I am thinking of putting together a collection of a few games and apps for home use:
I am only interested in games and non educational apps from the 70s and possibly very early 80s
Particularly interested in text based adventures.
Some popular ones I have on my list are:
ZORK I
SubLogic Flight Simulator II
Choplifter
Visicalc
Which ones are your favourites?
The sorts of apps you wouldn't mind firing up even today.
Arun
LodeRunner
Transylvania
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Seadragon
Aztec was a game that came out in the early 80s and was very advanced for its time. It featured a realistic looking "indiana jones" like character instead of the common stick men most games had in that early 8-bit era. On top of that it had a very complex commands that required the use of the whole keyboard that allowed for interesting stuff to be done by the character.
Stellar 7
Bolo
were engaging war games (tank battlers)
Conan and the Hall of Volta
was pretty fun
Early on there was this weird top-down view game of two battling, axe and shield wielding knights called The Bilestoad.
Good arcade to Apple ][ translations games include ;
Centipede
Ms. Pacman
Defender
Bezerk
Happy gaming!
Mutant_Pie
Transylavania runs only on 64K, so I am told
Won't work with an original Apple II
Four games stand out to me as still fun and perfect for emulation:
Karateka, Choplifter, Sammy Lightfoot and Lode Runner.
I run these four on my Treo using Appalm ][ (slight plug for myself) and provide perfect on-the-move entertainment. Simple and challenging with good controls. Much better than the retro game packages you see today re-released for the newer platforms.
I don't think they require 64K, but I may be mistaken.
Dave...
Robot Odyssey
Fun logic/puzzle/adventure based game based on robots. If you can get a hold of the original discs and maybe an emulator
I like hardball and karateka,karateka was released in 1985.I was studied in junior school.I spent four days to the end.it was famous game.I guess all apple games it must important and collecte.
Captain goodnight and the islands of fear, and good ol Sherwood Forest. I loved them! Really neat graphics too. Both these games were major favorites. Im actually looking forward to firing them up again some day. I wonder if they are as good as I remember them....
Steve
The things that I remember the most back in the day , the games and the appz .....
Aztec
Transyvania
Sneakers
Bolo
Castle Wolfenstein
Rescue Raiders
and so on....
The appz....
Disk-Fer [awsome disk transfer program back in its day]
Daltons Disk Distintagrator
Cat Dialers [Cat's Meow , and all and any Apple Cat Modem Utility]
Ascii Express The Profressional
Copy ][ Plus [Parm. Version]
The Jerk's Favorite Copy Programs
Warcat Dialer
Wargames Dialer
Alot of these programs were awsome , and it's really kewl to see
them brought back to life again in with Applewin.
Can someone tell me what the keyboard controls for Choplifter are?
Thanks. Have the disk and dying to play it.
Is there a web link for keyboard controls for other Apple II games?
Flip Out
http://www.virtualapple.org/flipoutdisk.html
My sister and I spent many spiteful hours on this game of "screw your opponent." I think this could be adapted very well to Xbox Live, the iPhone, or the Web. The only flaw is that you can technically decide to just park your opponent's balls out of the way while doing nothing to rack up points from your own, thereby prolonging the game with no chance of resolution, but I'm sure there's a way to deal with that.
Paipec
http://www.virtualapple.org/paipecdisk.html
Straightforward and horribly addictive, this is something that PopCap Games might conceive of today. Catch the stuff that falls from the sky, using your four stacked platforms - but if you miss, you lose a platform and have less vertical surface area with which to catch something on the side. It's nerve-rattlingly jarring when this happens. Another great candidate for iPhone/XBL/Web adaptation.
Ankh
http://www.virtualapple.org/ankhdisk.html
I wish we had more games like this. You're an abstract geometric entity navigating through an abstract geometric world, avoiding abstract geometric enemies and solving logic puzzles. I never finished this game, but the environment is unforgettable.
Frenzy (not yet on Virtual Apple)
ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/file_based/frenzy_grapple_wavynavy.dsk.gz
A simple game of enemy evasion, but the terrifying voice samples and gameplay forever wedged it in my mind. "FRENZY! PREPARE TO DIE."
Can somebody tell me what the difference is between "Loderunner" and "Championship Loderunner". If I am a Loderunner newbie will Championship be unplayable?
OK we've talked games, what about serious stuff. I am looking for software I can "use" around the house on an Apple ][.
Was PFS any good?
What about the legendary Visicalc?
As far as I know the only difference between Loderunner and Championship Loderunner is the number of levels and the layout of the levels. You can play any of the Loderunner games without having played any of the previous ones.
I believe all the PFS products were pretty good stuff for the Apple II back in the day. So if you want to use them by all means do. Visicalc was the program that launched the Apple II into the business world, so if you have something you need to do with it go for it.
Dean
Thanks Dean - a trustworthy seller is offering to sell me PFS for the Apple II
This software is boxed with the core disk+user manuals. However, the seller says it is missing the "data diskette". What is the data diskette and is this easily replaceable? Sounds like a simple formatted diskette to store your own PFS generated files on - not sure though.
I would tend to agree with you that the data disk is just a regular blank 5.25 disk that has been formatted by PFS to save files on. So I'd say as long as you have blank 5.25 disks it really shouldn't matter that much that the data disk is missing.
Dean
So far I've seen Text Games, Graphics Games, and a few Utilities, but not one person has mentioned the Basic Three Combination; Wordprocessor, Database, Spreadsheet. In other words Appleworks. With or without the additions from Beagle Brothers or Pinpoint.
I know they may have came a bit later, but they are just as good today as they were then. I still use the word processor on occasion.
Best Regards to all,
"Apple II...It's ALIVE!!!"
invaders, dragon maze, microchess, breakout, star trek and star wars - spent countless hours playing these babies back in the late 70's. Now that I've caught the retro-computing bug, I will occasionally crank them up, using the excuse that I need to test a system out or something like that. All except for the classic star trek, which takes far too much time, to play.
My kids, who spend countless hours playing X-box and the like, don't like too play them, because they are too hard!
Regards,
Mike Willegal
Mike,
I'm sure they are too hard for the kids because it requires more than thumb twitches to control the games. Just out of curiosity is the Star Wars game you play the illusive Broderbund version of the arcade game or is it the Interger Basic version?
Dean
Regards,
The Star Wars version I know is the "integer basic" versions, though I think that it is largely assembly embedded within a small integer basic program
After playing (for the first time) games like Karateka, Zaxxon, Captain Goodnight, Aztec and some of the others mentioned, on my Apple ][ non-plus, it boggles the mind how they managed to get all those graphics on such a small amount of memory & CPU resource.
Goes to show how both the software and hardware of the Apple ][ was (and is) a remarkable achievement of engineering and ingenuity.
Can someone tell me how I can save my hi-scores, so that when I boot the disk the next time it saves the hi-score rather than zero-ing it out? I really want to save that 10,000 on Galaxian.