Hello everyone, I'm SitarKnight, I joined this community after seeing some videos of the TI-Nspire and TI-84 Plus playing games. One of the things that really got my attention was the video of the gameplay for Desolate. It totally inspired me to wanna go out and buy a calculator (which I don't yet have) and learn how to make my own games. (which I know nothing about and would appreciate some help on the matter)
I don't really have any background with programming, but I'm willing to learn. Any advice would be highly appreciated:) Thank you for reading.

What calculator you should get depends on what you want to do.

If you want a large base of existing software to learn from and play with, the 84+ series is your best bet. It has a lot of existing stuff like Axe, many active developers, and it's fully hacked as well as extraordinarily well documented.

If you want a lot of memory as well as a good BASIC, then the 89's and other 68K calculators are nice. However, they have almost no developers remaining and finding help may be difficult.

If you want the best hardware, the Nspire series has it. However, it's very difficult to ensure future compatibility and TI tends to block exploits, meaning that running code is often difficult.

If you want the platform with the most potential*, the Prizm is the way to go. You can program for it in a number of languages, it has a useful (if slow) implementation of BASIC, and the hardware is far better than the 84+ series. It even has a high resolution color screen, so that you can draw those pretty images that the 84+ can't. The main problem is that the Prizm is so new that a lot of programming tools and documentation don't exist yet.

There's also the HP calculators, which are insanely good at math, but tend to be rather user unfriendly and lack almost any sort of community.

*I'll admit to being a bit biased

Plus the 84 is a lot more open--after some recent events it's pretty much as open as a device ever will be

Bigger community, more developed.

The TI-83+SE is technically slightly more open, since TI hasn't released 1.03 on it. But yeah, the TI-84+(SE) is the one that you can do the most things with.

Also, the Nspire, (non-CX, and you have to buy another keypad from TI) has an 84+ emulator, so you can have the advantages of the Nspire with most (unfortunately, not everything is emulated correctly) of the software base of the 83/84 series.

The 84+ emulator on the Nspire isn't very good for programming. You can't use 2.43, you can't write to flash, programs that use USB don't work, old games don't work because of hidden instructions, etc.

Wow. I'm flabbergasted (lol yes i used that word) that wabbit isn't made for linux considering how many linux users we have here! Even I didn't know this.

Technically wabbit does have a port, wxWabbit
which compiles itself automatically. is already pre-compiled.
just use:
/path/to/compiled/file/wxwabbitemuor to permanently set it (after compile):
sudo mv wxwabbitemu /usr/bin/wabbit(You can change "/usr/bin/wabbit" to whatever you like, you just have to leave it in the "/usr/bin" dir.)
Then just execute it.

Or if you are more technical, get wine and Wabbitemu For Win32 or 64
then:
cd /path/to/downloaded/file
chmod +x ./Wabbitemu.exe
sudo wine ./Wabbitemu.exe

Then just use it like regular, all the stuff is the same

Alright, thanks for all the great info everyone Ok, get myself a 84+SE, learn BASIC, ASM, and AXE. Hone my skills, then move on to a Casio Prizm when I feel I'm ready lol
I kind of wanna paint the casing and add a backlit screen, is that a bad idea or no?

Yeah, go for the paint and backlight.  Just be careful.
As far as which 84+SE to get, try and get one that has a letter between A and F as the last digit/letter of the serial number, which is stamped on the back of the case.  Those have more RAM.

Alright, thanks for all the great info everyone Ok, get myself a 84+SE, learn BASIC, ASM, and AXE. Hone my skills, then move on to a Casio Prizm when I feel I'm ready lol
I kind of wanna paint the casing and add a backlit screen, is that a bad idea or no?

You can't do much wrong with paint, but for the backlight, I would suggest just taping some LED's at the side of the screen, outside of the calculator. This should give you enough light if you take bright LED's. Also remembr that soldering anything to the INSIDE of your calculator will void the warranty, and if you are using LED's for this, don't forget to use a resistor when you use the calc's 6v battery pack.

But anyway, i really think you should paste LED's or other lights to the front of the calculator, pointing at the screen. A screen that isn't made for use with a baklight has a mirror at the back, which usually isn't fully transparent (I tried it with an other kind of LCD some time ago, and only a rectangle in the middle was illuminated). And many other screens with baclight also have the light in front of the screen anyway.

By the way: welcome to omnimaga