Tic Tac Toe
By E. Schoo
198x.


This game is for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade and AstroBASIC.

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The transcription of the games instructions were made from the audio instructions that preceded the game on the tape.  The transcription was made by Adam Trionfo on December 7, 2021.  The text has not been changed, although punctuation has been added to make the instructions easier to read.

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The game that is on this tape now is Tac-Tac-Toe.  You input the number of games that you wish to play on the keyboard.  It is designed for two players.  Number one player starts, selects number with knob, pulls trigger when desired number is shown.  The machine will show that number with a question mark.  If you do not wish that number, push knob away from body and you can turn a new number with the knob.  If you wish to use the number, then pull trigger and X will be put in the square you selected.  Number two player does the same thing.

When the game is tied, a new game will be displayed.  

The computer is programmed not to accept a number other than those of your coordinates.  Also, if a number has been used previously, it will not accept the number again.  When this occurs, the trigger will not accept it.  It will bring back the number so you may select a new one on your time.

Good luck, and load the tape at the BEEP tone.

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The archive thread for this game is here:

https://groups.io/g/ballyalley/topic/archived_tic_tac_toe_by_e/87557251

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Archive Notes by Paul Thacker (Monday, December 6, 2021):

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I've archived Tic Tac Toe by E. Schoo. Thanks to Allen Schweitzer for loaning me this tape. This program seems to be completely unknown, and a quick search didn't reveal anything about the programmer. This is a reminder that for all the programs published or advertised in a newsletter, there were probably many more that people just experimented with on their own.

https://archive.org/details/tic-tac-toe-e-schoo

Tic Tac Toe by E. Schoo for the Astrocade console in 2000 baud format, load with:

:INPUT; RUN

So far as I can tell, this program was never published. The tape was included with an eBay purchase, but no further details of the source are known. The front side of the tape includes audio instructions and a copy of the program with a title screen. The reverse side of the tape includes an extra copy of the program, which seems to differ only in that it doesn't have a title screen. I digitally processed the programs with ballybin after applying a bandpass filter.

Paul


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Archive Notes by Adam Trionfo (Tuesday, December 7, 2021 10:57 AM):

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Thanks for archiving this 2000-baud, AstroBASIC program, Paul.  Also, of course, thanks to Allen for lending the tape to him.

Paul didn't mention that Mr. Schoo included spoken-audio instructions on his Kmart-branded cassette tape.  I've taken the original WAV file and made it into a small 3MB, 2-minute audio file and attached it to this post.  There's something about these spoken introductions on a few tapes that are fascinating to me.  It's as though Mr. Schoo is talking to us through a time machine from forty years ago.

Paul really has found an elegant method to archive EVERYTHING now, including the RAW files.  The zip file on archive.org is 63.6 MB.  I've attached the screenshot of this game that Paul included in the archive.  It looks like this was taken using Astrocade emulation.

I also looked for some information about E. Schoo, but I came up empty-handed as well.  If he was a subscriber to the Arcadian, then he may be on a subscriber list.

Adam

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wBallyBin was used to get BASIC listings of this game.  The load screen for this game is different for these two versions, but the text listings themselves, when checked with Beyond Compare 4, are identical.

1) Tic Tac Toe (198x)(E Schoo)(2000 baud).wav

2) Tic Tac Toe (198x)(E Schoo)(2000 baud)[a].wav

