Tantalizing Games for the T/S 2000 Series
2 messages · 2008-02-22 → 2008-02-24 · Yahoo Group era · View archive on archive.org
Participants: Adam Trionfo, Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey
Preserved from the Timex/Sinclair 2068 Yahoo Group (2001–2019), which is no longer online. Text reproduced from the archive.org archive; email addresses masked.
Messages
1. Tantalizing Games for the T/S 2000 Series
Adam Trionfo · Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:59
Today I received another Timex Sinclair book full of BASIC games. This book is called "Tantalizing Games for the Timex/Sinclair 2000 Series" by Hal Renko and Sam Edwards. The ISBN is 0-201-16479-5. It was published in 1983 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (but printed in Finland). The original cost of the book was $5.95.
There are thirty BASIC game programs in this book. Each program listing is made from a quality copy of a print-out that seems to have been originally made with a Timex printer. The listings are clear and easy to read.
There is a note after the table of contents that says, "'Qui Vive' and 'I.T. The Adventure of the Century' require 48K of memory." I guess that this means the rest of the games will fit into 16K of RAM.
Here is the table of contents:
1 – Zombies in the Swamp
2 - Galactic Monsters
3 - Keyboard Memory
4 - Las Vegas a Go Go
5 - Parrot
6 - Kentucky Derby
7 - Rainbow Square Dance
8 - Qui Vive
9 - STM
10 - One to Five
11 - Escher
12 - Genius at Work
13 - Shakspearian Shuffle
14 - Explosion
15 - New York, New York
16 - Key
17 - Black Box
18 - Treasure Hunt
19 - I.T. - The Adventure of the Century
20 - The Wolf and the Five Little Goats
21 - Spring
22 - Road Race
23 - At the Market
24 - Fallout
25 - Ship's Attack
26 - Mini Mancala
27 - Stop It!
28 - BABA
29 - Vowels and Consonants
30 - Astrology
Each program has a description of the game, plus the rules on how to play. This book doesn't cater to anyone that is trying to learn BASIC as the programs are just meant to be typed-in and played: there is no explanation on how the programs work. Many books from this period usually had some sort of introduction or appendix that made a very simple stab at explaining BASIC a little and then pointed the reader to some other books. This book makes no such attempt. For $5.95 you get a book with thirty programs and that's it. I searched in the book for a way to have "trouble-free" programs by purchasing the games on tape, but I don't see any such offer.
After getting quite a few plain-looking T/S 2068 books lately I like that the cover art for this book brings the games out for my imagination. The UFOs, aliens, racing cars, city floating in the sky and slot machine don't represent the way that the games would REALLY look, but it brings to mind much of the cover art for games and magazines circa 1983.
I like the presentation of this book: it's simple. There do seem to be a few games that were created especially for this book, but many of these games are just ports from other standard BASIC fare of the period.
Adam
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2. Re: [ts2068] Tantalizing Games for the T/S 2000 Series
Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey · Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:58
On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 15:59 -0800, Adam Trionfo wrote:
> Today I received another Timex Sinclair book full
> of BASIC games. This book is called "Tantalizing
> Games for the Timex/Sinclair 2000 Series" by Hal
> Renko and Sam Edwards.
Adam,
I have the Tandy CoCo version of that book here.
I bought it "back in the day" and have somehow
held onto it since.
My version is titled "Thrilling Games for the
Tandy Color Computer", same authors, same cover
art, ISBN 0-201-16481-7
The table of contents is the same, except this
one has a "Shark Hunt" listed between "Genius
At Work" and "Shakespearean Shuffle".
The pages for the program listing of the very
last program "Astrology" have come out of mine
and gone missing.
If you can type in yours and can save it/send it,
I would appreciate it. I can type in "Shark Hunt"
from mine and send that, in return. It should not
be too hard to convert it from Tandy BASIC to Timex.
You are correct about the sparseness of the text.
Each program has a minimal intro, and that's it.
The sparseness may be a publisher restriction
since they were apparently doing several versions
of the same book. The code is pretty easy to read
and I remember it was pretty easy to understand
what was happening as I typed in each line.
--
Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey
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