TI-99 fans with Android phones can now carry their favorite computer around in their pocket. The new Droid99 is a TI-99/4A emulator written by Eric Lorimar (EML Labs) and can be downloaded from the Google Play store like any other Android app. A TI-99 emulator has been a long time coming- most of the other classic computers have had emulators on Android and iPhone for a while now. I had been able to get an older DOS TI-99 emulator running under a DOS Box app, but it was really clunky and slow. Droid99 is waaaay easier.
Droid99 installed and ran on my Samsung Galaxy S5 without any problems, and worked great. It emulates VDP graphics, CPU, keyboard, joystick, sound, and one 180K disk drive. Once you start the app, you're presented with the TI-99/4A boot screen and a TI keyboard if you're in portrait mode (turned sideways, landscape, the TI screen goes full-screen). Near the bottom of the screen, there are save, load and setting buttons. The save/load will save the state of the emulator so that you can just load it back up later. Tapping the 'settings' button takes you to a screen where you can choose which cartridge to use or load ROM and disk images.
There are currently 15 cartridges pre-installed in the app: Demonstration, A-MAZE-ING, Car Wars, Diagnostics, Tunnels of Doom, Blackjack, Football, Hustle, Video Chess, TI Invaders, Parsec, Early Learning Fun, Music Maker, Mini Memory, and Editor/Assembler. The author notes that if there is enough interest, he may add the ability to add custom ROMs from non-TI sources. The settings screen also has an option to enable a debug socket (instructions are provided on the app website).
So far, I've found the on-screen TI99 keyboard very usable. Below the keyboard, there are 'joystick' buttons for playing games- left, right, up, down, and fire. I'm still testing the emulator out, but it's been working great for me. In any case, I certainly can't complain, given the price (free!). The author has made the source code available on
Github. For more information as well as the debug instructions, visit Eric's site at
http://ericlorimer.com/droid99/ .
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