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 :-)

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! :)

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 those unfamiliar, the game started in 1984 on DOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Wars_(video_game)

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...

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!

First experiences around programming were on an 83, I'll never forget those choose your own adventure games I let friends play in class.

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!

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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'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.

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

Interesting. I always knew it as Dopewars.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

coincidentally, a SilverLink cable arrived here today so I can program my 85 and 83 Plus.

Can someone please compile this to wasm? I'd love to play this again

The amount of classroom time I wasted playing this game…

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I spent a lot of time in math class playing this...

Emulator link?

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.