Apple II Bits

This winter, I launched a Google+ page for my YouTube gaming channel. As I began exploring the gaming communities on this social network, I discovered Leigh Alexander, a Gamasutra editor with a large following. She is an accomplished fiction author and columnist, and I’ve now enjoyed her writing for some time. But when she chose to expand into video, I was pleasantly surprised by the subject that a journalist on the cutting edge of technology would choose for her YouTube debut.

Alexander’s first foray into video is a Let’s Play of the Apple II game, Death in the Caribbean:

A "Let’s Play" is a video game walkthrough with commentary that focuses on the player’s experience, instead being a tutorial that provides strategy (though it can do that, too). Alexander follows through with that promise, having grown up playing this game with her father. On a recent return to her parents’ home in Massachusetts (hey, that’s where I live!), she recorded this video that reflects not only on how the game expanded her vocabulary with words such as "crevasse" and "brazier", but on other lessons: "[Death in the Caribbean] taught me from an early age that disaster can happen anywhere, at anytime. Even if the whole world sprawls out in front of you like a beautiful place ready to be explored — you can die, just by being a little bit wrong" — something you’re never too young to learn.

The launch of Apple II Bits in 2010 coincided with my discovery of Let’s Plays, at which time the genre was relatively unknown. I imagined myself being one of the first to bring this video format to the Apple II. While I’ve since recorded dozens of Let’s Play videos of Nintendo games, I’ve never executed on the idea to apply that experience to my favorite retrocomputer.

Four years later, Let’s Plays are booming, with no less prestigious an outlet than The Atlantic giving the issue coverage, detailing how PewDiePie, the most popular channel on YouTube, makes millions of dollars a year producing Let’s Play videos. If you’re baffled why Let’s Plays are so popular, Jamin Warren of PBS Digital Studios explains the appeal of Let’s Play videos:

Between the proliferation of Let’s Plays and the age of the Apple II, you might think, what more remains to be said about our favorite games? Plenty, reminded one of my YouTube followers. "I hate it when people who LP an older game and say ‘I have nothing original to contribute’," commented Gaming Media. "YES YOU DO! If you grew up with the game, you have stories about the game that no one else has."

Even those who didn’t grow up with a game can still provide unique commentary. As Alexander did, Gaming Media recently turned to Virtual Apple ][ and recorded a Let’s Play of Oregon Trail, a game that came out decades before he did:

(Skip to 4:52 into the first video for a fun blatant plug!)

Neither of these recent videos is the first Let’s Play to come from the Apple II: Jesse Hamm recorded his own playthrough of Death in the Caribbean three years ago; Brian Picchi has recorded reviews of games like Gold Rush! that could be considered Let’s Plays; and I in turn recorded a similar hybrid video of Picchi’s Retro Fever, a year after unboxing and playing Zéphyr.

There indeed remains much to be preserved, shared, and experienced of the Apple II on YouTube. I hope that Alexander, Gaming Media, Picchi, and I continue to find the time and enthusiasm to explore this fun intersection of old and new media. What games would you like to see us play next?