Humanity has a hit to get bored. We will get bored in the car, on a plane, or in our math class. However, no one would blame us for being bored in math class. Math can be tedious and boring. That’s probably what 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 ran on a device originally used to graph functions or help solve equations. The TI-84 calculator harkens back to the original Game Boy, both in graphical and mechanical limitations.
The TI-84 calculator harkens back to the original Game Boy, both in graphical and mechanical limitations.
The TI-84 has limited screen real estate and doesn’t have the smallest pixels, forcing system developers to be particularly cunning in how they design a game. Some tend to use single screens at a time or single screens that the player cannot leave. This way the player knew what to deal with without the risk of being presented with something new with the inclusion of poor screen transition blur or sometimes lag.
Like the GameBoy, the TI-84 Calculator still had different aesthetic styles despite the lack of pixel detail. The games had to have a balance between detail and size. For a sprite to be detailed, it would have to be large and therefore take up more space on the screen. Despite all this, the games still look attractive, unique to each game.
The controls are a strange story when it comes to the TI-84 calculator, since it is a calculator. For starters, there are plenty of buttons to work with, but not all of them are in a good position, or at least not on a dresser. This is due to the location of the D-Pad. The D-Pad it has is on the right, which is different than normal systems. Not only that, but it also sits high on 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 detailed, it would have to be large and therefore take up more space on the screen.
It’s a good thing they don’t. The most used buttons are the 2ND and ALPHA buttons, with some games using MODE and others just to the left of the D-Pad. Most of the games are bound to be simple and thus use simple controls. Some games use these buttons for things like jumping, shooting, or selecting, while other games just use these buttons to open the game and then the D-Pad does the rest.
Now, what really makes a gaming system great is the games available to play on it. While there are adaptations of games like Tetris and homebrew versions of franchises like Mario and even Portal, there are also a plethora of original titles, some of which I love. Platform games like Swords 2, arcade games like Uncle Worm, puzzle games like Pegs and the famous Block Dude, etc. The TI-84 has been around for a while, so now it has its fair share of fun games.
Having said all of this, I just want to say that after playing it a lot, the TI-84 calculator is an underrated gaming system. Heterodox? Yes. A pain to put the games on? Yes. Allowed in math classes? Yes.
