(re: Games for the TI 99)
Bryan:
Sorry to tell you this, but I have no idea what games we produced for the TI-99. I’ve been trying to remember, but, honestly, had you posted this message and just asked if we ever did games for the TI-99 I’m sure I would have said no.
I’m curious if we did the conversions ourselves at Sierra, or if we licensed the product to someone else who made the games. Do the boxes have another publisher name besides Sierra on them?
There was a strange time in Sierra’s history that occurred in around 1983, that is chronicled in the book Hackers. At the beginning, we did only software for the Apple II. We were an immediate success, and had grown from just Roberta and I up to 120 or so employees. Then, we raised a bunch of venture capital, and decided to expand. We did cartridges for the TI-99, Com-64 and Atari 800 – and, even toyed with the idea of the Atari 2600 game machine. Unfortunately, just as we were receiving our inventory (cartridges in those days were very expensive, and had to be ordered in large quantities), the whole market for cartridges just ended. We had millions of dollars of cartridges in our warehouse, and no place to sell them. It almost killed Sierra. We laid 100 people off, which was the most painful thing I had ever done, and got a loan on the house, with which to make payroll. We also borrowed all the cash we could on several different credit cards. Luckily, we made it – but, most of those cartridges literally wound up being thrown away.
-Ken W