Ah, the good old TI-99 series. I had the TI-99&#x2F;4A and compared to its rivals like the Commodore 64, it was junk. To do anything cool with it you had to buy the bulky, expensive Peripheral Expansion Box. The TI-99 did make history in two ways:<p>* giving us the term &quot;sprite&quot; in the computer graphics sense. Such things were called different things on different platforms: &quot;player-missile graphics&quot; on Atari, OBJs on Nintendo, MOBs on Commodore. The designers of the TMS9918&#x2F;9918A chip which the TI-99s used, named movable graphics &quot;sprites&quot; after the way they floated above the textual-grid display; and TI Extended BASIC provided a CALL SPRITE command.<p>* providing the first ROM-cartridge lockout system in a dick move that would later be copied by Nintendo and every other console manufacturer. The 1983 &quot;beige&quot; rerelease of the 99&#x2F;4A would not boot unlicensed cartridges (though cassette- or disk-based games would still run).