The History of the Apple II as a Gaming Platform

Matt Barton writes "Gamasutra is running a feature on the venerable Apple II platform, which practically defined the early home computer industry and was home to many of the greatest games and developers of all time. The authors discuss the platform's lifespan and many iterations, struggles with illegal distribution, and legendary Apple II games such as Prince of Persia, John Madden Football, and Ultima. 'How big of a problem was piracy? Although several software authors claim that they stopped developing games because of rampant piracy and the subsequent loss of revenue, piracy did expose more computer owners to more games than they otherwise would have been -- this was at a time before ubiquitous demos made it easier to "try before you buy." Another benefit of this piracy is that much of the software archived today at online repositories are the cracked versions.'"

Best Games

[coinreturn (617535)]

Crisis Mountain, Lode Runner, BoulderDash, Choplifter

Re:

[xstonedogx (814876)]

Lemonade Stand, The Dark Crystal, Oregon Trail, Taipan, Karateka, even Wasteland. Those were the days.

Re:Best Games

[djdavetrouble (442175)]

why not just play them in your web browser? [virtualapple.org]

Re:Best Games

[rho (6063)]

I like how I can't play the Virtual Apple games on Safari.

Re:

[steveo777 (183629)]

Choplifter was amazing. I played that game for hours. Never had the instructions, though, so I had to press random keys and hope I got my tanks and what not. Never bothered to write down the keys though. Mostly memorization. Maybe that... maybe that wasn't Choplifter I was playing...

Re:

[0100010001010011 (652467)]

It was called "Stun Copter". It has it's own Wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunt_Copter [wikipedia.org] and.... It's been released for OS X! http://antell.com/software/games.html [antell.com]

Anyone with any leads on New World ROMS so I can fire up and install OS 9 or something? I have a stack (50+) of all my old MacAddict CDs and somewhere I know I have an "Inside Mac Games" from around 1996. That thing had on it the first game I ever bought (shareware). Realmz II.

Oh and Warlords. First turn based game I ever played. Man I lov

The good old days

[eviloverlordx (99809)]

That brings back memories of junior high school, and playing cracked versions of various arcade games (complete with signature opening screens) on the school's Apple //e machines. Not to mention 'hacking' the 5-1/4 SS floppies to get cheap DS usage. While today's games are certainly graphically superior, in many ways they've gotten to be somewhat pedestrian compared to the excitement of playing Dig Dug or Conan on the green monitors.

Re:

[smokytgab (1062510)]

I actually just finished getting a working one together and giving to my girlfriend and her suitemates. It defined a lot of elementary childrens' computer experiences and was actually my first computer as well. Even when I was looking up various information on how to get the various disk images onto 5 1/4 floppies (great program http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]), it amazed me how open and extendable the Apple ][ was. There are still small companies that make various expansion cards for things such as Ethernet

Re:

[Sebastopol (189276)]

Locksmith 3.0 FTW!

Re:The good old days

[Captain Splendid (673276)]

in many ways they've gotten to be somewhat pedestrian compared to the excitement of playing Dig Dug or Conan on the green monitors.

It occurs to me the reason we don't excited about games the way we did when we first played Pong, or messed around with early Apples and C64s is because back then, this was all cutting-edge stuff and very non-mainstream. We were doing cool shit that almost nobody else knew about. In the days before the NES and Sega Master system, I could count people I knew who played videogames on one hand.

Nowadays, everybody and his cousin owns at least a couple piece of hardware able to play games, even if it's just a low-spec PC and a cellphone, and most games tend to basically be point releases, incremental upgrades designed to suck up your spare cash, not try anything new.

Re:

[nacturation (646836)]

Maybe this is just nostalgia talking, but a lot of games back then were just plain fun. I recently dug out my Apple IIc and was amazed that a lot of my floppies still worked. After playing a few games, they seem to have a character that's lacking in today's games. That's likely a reflection of your last point as well... the games today are just all rehashes. Most first person shooters are simply the same game engine with a new graphics and sound facelift.
 

Re:

[fermion (181285)]

The cool thing was that every thing was a game on the Apple. Shape tables made programming games relatively easy. Disk Muncher should have probably been on the controlled substances list as it was the gateway drug to what is now referred to as piracy. Even trig function took on a whole new meaning when manipulated on an Apple.

The programming in particular was transformative. I already had opportunities to code in basic and Fortran on teletypes and dumb terminals. The graphics on the Apple were fascin

FTA

[FredFredrickson (1177871)]

Nevertheless, Woz, a fan of both Atari arcade games and engineering challenges, came to his friend's rescue. He completed the bulk of the work in about four days, with an efficient design that used far fewer chips than any other Atari arcade game at the time. Atari's engineers were impressed and Jobs received a nice payout and bonus --most of which he kept for himself. Breakout would become another arcade hit for Atari.

Turns out, Woz is also behind most of the stuff that Apple pumps out these days. And of course, Jobs keeps the cash.

Let's not forget...

[ivanmarsh (634711)]

The original Castle Wolfenstein.

Achtung! Damn exploding treasure chests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Wolfenstein [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[lord_mike (567148)]

Or it's successor, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein!

HALT! KOMMEN ZIE!!

AUS PASS?

AUS PASS?

*fires shot*

AYEEEEEEEE!!!!

The best part of the games was, of course, the speech synthesis, which was revolutionary at the time. The games were creatively designed and a lot of fun, though. The only really annoying thing about both the games is when you run into a wall, and the screen totally flops out! I don't understand why that was considered to be a "feature".

Man, this article is bringing back memories!

Can't we get the name right?

[Overzeetop (214511)]

It's an Apple ][ - those brackets are absolutely necessary. Trust me.

Now get off my lawn, and don't come back until you can code in 6502 machine language hex codes - I don't want any of you assembly language sissies hanging around here.

Re:

[WillAffleckUW (858324)]

Remember how we used to laugh at 6502c coders who couldn't make the box squawk on a 6502 - 8086 and 8088 chipsets were lame, and we thought nothing of popping open a Timex-Sinclair to get at the board and probe it.

Ah, hex. A1B2C3D4E5. F!

My reply

[ToastyKen (10169)]

A946 9900 00A9 6999 0001 A972 9900 02A9 7399 0003 A974 9900 04A9 2199 0005

(I think that should print "First!", but my 6502 machine code is rusty. :\)

My #1 game

[caywen (942955)]

Aztec all the way, baby! That game was fun *because* of the bugs. I loved walking the Indiana Jones dude on top of the water, on top of alligators, and using grenades to create garbled spider sprites running around. Sea Dragon was a kick, too.. SEEEAAAA DRAGOOON! Speaker modulation on the Apple IIe done right.

Re:

[caywen (942955)]

FYI, I like the AppleWin emulator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleWin [wikipedia.org] Also, lots of old Apple II software (.DSK images) here: ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/ [asimov.net]

Favorite emulator...

[UnknownSoldier (67820)]

I'm curious how many got into programming because of ...

  * "I wonder how this game works..." or
  * "How do I remove the copy protection..."
  * "How do I cheat..." ;-) The 6502 was a nice CPU where one person could not only memorize all the opcodes, but understand the whole machine.

I'm a little biased *cough*, but there is a a half-decent emulator (with mockingboard support) available at http://applewin.berlios.de/

Gaming genres were defined in the '80s. I would highly recommend checking these out:

* Anything by Br0derbund! (Lode Runner, Drol, Spare Change, Captain Goodnight, Carmen Sandiago)
* Ultima series
* Anything by the "Beagle Bros" for just plain hacking fun

--
*C600G

Re:

[goldspider (445116)]

On behalf of the Ministry of Truth and the entire loyal Ultima fan base, Ultima IX never happened. It is an un-game. Please update your records accordingly.

My brain hurts!

[Tony (765)]

Anything by the "Beagle Bros" for just plain hacking fun

Ah! That took me back so fast, my brain is whiplashed. Painful.

I loved the Beagle Bros. They had some of the *coolest* hacks. I learned more about the Apple system from them than from anywhere else. Between Beagle Bros and the Sweet-16 mini-assembler (no more hand assembling! yes!), the Apple ][ was the *greatest* platform for budding programmers.

When people claim Microsoft started the computer revolution, I laugh gently, pat them on the head, and say, "Ah, you're so *cute*." The Apple ][ started it, followed by all the others: Commodore, Atari, Tandy, etc. *Those* were the days.

Not that I'd go back. I do like where we're at today (though we should've been here 10 years ago).

Confessions of a "pirate"

[digitalcowboy (142658)]

My first computer was an Apple IIc. I came from a lower middle class family and it was a sacrifice for my mother to buy the machine for me second-hand. She did it because she recognized my passion and wanted me to have the opportunity to pursue it. But there was no way my family could afford to buy any software, really, much less games at $50 a pop.

Over the course of a couple of years I "acquired" two disk files full of software, much of it games. I paid for blank disks out of money I earned mowing lawns and such. I also accumulated a stack of magazines mostly donated by a teacher who took an interest in my interest and whose husband had an Apple II and a couple subscriptions.

Long story short, I'm running two IT-based businesses today and I'm grateful for a mother that cared, a teacher (and her husband) that cared and "pirate" software. No one lost anything from my "piracy" because there was absolutely ZERO chance that I ever would have been able to buy any of the software or half of the magazines that I had available to me back then.

All of that combined has defined the life I now lead and today I both give away software under OSS licenses and willingly pay for any commercial software that I use.

Re:

[riseoftheindividual (1214958)]

I hear all that. I "pirated" almost everything back then too. I was a poor kid and I had no money after saving up for half the cost of the computer(which my mom and grandparents matched for the other half). Those game companies didn't lose any sales to me, you can't get blood from a turnip afterall. In fact, Origin in particular would go on to benefit long term, as I played ULtima I, II, and III for free, and when IV came out, I had a job and bought a copy of that and V-VI later(and I would in turn influenc

Re:

[Wylfing (144940)]

the copyright holder lost out on their right to profit from the distribution of the software

There is no right to profit.

Re:

[riseoftheindividual (1214958)]

but the copyright holder lost out on their right to profit from the distribution of the software

How? How does a copyright holder lose their right to profit if a copy goes to someone who couldn't buy it in the first place? There is no loss there. That's absurd. Where's the loss?

Re:

[rhakka (224319)]

In other words, the "pirate" in this case got a concrete gain, while the copyright holder lost out only in principle, that someone got something for 'nothing'. Not, of course, that the copyright holder would in any case have gotten ANYTHING, so it's a principle only thing.. and, furthermore, the loss doesn't cost them anything at all. Meanwhile, society has been enriched by another enterprising young mind finding fertile ground for his technical curiousity.

So society has gained, but of course, that's a ba

Cracking was a fun thing to do

[WillAffleckUW (858324)]

And most of us who did it would add improvements which we sent to the game authors.

I remember having 172k of RAM (on a 48k Apple II+) that I used as a RAM drive to run programs 1000 times faster, with a dual floppy setup so I could have a data disk and a program disk.

And it was fun creating the world's first play-by-mail role-playing games on it, doing nutso things like using word-processing macros to churn out character stories for each player, or automated D & D, Traveller, and other game system chara

What? No A Bard's Tale?

[TheWoozle (984500)]

Blasphemy!

The joys of Apple // piracy

[themushroom (197365)]

Some years ago the author of the Atarisoft rendition of "Mario Bros" for the Apple // was writing about the title in a Usenet post, saying that Atarisoft never released the game yet it was leaked and everyone had it... and for that reason, he was still able to list it on his resume. :) That's gotta be weird, everyone knows your work yet you didn't get paid properly for it.

Loderunner definitely made the Apple // a gaming platform, as did Wizardry.

Double Sided Disks

[PhillC (84728)]

The Apple IIc was the first computer I ever put my greasy little fingers on. I learned to create some Basic games from books - oh how I miss Goto 10.

The picture in the article of Ultima IV takes me back. So many hours of my early teens lost playing that, Castle Wolfenstein and The Bard's Tale. I was addicted to the Bard's Tale, the glorious green screen of it!

Who else remembers making 5 1/4 inch disks double sided! Hell yeah. How cool was that. A pair of scissors or hole punch and suddenly you had twice

I Remember...

[Gallenod (84385)]

...North Atlantic '86 and The Bard's Tale (I and II). They were the games that made me buy my first Apple (a IIc). I played them on a IIe in the library almost every day until it closed. I finally decided if I was going to save the world from Soviet or magical domination, I'd better get a computer at home so I could devote myself to the cause.

In my case, playing games led to buying a computer, which led to an interest in how computers worked, which led to a change in career from administrator to self-tau

I REPENT

[micromuncher (171881)]

I was a good kid. But that's not really true. There was a moral ambiguity. My dad brought home an Apple ][+ in 1978 - and I was hooked. As soon as I discovered copy protection, I became disturbed. Why could a friend have a game and we couldn't share? I'd already started learning BASIC and 6502 machine language; but it didn't take me long to figure out how to "copy" something that wasn't meant to be copied. Disk duplication software was unreliable. Removal of the protection was the only way. And who did it really hurt...

Some people pirated software. They collected it like baseball cards. Along comes an awkward teenager. All of a sudden, he has purpose and is "popular." Trading and playing software becomes less interesting than removal of protection. And notoriety does wonders for ego.

You get an aliases. Alien, MicroMuncher, Optimus Prime and the Evil Sock... just to name a few (all the same person.) And the art and science of computing starts being applied to your evil deeds. It also leeds you to competition with other aliases that become friends; MicroManiac, and the Saint to name a couple. Removing protection isn't good enough. Things need to work exactly like the original. Something that fits on a disk (with potentially a foreign OS) must now be reduced to a file. And it must save high scores, or get you to the next level. Self loading software of minimum size. And then the glorious splash page! The fun of graphic arts and animation; sometimes the quality of which is better than the games its plastered over.

For example... Dan Gorlin writes Airheart. A truly revolutionary game. And a revoluationary protection scheme. 18 sectors - and too much data to put on a single disk. What is a cracker to do? Re-write the OS to support block compression of course on a standard 16 sector format.

Then a brutal realization as you enter adulthood. What if someone did that to you? Every excuse you had to copy or crack is recognized as an excuse. You feel bad. You wish you had written games instead of breaking them. You even go so far as to seek forgiveness from people who were truly exceptional. To create - that is the best you can do.

Every time I see the old monikers I feel like crap. Going over asimov and noting the only reason certain software survives because YOU did something immoral - its like a WALL OF SHAME. I hang my head and punish myself a little more. I have nothing but reverance for the 8-bit pioneers and gaming gods.

Re:

[Bright Apollo (988736)]

You're making too much of your purported achievements, and consequently, the need to repent.

It doesn't matter what you did to crack protection, ultimately, if it served you in the future to do something better. I never read any stories about the game programmers having to eat dog food as a result of some trainer splashed in front of Karateka.

But hey, if you were the dude that cracked Lode Runner, man, thank you. Also, thanks go to the guy who hacked Wizardry so we could use +25 swords.

-BA

Arcade conversions

[RobotWisdom (25776)]

In Chicago in 1981 I found it very easy to get hired to copy arcade games for the Apple, Atari, and C64 (all 6502). Roklan and Image Producers hired me to do Berzerk and Wizard of Wor (one was supposedly for Microsoft). There was no training or local expertise available, you just had to reverse engineer them. Then Atari(?) successfully sued somebody for a PacMan ripoff, and the whole bubble quickly burst...

The Apple ][ was infamous for the bizarre layout of the graphics memory (supposedly Woz chose it to save a chip, or maybe a layer on the circuit board). And if the high bit was set, all the pixels in that byte shifted, creating the other two available colors.

I found a hidden 'Hot Coffee' style easter egg in the text strings for Sierra's 'Wizard and the Princess'-- the placeholder text for the default/generic "I don't know how to **** something" reply was the f-word (never displayed)...

Re:Apple II? Gaming platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, tard. Did you read the article.

[Gamasutra's A History of Gaming Platforms series continues with a look at the Apple II system. Perhaps best-remembered for its ubiquity in U.S. classrooms in the 1980s, the computer was also a popular gaming system. Need to catch up? Check out the first two articles in the series, covering the Commodore 64 and the Vectrex.]

Re:

[idontgno (624372)]

TFA much?

[Gamasutra's A History of Gaming Platforms series continues with a look at the Apple II system. Perhaps best-remembered for its ubiquity in U.S. classrooms in the 1980s, the computer was also a popular gaming system. Need to catch up? Check out the first two articles in the series, covering the Commodore 64 [gamasutra.com] and the Vectrex [gamasutra.com].]

And yes, the Apple II series was the first kick-ass game system. I'm old enough to remember first-hand. What was the Apple's competition? The TRS-80? I had one... the games wer

Re:

[IL-CSIXTY4 (801087)]

How about Ultima I, released in 1980? The VIC-20 wasn't released until 1981, and Ultima I didn't make it to the 64 until 1986.

Re:Apple II? Gaming platform?

[Creepy (93888)]

The C64 was released in August, 1982. The Vic 20 Jan 1981. The Vic was cassette only until 1982 and took 20 minutes to load a program. The PET I used had 4k of RAM and AWFUL games (with a max of 8k RAM, hard to do much).

oh, where to begin... these are some of my earliest Apple ][ memories
The Oregon Trail (1970s, diskette version mid '80s)
Odyssey: The Comleat Apventure (1980) - written in integer BASIC, not MS-BASIC
Ultima I (1980)
Zork I (1980)
Zork II (1981)
Sneakers (1981)
Sabotage (1981)
Gorgon (1981)
Space Eggs (1981)
Castle Wolfenstein (1981)
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981 - and Hi Werdna!)
Softporn Adventure (1981) [text - graphical update became Leisure Suit Larry] - had to throw that in ;)
maybe Aztek (may have been 1982...)

I didn't say Akalabeth (prequel to Ultima 1979-80) because I personally found it very unfun, but it was entertaining until I starved for the 300th time. Also the Prisoner (1980?), which some people liked, but I didn't.

Re:Apple II? Gaming platform?

[saboola (655522)]

My first computer was two rocks and a stick. It had only one game, called two rocks and a stick. The expansion module, three rocks and a stick, was too expensive.

Re:

[solitas (916005)]

You could get books and magazines that let you make your own games.

Remember when BYTE was really a JOURNAL and not a magazine (and now it's nothing)? InCider? Kilobaud! (MORE 'zines should have their index on the cover - It Was Awesome! we miss you Wayne - we also loved '73) 80-Micro? The old Dr. Dobb's? And a BUNCH of others.

There's nothing good anymore.

Re:

[Mister Whirly (964219)]

And you apparently know nothing about early Ataris.

Ram limited? My Atari 800 had 48K of ram - it had 4 slots for RAM expansion. It also came with 8K standard - double the stock amount in the Apple IIs. Tape drive? Hardly. Never had one for my Atari - I had a floppy drive. The original Apple IIs came with a tape drive. And as for the 400 having "the worst keyboard on the face of the earth" - obviously you never tried typing any significant amounts of code onto the old Timex/Sinlair TI-99 keybaords. Think

Re:

[Dancindan84 (1056246)]

I feel old posting this but you're right. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 [wikipedia.org]. 40% market share in around '83-'85. There's also the VIC-20 which was its predecessor that I had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20 [wikipedia.org]. First microcomputer to sell one million units. I remember having a wall climbing game on it that I played for days on end.

Re:

[Dancindan84 (1056246)]

This prompted me to go look up that game. It was http://www.klov.com/C/Crazy_Climber.html [klov.com]crazy climber. I remember trying to explain to my wife that I played a game where the objective was to climb a building while avoiding bird crap and falling flower pots. At least now I can prove I wasn't going crazy (about this at least).

Re:

[Jonathan (5011)]

Why does every computer "historian" ALWAYS forgets Commodore 64?

Ultimas all the way to Ultima VI was available on C-64.

1) The C64 was popular but not very historical -- it came out late in 8-bit history -- it came out in 1982. The Apple ][ came out in 1977. As a reminder, 16-bit computers like the IBM PC were already available in 1981.

2) Sure things like Ultima were on the C64 too, but as ports coming months or years after the Apple ][ originals. People like Lord British used the Apple ][ as their premier p

Re:

[FesterDaFelcher (651853)]

Here you go [ebay.com]. It is definitely worth it.

Re:

[nacturation (646836)]

] CALL -151
* 300: AD 30 C0 20 ED FD 4C 00 03
* 300G

This is:

300: LDA $C030 ; Toggle the speaker
303: JSR $FDED ; Print (random) contents of accumulator to screen
306: JMP $0300 ; And start all over again

Makes a wonderful visual clickfest on your screen that gets annoying. Imagine a school lab filled with machines running that. :) Last time I posted this, someone provided the relative branch alternative, thus saving a byte. However, I remember the above code from 20 years ago and that's the ways I likes

Re:Original Cracked

[riseoftheindividual (1214958)]

but don't give out that not having a copy of the original is somehow beneficial!

it is if the original required some verification to use, like looking up something on a page in a manual that no one has anymore.

Re:Original Cracked

[neapolitan (1100101)]

I know what you are saying, and agree with you to a large extent, but as a former 6502 hacker I am not sure you understand what you are talking about.

The majority of the copy protection routines on the Apple //e depended on nuances of a combination of hardware and software not just software. Disk reading routines were able to be controlled in software -- copy protected games would not include standard apple "DOS" but essentially invent their own disk reading routines. In order to copy a disk, you would have to get extra memory, try to load the program into it using its own disk reading routine, find the starting location of the program, remap this into a format that could fit on a normal disk, and then save it back to a disk (using a standard DOS loaded into your extra memory.) Some methods of protection altered the write timing cycles on the disk, varying sector timing / size, etc. In general you would need, to unprotect disks, a hardware-modified //e with extra memory.

Something that changes the read/write timing of a disk would be very, very difficult to emulate correctly, 100% of the time. A good fraction of copy-protected files could not even be made into a standard .dsk image, and thus would be most likely lost as the original magnetic media fades -- an emulator built to emulate the nuances of the hardware would probably never be built, as even getting a method to accurately read some standardized format of the original magnetic media would be difficult / impossible. Thus the original article writer's statement is correct, whether he knew the details or not...