ohithur, you!

most people come into calc programming without any experience in other places. it's a wonderful place to start if you plan to go on to develop for other platforms and a wonderful hobby if you decide to never progress further.
like everyone else, i'd recommend the 83/84 series just because the community for it is still so active and, because they've been around for so long, we know nearly everything there is to know about how they work (with one or two exceptions...).

there are three main methods used for programming the 83/84 series: BASIC, which is probably the easiest place to start, axe, which uses basic tokens and is easy to pick up, but allows much more functionality (especially now that quigibo released version 1.0 =D), and asm, which allows direct access to the hardware, but can be a little verbose and takes a while to learn. all three of these languages have 'addons' which can be used to increase their ease of use (and, in the case of BASIC, their speed). BASIC has asm libraries like Iambian's Celtic III, Xeda's Batlib, etcetera, which allow things like sprite commands to be put inline in your BASIC programs. axe has things called axioms, which are optional additions written in assembly which give more functionality. asm has libraries (like ion) which allow you to benefit from what other people have written already and not have to write it again.

the 83/84 line are my favourites, but that doesn't mean all the others are worthless. the Casio PRIZM, in particular, is looking very promising, as it already supports code in asm and C (which, if you don't know, acts as a standard coding language and has been implemented on thousands of different devices), and has a larger screen and 16 bit (i think) colour support. plus, if you buy your calc in stores (which i don't recommend, because TI overprices), it costs about the same amount as an 83+

i hope you are happy with your choice and have a wonderful time here!

oh, and do you play maple story? if so, you should check out wakfu. it's still in closed beta for NA, but i got a key yesterday and can say that it is, unquestionably, the best mmo i have every played.

Welcome! Guess another Coding Knight has arrived

Will Wabbitemu run on Linux?

Yes, through wine. For responsiveness though ( for gaming and such ) use wxwabbitemu. If you need a debugger ( for assembly etc ) use wine.

Welcome to Omnimaga, Sitarknight!
It's cool that you want to make games for the calc, and that's leading you to buying one.   I wish you the best of luck with learning to program.
If you would like to start with an RPG, try something really, really small.  It's really hard to write an RPG.  Click on Elmgon in my sig to see what I'm struggling with, and I've been programming calcs for about 4 years.

I hope you enjoy Omnimaga!   If you need any help, just ask.

@ztrumpet Well it looks like you've got a lot done judging by the screens. Kind of reminds me of Zelda for the gameboy, or Final Fantasy Adventure. I'm more than likely gonna have lots of questions starting off, I hope I won't get on your nerves
@Ti-Programmer thanks, I need all the help I can get I read a post of yours earlier on a different topic, I'm sure I'm more noob than you >.< lol

@Ashbad Which would you say is easier to program?

Hmm, both have a BASIC implementation on them, but in the long term the 84+ would be easier because the next level up there is Axe, which is a lot easier than C; and, z80 assembly on the 84+ is simpler than SH3 ASM on the Prizm, if you ever try that.  So, I guess I would suggest to start with the 84+