[joakleaf]

I hear you regarding the speed... I had a TI and I learned to program on it, so I know how amazingly slow it was!

They do mention that they used extra RAM from the floppy drive controller which would help!

I don't see anything that makes me think it is completely impossible. Lots of the more complicated full screen effects could probably be made by altering character bitmaps (which was pretty fast). Parsec managed smooth horizontal scrolling back in the day, but I must admit some of the scrolling stuff definitely looked challenging to do on that machine. I still think, you can get far by manipulating character bitmaps, and clever use of sprites.

I still think calling it "fake" may be a bit harsh on the coders if it isn't.

Anyone tried it on one of the emulators?

[nsxwolf]

A mistake on that article... the 32K RAM expansion is a separate card, not part of the floppy controller. They were almost always sold together, however.

[Olivier26]

Well, Parsec is very far from this demo, if the window is small it's for speed. The demo is full screen, which is impressive. And Parsec is coherent with what the hardware had to offer for the 3D those years, like Elite.

[joakleaf]

Parsec was 2D horizontal smooth scrolling. It wasn't full screen, but the scrolling screens in this demo generally contains repetitive graphics, which would allow them to use a number of possible tricks.

I actually downloaded and tried the demo on the Classic99 emulator, and it works exactly as advertised.

Would love to see actual hardware demo though.

[arcadeshopper]

check out another demo here by one of the coders of the megademo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guv_Jp3m-vw this is video from my 99/4a screen real hw.. my boot menu is a gram device so it's a little different..

[Olivier26]

Same here, it works even with the F18A option disabled. So I apologize to these talented developers!

[orbitaldecay]

No problem ;)

[nsxwolf]

I have the real hardware ready to go, but I don't currently have an easy option for getting software from the internet onto it. I see they made a ROM cartridge version of it; if they ever make a run of those for sale I'll definitely grab one.

[arcadeshopper]

you are in luck they are available soon as I get the labels in also many other new TI-99/4a games, expansions etc including 32k if you don't already have it

[orbitaldecay]

FYI, a kind member of the atariage forums will be burning carts for cheap. if anyone is interested just stop by the forums there.