Achieved at : 2025-03-15
Rank : 3
(95% worse)
Lups : 29
Approved :
Yes
Voting completed : 2025-03-18
| General Rules: |
Game must be played on the actual hardware. Play with default settings unless otherwise specified. No code modifications that give the player an advantage over other players. 1 credit. No continues. 1 player mode only. No use of trainers, cheats, auto-fire (when not default present in-game) , game saves, or cheat codes. Can be overruled by the Specific Rules. It is discouraged and may lead to voters not accepting your score to - excessively point farm - use glitches or other game exploits |
| Specific Rules: | Play the game in 1 player mode with default settings |
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TGP
Parsec is an arcade game for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. It was released on cartridge by Texas Instruments in 1982 and was written by Jim Dramis (who also wrote Car Wars and Munch Man amongst others) and Paul Urbanus (Jungle Hunt and Pole Position), which is why some of the enemies are called Urbites and Dramites. Their names also appear as part of the background as JED and URB.
The game is similar in some respects to Scramble, in that your craft passes over a landscape while shooting down enemies. It's a little more basic than Scramble in that you do not bomb anything, just shoot at waves of enemy craft and the odd asteroid storm. If you run low on fuel, there is the option of refuelling in an underground tunnel. You lose a life if you collide with anything (including the ground), run out of fuel, use your laser too much or are shot - as some of your enemies fire back.
Parsec is regarded as a TI classic and rightly so. At the time of its release, the standard of its visuals and gameplay were not that common on home machines so it was a popular title to own. The icing on the cake though, was that the game included speech if you had the Solid State Speech Synthesizer fitted. A female voice warns you of upcoming threats and as it uses the dedicated speech peripheral, it is of a very high standard. Testament to its nostalgic fame, the game even got a port to iOS (Retro Parsec). Parsec may be a little unresponsive to control, but somehow I rarely got annoyed by this - it just felt like part of the charm.
This run was made on the 15th March 2025. The emulator is Classic99. There are no skill levels and the final score was 15,300 points.
Time stamps:
00:30 Loading Parsec and the title screen.
00:51 Game start.
02:31 First life lost.
02:42 Second life lost.
03:27 Third life lost.
03:33 Extra life awarded for reaching 5,000 points.
03:39 Fourth life lost.
05:29 Fifth life lost.
06:39 Sixth life lost. Game Over! Final score 15,300 points.
The game is similar in some respects to Scramble, in that your craft passes over a landscape while shooting down enemies. It's a little more basic than Scramble in that you do not bomb anything, just shoot at waves of enemy craft and the odd asteroid storm. If you run low on fuel, there is the option of refuelling in an underground tunnel. You lose a life if you collide with anything (including the ground), run out of fuel, use your laser too much or are shot - as some of your enemies fire back.
Parsec is regarded as a TI classic and rightly so. At the time of its release, the standard of its visuals and gameplay were not that common on home machines so it was a popular title to own. The icing on the cake though, was that the game included speech if you had the Solid State Speech Synthesizer fitted. A female voice warns you of upcoming threats and as it uses the dedicated speech peripheral, it is of a very high standard. Testament to its nostalgic fame, the game even got a port to iOS (Retro Parsec). Parsec may be a little unresponsive to control, but somehow I rarely got annoyed by this - it just felt like part of the charm.
This run was made on the 15th March 2025. The emulator is Classic99. There are no skill levels and the final score was 15,300 points.
Time stamps:
00:30 Loading Parsec and the title screen.
00:51 Game start.
02:31 First life lost.
02:42 Second life lost.
03:27 Third life lost.
03:33 Extra life awarded for reaching 5,000 points.
03:39 Fourth life lost.
05:29 Fifth life lost.
06:39 Sixth life lost. Game Over! Final score 15,300 points.