I too am only a software engineer today because I wrote crappy games for the TI83 in middle school. The day I discovered you could download games from the web, the scales fell from my eyes.
TI-83 Basic was the first programming language I really felt like I had mastered. For a while in my first CS college class I was writing code in TI basic and translating it to C++. Drugwars and Bowling were the two really impressive games written in TI-Basic.
But discovering z80 assembly was like magic. It was incredibly exciting to go to my dad's office at the university where he worked (where computers had 2 T1 internet lines) to download and try assembly games when they first burst on the scene (I was in 8th grade). Bill Nagel blew my mind with Turbo Breakout and Snake, and later AShell, Penguins, and grayscale Mario... but the best executed and most replayable games I think were Sqrxz and ZTetris on the TI-86 by Jimmy Mardell. Honorable mention to Galaxian and Falldown. I once downloaded the z80 assembly source for a game, printed it to about an inch of paper, and carried it around for weeks trying to understand it...
It was also really cool for some reason (and would often brick the calculator until you took the batteries out) to type random hex pairs into a program and execute it as assembly. "C063" run as assembly - syntax was the random looking Send(9PrgmA where PrgmA is where you typed the hex code - on a TI-83 would scroll tons of random text in an infinite loop.
Does anyone remember the TI website wars? TI Files (later TI Philes) was "so much more awesome" than "the lowly weak ticalc.org"... but look which one is still around :-)
I'm amazed ticalc.org is still alive and kicking. So much nostalgia. Joltima was what convinced me to learn assembly. So far ahead of its time on the TI-86. Full featured RPG with turn-based combat on a graphing calc. Glad the history is still accessible online.
This game is a really big deal for me! I was addicted to it in high school and it left a lasting impression. Drugwars directly inspired my passion project, Farmhand: https://www.farmhand.life/
I loved this game. I played this game instead of learning math, unfortunately. It was only by the grace of other apps on my TI-83+ that I was able to pass my exams...
I feel vindicated by the rise of AI. Soon nobody else will know how to do anything without a small computer either.
My "fun fact" that I always tell is that I got my start by reading the manual of my TI-83+
I spent most of my 9th grade making a stick figure clone of Street Fighter, using TI-BASIC and graphing functions.
Eventually I switched to coding with pencil and paper because the calculator screen can only show you 8 lines at a time. No idea how I made something that could support 2 players playing on the same calculator, all with GOTOs and LABELs.
My favorite optimization of all time was turning their heads into hexagons instead of circles since drawing 6 lines was so much faster.
For my birthday in 7th grade, I wanted a TI-86 calculator because I could program on it. And maybe because a classmate showed me ASM games on their TI-83+.
In 9th grade, I wrote programs to solve specific kinds of algebra problems while showing the step-by-step "work" on screen. I remember realizing a critical bug in the code during an exam, which surprised me because it worked perfectly for all the homework and study questions.
I ended up spending more time trying to fix it than working on the test! I now realize that it was my first experience with a P1 production bug. In a way, it was my math teacher's fault for not providing sufficient acceptance criteria. I was supposed to learn about polynomials, but I (also) ended up learning about edge cases.
Same here, got started via the TI-83+ manual, started out building simple menu based games & homework helpers. Eventually moved on to learn z80 assembly and build a few simple games. Interestingly now I focus on mobile development. I always loved having the ability to take something I built and carry it around in my pocket.
Mine was a TI-81 and a clone of Scorched Earth with multiplayer, realistic physics, wind, random terrain generation, etc. Used all 2.4kb and every single named variable provided by TI-BASIC on the machine.
I had a friend in ninth grade in the late 1900s who was a talented artist. He used his skills to make beautifully expressive pixel-art hardcore pornography on the TI-82.
He crafted a few different scenes, where for each one, he set it to loop back and forth between two frames -- and the implied motion was fantastically realistic for the resolution and fps he was working with...
I was curious why some expressions in the code used the character ù, such as “If Zù500”. It looks like a character encoding error, but the code presumably works correctly. ChatGPT says the byte value for ≤ in TI-BASIC is the same as ù in ANSI/Windows-1252 (0xF9).
This game was the first software I ever modified! I added an easter egg where if you spent all your money immediately on cocaine, its price would reliably skyrocket, so you could go ahead and pay back the loan sharks, or buy lots more drugs.
I remember playing this all the time on my TI-83+. That calculator is where I really learned to program. I wrote programs in TI-BASIC - mostly to solve equations for my math/science classes, but some games too. It's been so long that I don't really remember TI-BASIC, but I was quite good at it in high school.
15 years ago I had a Pocket Street Fighter game (Street Fighter characters in their baby version) and it was running fast even on a TI-89! You had 6 characters or so with Riu etc… It was really impressive. For sure the most well crafted back in the days.
Oh man, I ported this to the TI-89 back in 7th grade and made it slightly more school appropriate calling it “pop wars”, trading soda from different machines at different schools instead of drugs.
I still have my GX from the late 90s which managed to outlast my Metakernel equipped, overly rubberized 49G. If I were to dig it out, the serial cable too.
And a printout of the sysrpl guide, it being quite thick of a print.
I LOVED the TI calc forums. I got my hands on enough parts (and went to radio shack to get the rest) to make my own cable from the parallel port to the 2.5mm jack they had back then.
I'm still amazed they cost as much now, as they did 30 years ago, but if you just realize you're buying a license for decent computer algebra system (CAS), at least in the ti-85/89/etc models, it kinda makes sense.
Man I loved programming TI-82s. So many fun ways to build things. I really didn't learn much math that year - I was too enthralled with writing programs to answer the problems for me.
I'm a little older so I missed these models of TI calculator.
I loved programming my TI-81 my freshman year of high school. Having a programmable computer on my person-- even one as weak as the '81-- was so cool. I made a bunch of crappy games and graphical "demos", but being that the '81 didn't have a link cable I couldn't pass them around.
I got my '85 my freshman year of college but, by that time, I had a laptop and was much less interested in programming a calculator. I ended up misplacing my '85 in a move. Now that my daughter is old enough to appreciate it I wish I still had it.
Wow - what a blast from the past!! I remember once in 9th grade when the science teacher called me up to ask me what I was doing on my calculator, and I quickly deleted the game because it could result in a suspension. I had been working on a game similar to Wing Commander Privateer, and I showed him that instead and got away with it.
Maybe that sounded dismissive (considering the downvotes), but I loved this game when I was on high school. I had a symbian version. and I don't have a ti-83 laying around, so created a slop version to have some fun, and thought maybe others would try it too. Didn't share the generated code out of respect. No offense meant :)
I too am only a software engineer today because I wrote crappy games for the TI83 in middle school. The day I discovered you could download games from the web, the scales fell from my eyes.
TI-83 Basic was the first programming language I really felt like I had mastered. For a while in my first CS college class I was writing code in TI basic and translating it to C++. Drugwars and Bowling were the two really impressive games written in TI-Basic.
But discovering z80 assembly was like magic. It was incredibly exciting to go to my dad's office at the university where he worked (where computers had 2 T1 internet lines) to download and try assembly games when they first burst on the scene (I was in 8th grade). Bill Nagel blew my mind with Turbo Breakout and Snake, and later AShell, Penguins, and grayscale Mario... but the best executed and most replayable games I think were Sqrxz and ZTetris on the TI-86 by Jimmy Mardell. Honorable mention to Galaxian and Falldown. I once downloaded the z80 assembly source for a game, printed it to about an inch of paper, and carried it around for weeks trying to understand it...
It was also really cool for some reason (and would often brick the calculator until you took the batteries out) to type random hex pairs into a program and execute it as assembly. "C063" run as assembly - syntax was the random looking Send(9PrgmA where PrgmA is where you typed the hex code - on a TI-83 would scroll tons of random text in an infinite loop.
Does anyone remember the TI website wars? TI Files (later TI Philes) was "so much more awesome" than "the lowly weak ticalc.org"... but look which one is still around :-)
I'm amazed ticalc.org is still alive and kicking. So much nostalgia. Joltima was what convinced me to learn assembly. So far ahead of its time on the TI-86. Full featured RPG with turn-based combat on a graphing calc. Glad the history is still accessible online.
> Bill Nagel
now there's a name that inspired awe in my 12 year old mind.
i didn't know at first how he was able to make those incredible games, only understanding TI Basic myself. mindblowing stuff.
Yes, I checked ticalc.org regularly in hopes of seeing an update to the Zelda: Link’s Awakening port proof of concept demo.
That’s funny I use to do the same in high school 15 years ago
It was Andreas Ess for me. PlaneJump.
That opened my eyes to the world of Assembly, which in turn turned me on to the demoscene, and off I went into a truly magical subculture!
This game is a really big deal for me! I was addicted to it in high school and it left a lasting impression. Drugwars directly inspired my passion project, Farmhand: https://www.farmhand.life/
I'm so happy to see this pop up here! :)
When everyone had this and a Mario clone on their Ti calcs I had a game inspired by it on my Palm - Space Trader
Algebra 2 : AKA Drugwars and Snake
Luckily I was ahead a year and didn't need to retake that class LOL. Went on to calc and discrete math.
I loved this game. I played this game instead of learning math, unfortunately. It was only by the grace of other apps on my TI-83+ that I was able to pass my exams...
I feel vindicated by the rise of AI. Soon nobody else will know how to do anything without a small computer either.
It is good that you was addicted to game ;-)
My "fun fact" that I always tell is that I got my start by reading the manual of my TI-83+
I spent most of my 9th grade making a stick figure clone of Street Fighter, using TI-BASIC and graphing functions.
Eventually I switched to coding with pencil and paper because the calculator screen can only show you 8 lines at a time. No idea how I made something that could support 2 players playing on the same calculator, all with GOTOs and LABELs.
My favorite optimization of all time was turning their heads into hexagons instead of circles since drawing 6 lines was so much faster.
For my birthday in 7th grade, I wanted a TI-86 calculator because I could program on it. And maybe because a classmate showed me ASM games on their TI-83+.
In 9th grade, I wrote programs to solve specific kinds of algebra problems while showing the step-by-step "work" on screen. I remember realizing a critical bug in the code during an exam, which surprised me because it worked perfectly for all the homework and study questions.
I ended up spending more time trying to fix it than working on the test! I now realize that it was my first experience with a P1 production bug. In a way, it was my math teacher's fault for not providing sufficient acceptance criteria. I was supposed to learn about polynomials, but I (also) ended up learning about edge cases.
Same here, got started via the TI-83+ manual, started out building simple menu based games & homework helpers. Eventually moved on to learn z80 assembly and build a few simple games. Interestingly now I focus on mobile development. I always loved having the ability to take something I built and carry it around in my pocket.
Same, but it was a TI-84, and the game was tic-tac-toe with a perfect "ai" that would let you enter "number of players: 0" [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s93KC4AGKnY
Mine was a TI-81 and a clone of Scorched Earth with multiplayer, realistic physics, wind, random terrain generation, etc. Used all 2.4kb and every single named variable provided by TI-BASIC on the machine.
For those unfamiliar, the game started in 1984 on DOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Wars_(video_game)
Ludes in this version... definitely 1984
I played some Web version in the late '90s or very early '00s, which is my main experience with the game, and it had 'ludes.
Just the word ludes took me straight back to playing this in highschool!
What a throwback
Then it became a BBS door game!
https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/899
the Drugwars and Tradewars BBS door games were so great!
I had a friend in ninth grade in the late 1900s who was a talented artist. He used his skills to make beautifully expressive pixel-art hardcore pornography on the TI-82.
He crafted a few different scenes, where for each one, he set it to loop back and forth between two frames -- and the implied motion was fantastically realistic for the resolution and fps he was working with...
> late 1900s
Oh, God, why you gotta do us like that?
What was the first letter of the city in which that happened?
Let me print that and send to my representative and request the immediate and hardcore age verification laws for the advanced calculators.
It's shocking to see what the bored teenager with some pixels can do.
....and while we're at it, pens, pencils and paints should be banned too, just in case - your friend could draw on paper after all.
I was curious why some expressions in the code used the character ù, such as “If Zù500”. It looks like a character encoding error, but the code presumably works correctly. ChatGPT says the byte value for ≤ in TI-BASIC is the same as ù in ANSI/Windows-1252 (0xF9).
This game was the first software I ever modified! I added an easter egg where if you spent all your money immediately on cocaine, its price would reliably skyrocket, so you could go ahead and pay back the loan sharks, or buy lots more drugs.
I remember playing this all the time on my TI-83+. That calculator is where I really learned to program. I wrote programs in TI-BASIC - mostly to solve equations for my math/science classes, but some games too. It's been so long that I don't really remember TI-BASIC, but I was quite good at it in high school.
Haha, same origin story as me. Messing around on that calculator was where I started to understand programming
It's also available on the far superior HP 48 series (presumably the 49/50 and Prime as well).
https://www.hpcalc.org/details/911
All hail RPN!
hail RPN
First experiences around programming were on an 83, I'll never forget those choose your own adventure games I let friends play in class.
15 years ago I had a Pocket Street Fighter game (Street Fighter characters in their baby version) and it was running fast even on a TI-89! You had 6 characters or so with Riu etc… It was really impressive. For sure the most well crafted back in the days.
I found it! It was called Texas Fighters: https://youtu.be/zZIqFJHe3yU?is=sVowojfWws9uwwRl
Oh man, I ported this to the TI-89 back in 7th grade and made it slightly more school appropriate calling it “pop wars”, trading soda from different machines at different schools instead of drugs.
I wrote a clone of this game for the HP-48 as a teen in the 90s. you can still find it if you google hard enough. good times.
I still have my GX from the late 90s which managed to outlast my Metakernel equipped, overly rubberized 49G. If I were to dig it out, the serial cable too.
And a printout of the sysrpl guide, it being quite thick of a print.
Still a classic set of z80 apps including a symbolic equations solver for the TI-83. I played and used the hell out of these in high school.
MirageOS was the iPhone Home Screen of that time.
https://detachedsolutions.com/main/
I had MirageOS and Symbolic and PuzzPack (so I can play BlockDude) on my TI-83+!
Also, I'm glad this website is still up :-)
I wish I had a cable to download these games or even a unit to unit cable. I hand typed them into my TI-82.
I LOVED the TI calc forums. I got my hands on enough parts (and went to radio shack to get the rest) to make my own cable from the parallel port to the 2.5mm jack they had back then.
I'm still amazed they cost as much now, as they did 30 years ago, but if you just realize you're buying a license for decent computer algebra system (CAS), at least in the ti-85/89/etc models, it kinda makes sense.
Thats how I learned to program : D
Hand typing sheets that my buddy printed because we didnt own a transfer cable.
I did, as well. It was neat learning about programming using those listings.
I also remember being concerned about teachers finding “Drug Wars” on my calculator.
Same. I didn’t know the cables existed I until college. Though typing it all in was its own form of distracting entertainment.
Man I loved programming TI-82s. So many fun ways to build things. I really didn't learn much math that year - I was too enthralled with writing programs to answer the problems for me.
I'm a little older so I missed these models of TI calculator.
I loved programming my TI-81 my freshman year of high school. Having a programmable computer on my person-- even one as weak as the '81-- was so cool. I made a bunch of crappy games and graphical "demos", but being that the '81 didn't have a link cable I couldn't pass them around.
I got my '85 my freshman year of college but, by that time, I had a laptop and was much less interested in programming a calculator. I ended up misplacing my '85 in a move. Now that my daughter is old enough to appreciate it I wish I still had it.
A lot of those old calculators can be had on eBay for less than $30 shipped. I've been building up a small collection - 73, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89
I am enjoying my 92+
Ebay? They're about $10!
Interesting. I always knew it as Dopewars.
Me too, played it on Casio. My first attempt at making a game was a half-arsed, unfinished clone in Delphi with a very ugly ui :)
Wow - what a blast from the past!! I remember once in 9th grade when the science teacher called me up to ask me what I was doing on my calculator, and I quickly deleted the game because it could result in a suspension. I had been working on a game similar to Wing Commander Privateer, and I showed him that instead and got away with it.
published dozens of TI-Basic and then C games (via tigcc) back in the day https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/authors/78/7869.html
this was such an amazing way to learn programming
For TI-89, I recently updated the FAT engine to have height mappings. You can read more about it here: https://github.com/dzoba/ti-89-raycasting-with-z
I remember playing this, but also a puzzle game called “dstar”, which I ported to the web: https://www.moria.us/games/dstar/play
What a throw back damn.
I didn't have a Ti-83 so had to ask my friend for his once he got bored with the game.
There was a moment in 2011 I started writing it in "pure" SQL (MySQL) as a joke, but gave up, I'll have to find my DrugQL repo.
Damn, that takes me back. I built a cable with my dad's help to download games from the Internet to graphing calculators. Ticalc.org!
coincidentally, a SilverLink cable arrived here today so I can program my 85 and 83 Plus.
Are they valuable? They seem a little rare but findable on eBay. I have one in my closet just gathering dust.
New TI graphing calculators are sold today for the same price as they were in 1999.
(Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/768/)
Can someone please compile this to wasm? I'd love to play this again
The amount of classroom time I wasted playing this game…
I spent a lot of time in math class playing this...
Emulator link?
I asked claude:
take this game for ti-89: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mattmanning/1002653/raw/b... 10eaae3bd5298b8b2c86e16fb4404/drugwars.txt
and make a single page web app in one single html/css/js file where it draws the ti-89 on the screen and you play the game in that calculator
---
It came up with this in one single shot:
https://drugwars-8od.pages.dev/
Thanks! Paid the debt in 6 days got bored.
I seriously remember this game being hard... I finished with $500k cash, $11m in the bank, and $0 debt. 100/100 score. High school me is very proud.
block dude was my favorite.
Dude. 7th grade like a mug
Jesus. Based.
I told claude to make an html version for me and have it look like the ti-83. I'm having so much fun, thanks for sharing.
Maybe that sounded dismissive (considering the downvotes), but I loved this game when I was on high school. I had a symbian version. and I don't have a ti-83 laying around, so created a slop version to have some fun, and thought maybe others would try it too. Didn't share the generated code out of respect. No offense meant :)