The TI-99 Home computer Encyclopedia: Timeline 1995 (2025)

JAN1995: The 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show takesplace on January 6, 1995. - Day 1. One of the early highlights of CES '95is an Activision Atari 2600 emulator running under Windows 3.1. It comeswith Kaboom!, Pitfall!, River Raid, Boxing, Chopper Command, Cosmic Commuter,Crackpots, Fishing Derby, Freeway, Frostbite, Grand Prix, H.E.R.O, Seaquest,Sky Junks, and lastly Spider Fighter. I took a bit of time to play a coupleof these titles, and they are very true to the original. I talked withone of the developers and he confirmed that the games run in a true 2600emulated environment. And while there are plans for future title to bereleased, they will most likely only be Activision titles. Currently, thereare no plans for a device that would allow a user to load cartridge dataonto their PC. To maintain the same frame rate as the original 2600 a 486-33will be required.

ID Software is once again aiming to invade every home and business withan addictive 3-D adventure! Quake, the new title ID is working on, is plannedfor a December release. Sources informed Game Zero that a release may comemuch earlier -- since development is progressing faster than anticipated.Following the general trend of computer gaming, it looks like you willneed at least a 486-66 to play this one. Good news is that this game isguaranteed to scare the pants off of you-- in the true ID style. In otherID news a new Doom type game should be out on the shelves right now, moreon that later though.

News flash! Seemingly everyone here is working on Ultra 64 titles. SpectrumHolobyte is in on the action with a conversion of their new PC title Topgun.Development is just starting so no news on how it looks yet. The long awaited,StarFox II, is now showing-- and it looks great! We are all planning onlogging some heavy play on this, and I'll give you a full run down tomorrow.Sony's PSX may be coming to the US! I talked with a former Virgin developer,now with an independent company, and he mentioned US software development.Still unconfirmed, I will get more news on this as time goes on and keepyou up to date.

• Day 2 -- First off, lots of Jaguar news. Several exciting new gamesand much innovative hardware will soon be released.

Doom for the Atari Jaguar is on preview, and it excels both as a singleplayer and multi-player game. The console version is comparable to thePC version running on a 486-25. The game has no slowdown, even in full-screenmode. Hover Hunter is an 8-player combat game from Hyper Image Productions,a new programming group. Although only partially complete, this title looksvery promising. You, and up to 8 players on separate machines, must chooseyour choice of craft and then battle it out on a highly detailed fractal-generatedlandscape. Hover Hunter is scheduled for release this year -- expect areview from us. Burn-out is a motorcycle race game where you drive formulabikes on closed tracks. This title, as well, is planned for this year.From what we've played of it, it is very promising. Rayman is a new platformtitle worth watching for. You play a clowny looking character whose mainweapon is to throw his hands at the enemy. Artwork in this title is alsovery pleasing to look at. Several new hardware accessories for the AtariJaguar are also being previewed at the show. The CD unit and a V.R. headsetare on display, as well as a new voice/data communicator. The data communicatornot only allows you to talk on the telephone while you are playing, butalso support your call waiting; you can pause your game, take the call,then continue back with your game when done. Another new item, CAT Box,allows up to 32 players to connect their Jags together via a standard serialline.

Sega's booth hosts a variety of impressive items. Virtua Fighter IIcoin-op is faster, texture mapped, and all-round dazzling. The game isready for arcade placement now. The U.S. Saturn system also premiered atthe show. An official announcement will be made this fall regarding a launchdate. Price will run between $300- $500 US. Sega confirmed that the U.S.and Japanese systems are not compatible. Apparently Sega arcade and Segaconsole are working closer together now. Daytona USA and Virtua FighterII--to name a few--will be ported directly to the Saturn. A demo of DaytonaUSA was shown at Sega's press conference. The crowd was visibly impressed.In other Sega news, Sega does not plan to drop the 32x when the Saturnis released. They plan to shift the 32x market to the older teen crowd.The Saturn will be aimed at the adults and older teens, and the Genesiswill be made the entry level system.

• Day 3 -- Today was an intense information day for the Game Zero team.In-depth meetings with Alias software, Nintendo, Sega, Atari and 3DO startedthe day off. One of the first meetings of the day was with Alias Software.These are the people behind the eye stunning graphics development kit usedin games like Donkey Kong Country. There were several unknowns in thisbooth. All of the talk revolved around the Nintendo Ultra 64. Alias, thepowerhouse behind Killer Instinct, and leader in Ultra 64 technology wasreally showing off. However, they were not showing off an Ultra 64--insteadthey were flashing Silicon Graphics Onyx systems. Although we were veryimpressed with what they were showing, whether this can be done on a homegame machine is yet to be seen. They hyped real time raytracing, modeling,and entire 3-D environments. Their key focus was that they were not bitmappedgraphics, but rather vector based. Alias had no information on the releaseof the Ultra 64.

After the news from Alias, we decided that it was time to find Nintendo'splans. Hot at the show this year was not the Ultra 64--but rather a red-black3-D system named "Virtual Boy." This system is based on a 32bit RISC processor--and had a very detailed screen. The true feeling ofdepth that this system provided was unbelievable. An absolute first inthe gaming market, this system's potential is amazing. However, this isnot the wonderful virtual reality system some may think. The screen isa monochrome red palette, and can be very straining on your eyes. Althoughthe resolution is very high, all color depths are achieved using half-tones.Nintendo has some tough marketing ahead on this one. Nintendo also startedto talk about their Ultra 64 system. They believe that this system willabsolutely kick the doors off of any other system coming to the market.In reality, only time will tell. With no official announcement, and Sega/ Atari / 3DO / and the PSX all running strong, Nintendo will have a battlein front of them. The Ultra-64 is expected to be officially unveiled laterthis spring at E3.

All of the talk about new systems almost made you forget that the SNESis still Nintendo's strongest system, and will be for some time. Afterthe incredible success of Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo said that the adventuresof Donkey and Ditti Kong will continue. They are not sure of a releasedate yet, but a sequel is already underway. Also announced at the showwas Star Fox 2, a fast paced more advanced sequel to the original. StarFox 2 uses a second generation FX 2 chip, offering faster speed, and morepolygon support. This made for a fast playing game. Your ship now has theability to morph into a land walker in certain stages. The game play wasas was clean, and Nintendo expects this title to be a hit as well. Alsofor the SNES, Nintendo was showing FX Fighter, a polygon based fightinggame similar to Sega's Virtua Fighter. Finally, Nintendo officially retired8-bit NES at the show, although games will be around for some time yet.

On other news fronts, a longer meeting with Sega followed. Sega wasvery proud to have a working Saturn running Virtua Fighter at the show.This translation was perfect. The machine was very impressive. Sega isgearing up for production of this unit, which raised a big question--Whatabout the new 32X? Sega's responded that their marketing focuses will bechanging to accommodate a multi-system platform set. They will still bemarketing the Genesis to the younger crowd, moving the 32X to the teenmarket, and leaving the expensive Saturn for the adult market. Some newnews with the 32X included 32X CD games. These games were able to takeadvantage of the 32X's advanced palette, although this was about it. Segahad a general plethora of new Genesis and 32X games, although there wasno one single game that they were trying to push as a market crusher. Thefully detailed Virtua Fighter 2 was extremely impressive, and is sure tobe the new arcade icon for Sega. There are already rumors of a completetranslation of this title for the Saturn system.

3DO Inc. had a very impressive showing at CES this year. With high endtitles like Wing Commander 3, the 3DO will be hot in '95. 3DO had no newsof their supposed 64-bit upgrade at the show. Some other impressive titlesincluded Novastorm, and The People's Game Show. The 3DO had the most visuallystunning graphics of all gaming machines available right now. 3DO hopestheir early entry into the market will help them against the releases fromSega and Nintendo.

Atari Corp., and their Jaguar systems were heavy into the CD-ROM marketthis year. They were showing everything from nearly perfect full screenvideo, to hot new action games. Atari plans for their CD system to be pricedunder $200, and be fully upgradable. With a cartridge slot on top, Atarihas plans for the future. Although the Lynx system is still consideredsupported by Atari, only 4 games were being shown for next year.

Game Zero expects to hear more after the show news from our contactssoon, so stay tuned, to find out the hottest news -- Only from Game Zero!!(compliments of www.gamezero.com)

• Jim Krych reports in MICROpendium that he will not be able to producethe assembly language programming series that he’d planned to do with thehelp of Bruce Harrison, Brad Snyder, Art Green, Joe Delekto, Chris Bobbittand Charles Good.

• Word reaches the TI Community that Mike Brent of Ottawa, Canada hasbegun work on a TI-99 Emulator for Commodore Amiga owners.

FEB 1995: CaDDElectronics releases PC99 Stage 3. The full product configuration is theequivalent of a TI-99/4A with Peripheral Expansion Box containing 32K MemoryExpansion; TI RS-232 card; and TI p-Code card; three DS/SD disk drives;together with TI Extended BASIC, TI Editor/Assembler and Tombstone Citymodules.

• The Erie, PA 99ers disband and merge their membership into the ComputerUsers of Erie, a multi-platform user group. The CUE's address is PO Box1975 Erie, PA 16507-0975.

• Bill Gaskill announces the release of Mailing List Manager v1.0.The Extended BASIC and assembly language application carries a $15 pricetag and sports unlimited file sizes.

• Fest-West ’95 takes place on February 18^th at the FabulousInn in San Diego, California. It is hosted by the Southern California ComputerGroup.

MAR 1995:

APR 1995: TexCompUsers Supply owner Jerry Price sells the business on April 1st to CareyHoffman, who will be assisted by father Larry Hoffman of the West Covina99ers. The new firm will be known as TexComp LTD.

• The Ottawa TI-99/4A Users Group ceases publication of its newsletterafter 14 years.

• Long time Sheboygan (WI) Area 99er Joseph Turk dies on April 7th atage 77.

• On April 27th, Jim Krych announces the impending release of the SUPERAMS card for the TI-99/4A.

• COMMODORE -- A year after Commodore files for bankruptcy inApril 1994, rights to the Commodore Amiga and its technology are purchasedby the German company Escom AG on April 21st. Escom AG will itself go bankruptand the rights to the Amiga and Amiga technology will be purchased by U.S.giant Gateway computers.

MAY 1995:

JUN 1995: IBMbuys Lotus and Sun Microsystems launches Java.

JUL 1995: Compaqannounces the 120Mb LS120 superfloppy which will also read 1.44Mb floppies.

• Microsoft releases NT 3.51 amidst questions about whether Windows 95would be delayed by legal action over the bundling of a sign-up for Microsoft'snew online service, MSN.

AUG 1995: Microsoftofficially releases Windows 95 on August 24th, to more fanfare than anysoftware product has ever received.

SEP 1995: TheNew England Fall TI Faire takes place on September 30th from 10AM to 4PMat the Emanuel Lutheran Church, 200 Greenwood St., Worcester Massachusetts.

OCT 1995:

NOV 1995: WilliamA. Higinbotham dies on November 10th. He is best known as the father ofthe video game, for his creation of the TENNIS like pong game he wrotewhile a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratories in Upton, NY in 1958.

• Cecure Electronics releases TI BARD CODE at the Chicago TI Faire, writtenby William Dowling.

DEC 1995: Thefollowing message is posted on comp.sys.ti on 12/27/95, supposedly by MicrosoftChairman Bill Gates? Right!

Hello!

Microsoft is planning on releasing a group of applications designedfor older computers. We will produce downscaled versions of Word, Excel,and Access to run on TI 99/4A's, Commodore 64's and Apple II's. We alsoplan on re-releasing older programs such as Microsoft Multiplan on theseplatforms.

Our current project involves the TI 99/4A. We need ccomputers, peripherals,and experienced programmers to accomplish our goal. If any of you are interested,post a reply here. Do not email me as I will probably never see it. (Iam currently getting between 250 and 300 messages a day.)

Regards, Bill Gates

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