With these virtues plus a list price of just $525, the TI-99/4A was a major hit right out of the gate, selling in numbers to rival the even cheaper but much less capable VIC-20. Indeed, they were considered something of a necessity for a really first-rate gaming system. Of the other contenders, only the Atari 400 and 800 offered sprites - as well as, tellingly, all of the game consoles. They were ideal for implementing action games in a game of Pac-Man, for instance, the title character and each of the ghosts would be implemented as a sprite. The TI-99/4A also had spectacularly good graphics, featuring sprites, little objects that were independent of the rest of the screen and could be moved about with very little effort on the part of the computer or its programmer. This just felt more like the way a consumer-electronics device ought to work to many people - no typing arcane commands and then waiting and hoping, just pop a cartridge in and turn the thing on. Programs loaded instantly and reliably, something that couldn’t be said for many other storage techniques, and left the user to fiddle with fragile tapes or disks only to load and save her data files. Instead of using cassettes or floppy disks, they sold software on cartridges, a technique they called “Solid State Software.” Since the programs would reside in the ROM of the cartridge, they didn’t need to be loaded into RAM that needed to be used only for the data the programs manipulated. The new model had just 16 K of RAM, but TI claimed more was not necessary. Over a year later, in June of 1981, TI tried again with an updated version, the TI-99/4A. It had a lot of potential, but also a lot of flaws and oddities to go with its expensive price, and went nowhere. Built around a CPU of TI’s own design, it was actually the first 16-bit machine to hit the market. Back in early 1980, the electronics giant Texas Instruments had released a microcomputer called the TI-99/4. The most obvious contender came from an unexpected quarter. Note the prominent port for “Solid State Software” to the right of the keyboard. Its price was certainly right, but it was just too limited to have long legs. Then of course there was Radio Shack, but no one - including them - seemed to know just what they were trying to accomplish with a pile of incompatible machines of wildly different specifications and prices all labeled “TRS-80.” And there was the Commodore VIC-20 which had validated for many people the whole category of home computer in the first place. And Atari itself, still riding the tidal wave that was the VCS, showed little obvious interest in improving or promoting this tiny chunk of its business. On the other hand, the 400 model, with its horrid membrane keyboard, was cost-reduced almost to the point of unusability, while the 800 was, once again, just a tad on the expensive side. Although introduced back in late 1979, these machines still had amongst the best graphics and sound capabilities on the market. Another contender was the Atari 400/800 line. Nor was its relatively high price doing it any favors. Its graphics capabilities, so remarkable for existing at all back in 1977, had barely been upgraded since, and weren’t really up to the sort of colorful action games the kids demanded. Apple was still the media darling, but the only logical contender they could offer for the segment, the Apple II Plus, was looking increasingly aged. If a full-fledged computer was to take the place of the Atari VCS in the hearts of America’s youth, which of the plethora of available machines would it be? IBM had confidently expected theirs to become the one platform to rule them all, but the IBM PC was not gaining the same traction in the home that it was enjoying in business, thanks to an extremely high price and lackluster graphics. As I described in my last article, many people were beginning to feel that change was in the air as they observed the field of videogame consoles and the emerging market for home computers during the middle part of 1982.
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