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!).
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