buying them for me. Thanks for just playing and not adding personal commentary or weird music, and letting us just relive the magic. Amazing how addictive and cutting edge this was, almost 30 years ago.
Ah, yes, I spent too many hours at Parsec and, though it has been years since I played it, I vaguely recall ships coming off the surface; and I never got past that level. I also played Tunnels of Doom with my children, using the tape-payer to reload a game. I loved Car Wars; one daughter loved Munch-Man; another daughter loved TI-Invaders.
Wow I was slightly obsessed with this game way back when. This brings it all back. Especially the rather unfeeling lady who would say " sorry you are out of fuel".
The meteor shower was the best and getting fuel was so nerve racking cause it was so long and you couldn't crash. I didn't know one person with TI back then, seems like it was mostly Atari.
Holy CRAP this brings me back. I was about 7 when my brother and I would play and I sucked so bad. So frustrating. Never thought I'd hear these sounds or see this game play again. THANK YOU
You bring back memories of when i met my wife. The first gift I gave her, after flowers and such of course, was a 99/4A. Back in 1982, one night after work. I somehow got in the 'zone' and played Parsec for hours and pegged out the score. Now, 40 years later, I can't remember what it stopped at. 196,000 or 199,000 but I don't believe it was 999,999. Unfortunately, I turned it ALL off and went to bed around 3 AM. When I told the guys in my apartment about it that day they didn't believe me. Doh! I didn't play it much after that.
I remember a either a glitch or a warp if you nailed all of the first ships at the top of the screen you'd get a hella fast enemy ship, kill that and you'd warp to further levels
Haha I forgot all about that. My dad discovered that as he played it all the time(only game he ever played). I'll have to try that out now I rebought the system and game.
I did not remember this game until someone brought it up a few weeks back! I was playing this at a very young age, and never got anywhere, but I was obsessed. Then came our PC Jr and Ultima II. Today? Elden Ring! A good string of games over the decades.
Oh man. I used to play this for hours. I wonder if my parents still have our TI-99s. I'd love to boot them up and play. I used to draw cartoons of this game in my notebook in like1st or 2nd grade.
As a kid, this game seemed really deep. I think it's because it taught you patience and discipline unlike other shooters. Shoot too much, you overheat. Refuse to reduce speed, you'll crash while refuelling or in an asteroid belt. Enemies pop up from behind sometimes, so you need to be hyper aware. Plus the speech was a nice touch.
Wow! Can't believe this is here. Sadly, my friend only had a B&W 10" television at the time and I didn't know this even had colour. :) Amazing that this featured speech samples considering that the machine only had 1K of Ram(16K with the upgrade cartridge) This was the first machine I ever created games on. My friend programmed and I did the insanely low-pixel count 'artwork'. We did 2 games: Bob the Bear and Hyperguy; and 1 prototype featuring the Aliens colonial marines ground vehicle. I still don't know how we did it as we were only 10 or 11 at the time. Great memories. :)
This was my favorite game of all time (and still is)! Those sucker's that came up from behind and ram into your tailpipe are the ones that drive me NUTZ!
This was my fave game back in 84 or 85. I liked programming it too. CALL SOUND(a bunch of numbers) I didn't have a disk drive so i had to re-write every time. I have to get a hold of one again.
Nice retro video! The ti 99/4a was my first computer. i begined to program computers 1980. and this one was the fist i oned. i later made a copy of this game to a ABC80 how was a early swedish computer. i hade to make it in assbly language becouse the ABC 80 was only based on a z8o cpu. thank you for a great video!! ps. i laped parsec 3 times and get over 3,000,000 points (if i remeber right) after every 1000000 the counter go gone to 0 again. :)
My very first video game! My Dad and I used to play against each other, and I used to whip him good…but he couldn’t figure out how I did, because I played with the remote turned the wrong way!
I never played Parsec but it is interesting to see how even the best TI99/4A game demonstrates the limited graphics capabilities of this machine. I spent years programming the TI99/4A with very poor results. As someone posted here: Texas Instruments tought me programming BASIC. All graphics, except for sprites, needed to be tiled up by monochrome 8 by 8 characters. Given 256 characters, you could fill up no more than 8 out of 24 lines (32 characters each) with individual bitmap graphics. The only way the use the other 2/3 of the screen was to recycle characters and use sprites. Parsec seems to use up most of the available characters for its primitive ground display. Even worse, you can see the CPU desperately struggling to quite smoothly scroll this ground bitmap. I had much fun observing how the ground is countinously stretched and shrunk as it scrolls by.
Back ages ago, i found a working t1994a for around 30 bucks, with this and a bunch of other games... i plugged in a few of my classic games i still have, though it has been a while.
I'm 73 and I remember my dad made a couple games for the TI-99A one was duck hunt and I can't remember the other one. He gave us a TI-99A and the game Parsec and my wife and I loved it. it was actually addicting we would play for hours. Is the game available on PC I would love to play it again? But thanks for this trip down memory lane. My wife went home to the Lord 5 years ago and I'm sure she would have enjoyed seeing this post on YT.
wowww. When we had to make due at home when we had no quarters for the far superior arcade. This took the edge of though. We played this, Munchman, and TI Invaders.
I'm watching MST3K and the movie gun sound effect reminded me of playing Parsec - SAME sound effect for the gun... the movie features "megaweapon" and the Paperchase dude - not sure the name of the movie. Joel Hodgson hosts. ... probably season 4 or season 3? I don't know.
This game was great, made it through the game twice before losing. The basic book was enough to get you mking your own games. I wish this was back on the market.
You're pretty good! I never knew about the spot at the bottom of the asteroid belt where you could hit both of the bottom ones from the same position, I always hung out at the very top =P
Игры
We played this all the time. It was the only game we had, for one thing! Those refueling tunnels were the worst.
I remember hating those tunnels. Also those Dramite ships.
My cousin had this, and it took me and him about a week to figure out how to get through the fueling tunnels!!! But yes, played this all the time, and I think the other games were tombstone city, and alpine
I used to crash in those tunnels all the time. Ughhhhhh
yes i hated them. there was a setting to make ship move slow. then the tunnel was easy......
Y'all were too impatient to turn your speed down, huh? ;)
Like so many others, this was my first video game system, and Parsec still holds my fondest memories. Great job!
This was my second video game system. I was the proud owner of an Odyssey system by Magnavox! Parents were early adopters... then they later wondered why I played so many video games while a teenagerl
Parsec and Zork for me!
@@breakfastsurreal5650 parsec is great but it doesn't beat HUNT THE WUMPUS
Watching this and my brain is thinking... please don't traumatize me again! It was a game i played until i conquered the 16th level and then just played to get to a million score after that.
Great memories, and the TI taught me programming as a teenager.
God, how I hated those refuelling tunnels, then I discovered how to change your 'lift'
Then I still hated them, merciless pixel perfect collision detection.
lol...same here!! My cousin had this, but we could never get past the first refueling tunnel. Something like a month later we figured it out!!!
wideeyedboy35 Indeed, they were brutal, especially on the higher levels.
Ok explain the lift!!!
@@TheRainHarvester you can press 1 2 or 3 to adjust lift speed(up down speed) with 1 being the slowest. Helped alot getting through the fuel tunnels but they were still brutal.
The synthesised speech is great!
It's actually just digitized speech, not synthesized speech. A young lady called Aubree Anderson recorded the audio, doing her best to sound like a synthesized voice.
@@cygil1 and nevertheless it requires the speech synthesizer module to function. Go figure!
@@scriptguru8 I can explain that one. The TI main processor needs the TMS5220 coprocessor located on the synthesizer module to do the LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) decoding and DAC (Digital-to-Analogue conversion.) The first could be done in software, but it would be expensive.. Tthe seocnd can't. The anolgoue signal is then placed on an analogue pin and fed back into the TMS9919 sound chip where it's multiplexed onto the output video signal and sound jack.
Since you brought it up.
@@cygil1 Awesome, thanks for the explanation!
Such a fun little game for its time! I remember we used to back into some of the Fuel Tunnels from the end in reverse.
the best Actiongame for the Ti99/4A this Cartridge was! And OH... i remember the Fuel Tunnels when you got very far... sheer heart attack!
Texas instruments home computer! The olden days of video games... good stuff.
This brings back memories....I don't think I made it through those DARN refueling tunnels!!! haha
2:09 Announcer chokes on hotdog.
=DDD made my day!!!^^
this one... :')
This is really great-- thank you for sharing this! I played Parsec (and Alpiner, and A-Maze-Ing, and various others) as a young girl thanks to my engineer dad buying them for me. Thanks for just playing and not adding personal commentary or weird music, and letting us just relive the magic. Amazing how addictive and cutting edge this was, almost 30 years ago.
Ah, yes, I spent too many hours at Parsec and, though it has been years since I played it, I vaguely recall ships coming off the surface; and I never got past that level. I also played Tunnels of Doom with my children, using the tape-payer to reload a game. I loved Car Wars; one daughter loved Munch-Man; another daughter loved TI-Invaders.
This is awesome! From my childhood... I just bought one on ebay.
Surgeon like precision needed on those refueling tunnels!!! Thanks for the memories!! :)
Wow I was slightly obsessed with this game way back when. This brings it all back. Especially the rather unfeeling lady who would say " sorry you are out of fuel".
Brings back fond memories of my first computer and one of my earliest video games. Thanks for posting the video!
I miss this game.
The meteor shower was the best and getting fuel was so nerve racking cause it was so long and you couldn't crash. I didn't know one person with TI back then, seems like it was mostly Atari.
I used to love this game. The speech synthesizer plugin really added another dimension to it.
Holy CRAP this brings me back. I was about 7 when my brother and I would play and I sucked so bad. So frustrating. Never thought I'd hear these sounds or see this game play again. THANK YOU
I played this game as a kid! Those damn refueling tunnels were ridiculous!!!
You bring back memories of when i met my wife. The first gift I gave her, after flowers and such of course, was a 99/4A.
Back in 1982, one night after work. I somehow got in the 'zone' and played Parsec for hours and pegged out the score. Now, 40 years later, I can't remember what it stopped at. 196,000 or 199,000 but I don't believe it was 999,999. Unfortunately, I turned it ALL off and went to bed around 3 AM. When I told the guys in my apartment about it that day they didn't believe me. Doh! I didn't play it much after that.
Between this, Munchman, Astroblast and Q-bert I fucking LOVED the TI99!!!! First computer gaming system we ever owned!!!! Such fond memories! :)
Oh, and Moon Mine.... FAVORITE game for this system for me!!!!
I have both the Texas Instruments computer as well as this very game sitting in my basement right now. OH ya.
You now realize that the ship on Futurama was modeled after this game's ship.
Good memories.
I remember a either a glitch or a warp if you nailed all of the first ships at the top of the screen you'd get a hella fast enemy ship, kill that and you'd warp to further levels
Haha I forgot all about that. My dad discovered that as he played it all the time(only game he ever played). I'll have to try that out now I rebought the system and game.
Wow!…it’s been 38 years since I last played that and the sounds are like yesterday. ❤️
Spent countless hours playing this as a kid. Great memories!
oH MAN, I played this game all the time as a kid, in fact, it was my favourite TI game.
So much action and tense moments playing this game especially on your last ship and so far in.
My first system but all my old man ever bought us was ti invaders and car wars. lol. I wish to god we'd had this. I love the synth voice!
Played that growing up
sounded even better with the voice synthesis addon
Most excellent!
I feel the frustration on the "Fire" button not working and ramming on it with my fist right b4 death.
I had a TI-99, but not this game. Now that I see it, it looks just like a predecessor of Gradius for the NES!!!
This brought back a lot of great memories, thanks!
I did not remember this game until someone brought it up a few weeks back! I was playing this at a very young age, and never got anywhere, but I was obsessed. Then came our PC Jr and Ultima II. Today? Elden Ring! A good string of games over the decades.
Oh man. I used to play this for hours. I wonder if my parents still have our TI-99s. I'd love to boot them up and play. I used to draw cartoons of this game in my notebook in like1st or 2nd grade.
My memory of this game is when I first hooked up this 99/4a, the controllers were so cheaply made that I had them worn out within a few days
What a blast from the past! I loved this game. Thanks for posting!
Wow... memories. I always thought the Asteroids looked like chewing mouths!
Such fond memories of playing this with the speech synthesiser
I loved this game. I mainly used to play Parsec, Alpiner and Tombstone City. They had two TI computers set up for kids at the public library.
As a kid, this game seemed really deep. I think it's because it taught you patience and discipline unlike other shooters. Shoot too much, you overheat. Refuse to reduce speed, you'll crash while refuelling or in an asteroid belt. Enemies pop up from behind sometimes, so you need to be hyper aware. Plus the speech was a nice touch.
I remember when I flipped this game. Proud moment.
The Attack and Car Wars are my other faves. Don't forget Frogger and QBert!
I had this game cartridge! Wow, like 40 yrs ago.
I loved this game and dreaded those darned refueling tunnels.
I used to get my ship flying across the screen so fast that it would just blow up!
Loved this game in the very early 80s First Time I saw this game I was addicted.Loved the TI 99 at the time even though it didn't have many games.
Still have parsec in my attic. Ha!
core memory unlocked.
Wow! Can't believe this is here. Sadly, my friend only had a B&W 10" television at the time and I didn't know this even had colour. :) Amazing that this featured speech samples considering that the machine only had 1K of Ram(16K with the upgrade cartridge)
This was the first machine I ever created games on. My friend programmed and I did the insanely low-pixel count 'artwork'. We did 2 games: Bob the Bear and Hyperguy; and 1 prototype featuring the Aliens colonial marines ground vehicle.
I still don't know how we did it as we were only 10 or 11 at the time. Great memories. :)
Even now, I instinctively remember to set Lift to 1 when refueling.
this brings back a lot of memories!
TI had a Star Trek game that was great as well!
This video brings back memories and makes my legs shake when the big ships attack! lol
My first Computer! Loved Parsec!
I loved that game! Very nice.
This game was hard AF. I could never get past fueling
I USE TO PLAY THIS GAME WHEN WAS YOUNG AND NOW I WANT TO PLAY IT AGAIN
Played the hell out of this game. LOVED IT.
This was my favorite game of all time (and still is)! Those sucker's that came up from behind and ram into your tailpipe are the ones that drive me NUTZ!
This was my fave game back in 84 or 85. I liked programming it too. CALL SOUND(a bunch of numbers) I didn't have a disk drive so i had to re-write every time. I have to get a hold of one again.
Brings back memories
I remember playing this game back in 1983. I got to the 13th level before dying. I never did make it to the to the top level of 16.
Nice retro video! The ti 99/4a was my first computer. i begined to program computers 1980. and this one was the fist i oned. i later made a copy of this game to a ABC80 how was a early swedish computer. i hade to make it in assbly language becouse the ABC 80 was only based on a z8o cpu.
thank you for a great video!!
ps. i laped parsec 3 times and get over 3,000,000 points (if i remeber right) after every 1000000 the counter go gone to 0 again. :)
This was my childhood
My first game! Loved it as a child.
Holyshit! Great memories :)
Such a great one!!!!
My very first video game! My Dad and I used to play against each other, and I used to whip him good…but he couldn’t figure out how I did, because I played with the remote turned the wrong way!
Played this a ton with my Mother in Law when I was dating her daughter who is my wife of 35 years.
My childhood memories
I never played Parsec but it is interesting to see how even the best TI99/4A game demonstrates the limited graphics capabilities of this machine. I spent years programming the TI99/4A with very poor results. As someone posted here: Texas Instruments tought me programming BASIC.
All graphics, except for sprites, needed to be tiled up by monochrome 8 by 8 characters. Given 256 characters, you could fill up no more than 8 out of 24 lines (32 characters each) with individual bitmap graphics. The only way the use the other 2/3 of the screen was to recycle characters and use sprites.
Parsec seems to use up most of the available characters for its primitive ground display.
Even worse, you can see the CPU desperately struggling to quite smoothly scroll this ground bitmap. I had much fun observing how the ground is countinously stretched and shrunk as it scrolls by.
Back ages ago, i found a working t1994a for around 30 bucks, with this and a bunch of other games... i plugged in a few of my classic games i still have, though it has been a while.
I'm 73 and I remember my dad made a couple games for the TI-99A one was duck hunt and I can't remember the other one. He gave us a TI-99A and the game Parsec and my wife and I loved it. it was actually addicting we would play for hours. Is the game available on PC I would love to play it again? But thanks for this trip down memory lane. My wife went home to the Lord 5 years ago and I'm sure she would have enjoyed seeing this post on YT.
Here you can play it again Online: www.ti99iuc.it
Some of the later refueling tunnels were ridiculous. It's like your own side wanted you to die.
I broke two pairs of joysticks with this game, the later levels are so intense.
loved this game! :D
Don't know why, but this game was so addictive.
brings me back :-)
wowww. When we had to make due at home when we had no quarters for the far superior arcade. This took the edge of though. We played this, Munchman, and TI Invaders.
Loved this game.
That ship was going 2 mph, it was hideous on gas and could they have made that gas station any fucking harder to get in?? l loved this game.
cuantos recuerdos ¡
haha... fun to see this game again... spent some hours there :)
Like it was yesterday! Wooow ❤️
Wow, I don't remember Aubrey sounding that depressed.
Played this game till I had a callus on my thumb from shooting
I had no idea the TI could react like that. I have one with a speech synth up in the attic. I might have order this on EBay.
I'm watching MST3K and the movie gun sound effect reminded me of playing Parsec - SAME sound effect for the gun... the movie features "megaweapon" and the Paperchase dude - not sure the name of the movie. Joel Hodgson hosts. ... probably season 4 or season 3? I don't know.
This game was great, made it through the game twice before losing. The basic book was enough to get you mking your own games. I wish this was back on the market.
played this game 1 zillion hours as a kid and when I broke the record my dad played untill dusk to brake it back 💪
This game and Tetris prepared me for GTA4 in 2012. For some reason I couldn't stand the 3D games, but now I love them, open world only.
One of my favorite TI99 4/A game.... Did not know it had speech
Holly SH! that was one of the best game ever
I wanted the speech synthesizer so badly but it was expensive.
You're pretty good! I never knew about the spot at the bottom of the asteroid belt where you could hit both of the bottom ones from the same position, I always hung out at the very top =P