Humanity has the ability to get bored. We will get bored in the car, on the plane, or in our math classes. However, no one would blame us for getting bored in a math class. Math can be tedious and boring. That’s what probably led some people to pick up the Texas Instruments 84 calculator and say “I could work with this.”
And so began a unique corner of the gaming world, one that runs on a device originally used to graph functions or help solve equations. The TI-84 calculator dates back to the original Game Boy, in both graphical and mechanical limitations.
The TI-84 calculator dates back to the original Game Boy, in both graphical and mechanical limitations.
The TI-84 has limited screen space and doesn’t have the tiniest of pixels, forcing system developers to be particularly crafty with how they designed a game. Some tend to use individual screens at a time or individual screens that the player couldn’t put down. This way, the player knew what they had to deal with without the risk of being presented with something new with the inclusion of a poor screen blur transition or sometimes lag.
Like GameBoy, the TI-84 calculator still had different aesthetic styles despite its lack of pixel detail. The games had to have a balance between detail and size. For a sprite to be verbose, it must be large and therefore take up more space on the screen. Despite all this, the games still look attractive, unique to each game.
Controls are a strange story when it comes to the TI-84 calculator, as it is a calculator. To begin with, there are many buttons to work with, but not all of them are in a good position, or at least they are not comfortable. This is due to the location of the D-Pad. The D-Pad you have is on the right, which is different than normal systems. Not only that, but it also sits atop the device. Since most of the buttons are much lower than the D-Pad, it would be awkward to hold if the developers decided to use those buttons.
For a sprite to be verbose, it must be large and therefore take up more space on the screen.
It’s good that they don’t. The most commonly used buttons are the 2ND and ALPHA buttons, with some games making use of MODE and others just to the left of the D-Pad. Most games are forced to be simple and therefore use simple controls. Some games use these buttons for things like jump, shoot, or select, while other games just use these buttons to launch the game and then the D-Pad does the rest.
Now, what really makes a gaming system great are the games available to play on it. While there are versions of games like Tetris and homebrews from franchises like Mario and even Portal, there are also a host of original titles, some of which I absolutely love. Platform games like Swords 2, arcade games like Uncle Worm, puzzle games like Pegs and Block Dude, famous in the classroom, etc. The TI-84 has been around for a while, so now it has its fair share of fun games.
Having said all this, I just want to say that, after playing a lot, the TI-84 calculator is an underrated gaming system. Heterodox? Yes. Is it a pain to start playing? Yes. Allowed in math classes? Yes.
