Tank2004 and Find Doctor - E-dictionary Games on Calcs
Posted by Ryan on 20 November 2013, 03:29 GMT
Today's double feature is noteworthy due to the unique undertaking of Zhen "snoopyzz" Zeng. Due to cultural barriers, some of the things presented here might not be accurate; I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies and welcome any corrections or additional details.
E-dictionaries were extremely popular, portable devices a couple of decades ago. Especially in China, some of the most popular models among kids were the CC800 and PC1000, and were intended for school-aged individuals to learn English. Almost completely eliminated by the coming of smartphones, you might think of them as a stripped-down version of the more rudimentary instantiations of PDAs that were popular in the West some time ago.
As any calc fan will know, anything with a screen and processor will draw in curious and talented coders, and E-dictionaries were no exception. A handful of games were available for the platforms, mostly programmed in LAVA. Zhen has put in a lot of work porting a handful of these games over to the 68k line of TI calcs, two great examples being Tank2004 and Find Doctor. Tank2004 is a nice clone of Battle City, which is always a crowd-pleaser. Find Doctor, on the other hand, is an adventure/puzzle game where you search the world and use items to solve a mysterious crime involving science!
Great work on the ports, Zhen! It's wonderful to see this software kept alive on our calcs!
