Apple II Bits

This week marks Boston‘s sixth annual PAX East, and my sixth time attending the video game expo with Juiced.GS editor Andy Molloy. Inspired by our Apple II magazine’s 2014 cover stories about Leisure Suit Larry and Shadowgate, we’ll be bringing our retrogaming love to bear on the event.

On Sunday, March 8, at 1:30 PM EDT, I’ll be moderating the panel "Reboot Our Roots: Bringing Our Favorite Genres Back to Life"

Many of today’s indie games are spiritual successors of yesteryear’s hits, from King’s Quest to Gabriel Knight to Quest for Glory — with some even being developed by the same teams that brought us the originals. What’s it like to reboot a franchise or genre after 30 years? How do you update a classic while staying true to the original? Industry veterans share their stories of revisiting their roots, taking up their heroes’ mantles, and what they’ve learned in the intervening years.

I’m excited to be hosting this panel with so many talented developers. Katie Hallahan of Phoenix Online Studios will be representing Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, as well as the King’s Quest fan sequel The Silver Lining, which I previously presented at KansasFest 2010. Steven Alexander will be on the panel discussing Quest for Infamy, a spiritual successor to Quest for Glory, while Dave Wadjet will present his original creation, the Blackwell series, a point-and-click adventure inspired by the games of yesteryear.

This will be my third year moderating panels at PAX East, and the third year the Apple II has influenced my contributions to PAX. In 2013, I coordinated the donation of an Apple II gaming rig to become a permanent part of the freeplay console room. And in 2014, I moderated a panel on gender equality in gaming, which was made possible through 8-bit connections.

If you’re in Boston this weekend and have a ticket to this sold-out show, please stop by "Reboot Our Roots" on Sunday afternoon and say hello — it’ll be great to meet fellow gamers who have been around long enough to appreciate these classic genres and franchises. If you can’t make it ot the panel, it will be recorded by Travis Stewart of Broken CRT Productions and will be posted to Apple II Bits at a later date.

UPDATE (May 25, 2015): Here’s a video of the panel, as well as coverage from 2Old2Play.