.
Box Front	Manual

    MANUFACTURER:  MILTON BRADLEY

 PRODUCT NUMBER:  MB 4961

   RELEASED:  3Q/1979

   PROGRAMMER:

  ORIGINAL RETAIL PRICE:  N/A
 
   

TOUCAN'S TRIVIA: The Gamevision Demonstration cartridge was never meant to be sold to the public, but instead was made to showcase the Gamevision line of games that Milton Bradley was bringing out for the TI-99/4. Someone who visited a store with this cartridge plugged in could either watch a demo that goes through all the games or play any of the titles on the cartridge (Connect Four, Yahtzee, Hangman, Zero Zap). As with all demos, the idea of this cartridge was to sell a product. In this case that would be the Gamevision titles were were available separately.

TOUCAN'S TRIVIA: The label on this cartridge is unique in that the lettering is actually printed on a clear label that was then stuck on top of a plain white label. If you look at the cartridge images, you will be able to see that the clear label is peeling off of the white one. This differs from the other Gamevision releases in that they had a single solid blue label. The only other time this clear label scheme was used was on 3rd party Milton Bradley runs of I'm Hiding, which have clear labels placed on top of beige labels.

TOUCAN'S TRIVIA: The TI-99/4A Videogame House purchased this cartridge from Jeff Eyster in November 1998 on the rec.games.video.classic newsgroup. This is the only known copy of the cartridge in existence, as most of the others were probably tossed in the garbage by stores when the Gamevision titles were discontinued. There are most likely others still lurking around, but probably not many were made and the few that were made only found their ways into homes by people who either stole the cartridge from the store or got it for a discount when the titles were no longer new.

TOUCAN'S TRIVIA: According to Tony Cote who worked at Milton Bradley back in the late 70's, the company was developing their own video game system which would become the TI-99/4 (and manufactured by Texas Instruments). The details on this are kind of sketchy, but according to Tony "the MB1 was the TI-99/4. We were going to design a system that would put 16 bit processing against the current 8 bitter's of the day. I don't remember exact dates (late 70's). We had full assistance from TI on supplying all the chips, the 9900 processor. We actually created the 9918 graphics chip in house and TI manufactured the die for us. TI decided that most of all the hardware was theirs, they decided to take over the product and refused to supply MB with any hardware or help. There was a legal battle that TI won, so we just put our tail under our legs and made games for the "NEW" TI console. The only thing I personally have is one of the two prototypes (mounted on plywood) that preceded the actual production version of the 99/4. I think I am going to donate this to the computer museum in Boston. This part of computer history is not very well known. It should be known that the TI 99/4 should have been the MB1 (this was just an in house code name. no name was ever mentioned after we lost the rights)." It would not be surprising if the name Gamevision was going to be the final name for the MB1 that Tony Cote was involved with. This comes from the fact that MB already had a handheld video game system called Microvision, and a standalone system named Gamevision would make a lot of sense. Therefore, if you have a boxed Gamevision TI-99/4A cartridge, you very well might be holding a game that was to have been for a separate Gamevision system (too bad it never came to be, since the blue packaging was pretty nice!).

TOUCAN'S TRIVIA: This game was part of the Milton Bradley Gamevision series, which consisted of 7 cartridges (Connect Four, Yahtzee, Hangman, Zero Zap, Card Sharp, Stratego, and the Gamevision Demonstration Cartridge). These 7 cartridges were the launch titles for the TI-99/4 in 1979.

1979 Gamevision Brochure

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