The History of the Apple II as a Gaming Platform 310
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.'"
Re:The good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
My #1 game (Score:2, Interesting)
Favorite emulator... (Score:5, Interesting)
* "I wonder how this game works..." or
* "How do I remove the copy protection..."
* "How do I cheat..."
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:Let's not forget... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Confessions of a "pirate" (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Best Games (Score:5, Interesting)
Cracking was a fun thing to do (Score:2, Interesting)
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 character generation.
Until Bill G rolled around this artificial IP concept really was just regarded as code hoarding. Copy protection was not just a challenge, it was rude, and you were honor-bound (back then I'd say honour-bound, since I was in Canada) to crack it - and then distro copies with the add-ons you improved the original game with.
The joys of Apple // piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Loderunner definitely made the Apple
Re:Apple II? Gaming platform? (Score:3, Interesting)
* 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.
My brain hurts! (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:The good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
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 fascinating, though primitive. It also took more code, and as mentioned above, more mathematics, than with modern high level graphic API, and the results were certainly less sophisticated, but the effect on us kids seemed intense. It was something we made, not just downloaded and consumed.
I REPENT (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Arcade conversions (Score:4, Interesting)
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)...
Apple was expensive then, still is (Score:2, Interesting)
I was always slightly jealous of my Apple-owning friends. They had these really cool magazines that came with software, some of the magazines even had disks inside of them! Their computers had disk drives, whereas mine had a hokeyed up tape drive since floppy drives were so expensive. Most of the time I'd spend hours typing in a program, finally get it to work, and then get yelled at to go to bed so would have to turn off the computer. Program lost. One of my friends even got published in one of the magazines for showing a GOSUB routine or something like that that allowed easy programming of text based adventures.
I was in 9th grade, so this would be 1981, and learning computers was a whole ton of fun. I only wish it were easier to get my son, now 12, interested in programming rather than just playing the games. I tried Kids Programming Language, but I fear that kids these days just don't have the patience for writing code one line at a time, pressing run to see if it works, and then tweaking the code repetitively until it works. After seeing Unreal Tournament or some modern game, it must seem a little hokey to type all this stuff in just to move an icon from one side of the screen to another, or add 2+2 etc.
My biggest joy was finally figuring out sprites on the Atari. After I figured that out I could finally make a graphical game. I think it was Craps or something lame.
Oh the joys of reminiscing. Kids these days...
Re:I REPENT (Score:3, Interesting)
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