1982
1981
Europe
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1982 |
Manual 1981 |
Manual Europe |
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MANUFACTURER:
MILTON BRADLEY (Distributed
by Texas Instruments)
PRODUCT
NUMBER: PHM 3032
. RELEASED:
1Q/1981
PROGRAMMERS:
ELAINE HENSHON / BOB HARRIS
ORIGINAL
RETAIL PRICE: $24.95
 TOUCAN'S
TRIVIA: This
game is a port of the 1978 Sega/Gremlin Arcade game Blasto,
making it one of the earliest Sega arcades brought to the home. The
game
itself is pretty much identical to the Sega/Gremlin original, except
for
the alteration to the battle vehicles. In the arcade, you "drive"
spaceships
on a type of space minefield. Apparently, Milton Bradley thought it
would
make more sense to the public (and perhaps sell more copies) if the
game
took place on a minefield, where the player would control a tank.
Personally,
I think the space theme was more unique, but can understand the change
that arose most likely due to marketing reasons. Still, a faithful
arcade
translation by Milton Bradley. |
| TOUCAN'S
TRIVIA: This
game would be the first programming job done by Robert S. Harris (AKA
RoSHa)
before going on to create games for the Odyssey2, his most
famous
title being the well-known Killer
Bees! According
to Bob, this game was first started by Elaine Henshon, but for
unknown
reasons she stopped working on it. He speculates that the reason for
this
was because Elaine was busy working on 3 other TI-99/4A titles at the
time
for Milton Bradley, and could not meet the upcoming deadline for the
project
if she was working on 4 titles all at once. |
| TOUCAN'S
TRIVIA: Blasto, Hunt
The Wumpus, and A-Maze-Ing
were all initially going to
be bundled on one cartridge. However, programmer Kevin Kenney took
these games and added a bunch of extra features to them, turning them
into
viable stand alone cartridge products. In the end this was a great move
by Kevin since all of them went on to become top sellers on the 99/4A
system, bringing in more money than what TI would have gotten with an
all-in-one watered down combo cartridge. |
| TOUCAN'S
TRIVIA: The
European Manual for this game incorrectly states the product number
as
PHM 3023, when it should be PHM 3032. As seen in the European manual
scan above, someone crossed this error out and fixed it themselves. |
| TOUCAN'S
TRIVIA: Interested in playing an updated version of Blasto right on your own PC?
Thanks to a TI-99/4A gaming enthusiast you now can! The revised game is
called Blasto
3D
and is very faithful to the TI-99/4A conversion of the Sega/Gremlin
arcade. The only sad news is that it is for PC only and not
Macintosh. Hopefully in the future it will be ported to the Mac, but
for those who use PC's I seriously recommend you download and give this
game a try. |
ADDITIONAL ITEMS:
 |
Click Here for Blasto's Instructions |
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