Apple II Bits

Earlier this month, I attended my ninth annual PAX East, a video game convention held here in Boston, Massachusetts. The event offers panels, game demos, competitions, and merchandise. That’s roughly the order in which the parts of PAX appeal to me, as I try to save my money and avoid the merch table. But there’s one kind of merch I can never resist: dice.

When my age was in the single digits, I found my older brother’s Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, complete with polyhedral dice. I’d never before encountered dice with more than six pipped sides and was fascinated to discover dice could have any number of sides: four, eight, ten, twelve, and twenty! I eventually saved my pennies and bought a one-hundred-sided die from the TSR Hobby Shop.

A fraction of my collection.

These days, every trip to PAX East includes a stop by the Chessex booth, where I pore over dice of different shapes, colors, and materials. Even though I no longer play D&D, I usually go home from PAX East with a few additions to my dice collection.

I want my nephews to experience some of the same awe and fantasy I did as a kid. When I saw one of them randomly rolling dice last month, I decided to expand his horizons with more dice acquired at PAX East.

But what was he to do with these dice? Rolling them at random without purpose or structure would be entertain for only so long. So I set out to find some games he could play.
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Every year, the World Video Game Hall of Fame — a product of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York — conducts a poll of which video games deserve to be inducted into the annals of history. The criteria are not what games we had the most fun playing or are the most nostalgic for, but which games have "icon-status, longevity, geographic reach, and influence".

Given the substantial impact such games must’ve had on the industry, you’d think Apple II software would be a shoe-in. Sadly, this has not always been the case. Not a single Apple II game was inducted in 2017, and previous years overlooked such obvious candidates as Oregon Trail.

This year’s candidates—recognize any?

This year isn’t looking to make a much stronger showing, unfortunately. From the following dozen finalists, three have been selected to be added to the Hall of Fame in 2018:

• • Asteroids
• • Call of Duty
• • Dance Dance Revolution
• • Final Fantasy VII
• • Half-Life
• • John Madden Football
• • King’s Quest
• • Metroid
• • Minecraft
• • Ms. Pac-Man
• • Spacewar!
• • Tomb Raider

All 12 games are worthy candidates, but the Apple II can lay claim to only two of them: King’s Quest and John Madden Football. Of the two, I’d much rather see King’s Quest be inducted. But does Sierra On-Line’s flagship title have the longevity, geographic reach, and influence to attain that status?

We’ll find out soon enough — voting ended last Wednesday, and the winners will be announced on Thursday, May 3. Stay tuned!

(Hat tip to the AP)

Many of us know that the venerable Ultima series of role-playing games had its spiritual origin when Richard Garriott developed Akalabeth for the Apple II in 1979. But according to SyFy, it was the 1981 game Wizardry that qualifies as "the first computer-based RPG".

Although declaring anything the "first" is debatable, the video is a good overview of the era in which Wizardry released and the factors that made it popular. I would've appreciated if the video dissected the game's reception in other regions: Wizardry achieved significant fame in Japan and saw many sequels exclusive to that country. The game was also translated to French, as I discovered with this manual that Brutal Deluxe brought to KansasFest 2017.

The write-up that accompanies the SyFy video is less accurate: observing that "[The developers] had to face the technical limitations of the era (such as writing the game in basic and very limited memory space)" overlooks that the final game was developed in Pascal. And saying that "There were eight games in all in the Wizardry series, starting with the notoriously hard Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and ending with Wizardry 8, released in 2001" is accurate insofar as the main series goes, but it omits the franchise's spin-offs, of which there have been many.

Sadly, there aren't many modern versions of Wizardry available for gamers to choose from these days. In 2011, I blogged about the PlayStation 3 and iOS release of Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. But the PlayStation 4 supplanted the PS3 in 2013, and the game is no longer available on iOS, either. The only modern incarnation of the franchise that's currently available is Wizrogue – Labyrinth of Wizardry, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux on Steam as of February 24, 2017.

Given the lack of gameplay, it's not the most compelling trailer. But it's nonetheless good to see the series live on, if in name only.

Oregon Trail is seeing not only a resurgence in popularity, but also translation to a variety of media, from card game to stage play to Minecraft skin. Just now hitting the streets is yet another adaptation: the Oregon Trail electronic handheld game.

I blame you for this, Twitter pic.twitter.com/6epn7HlzQt

— foone🏳️‍⚧️ (@Foone) February 28, 2018

This game is the product of Basic Fun, a company that has released dedicated handhelds based on arcade classics such as Frogger, Q*Bert and Pac-Man. Oregon Trail seems to be the first time they’ve adapted a computer game, especially one that requires alphanumeric input. As such, this is not a straight port, having been adapted to use the handheld’s directional keys.

it has an on screen keyboard, explaining the "HOW DO YOU NAMES" question pic.twitter.com/0i5n4QiORn

— foone🏳️‍⚧️ (@Foone) February 28, 2018

This is not the first Oregon Trail game to be available exclusively from Target, with the 2016 card game and its follow-up being the first. But unlike those previous releases, Basic Fun’s game isn’t yet listed on the store’s website, and it can’t even be found on store shelves — at least not when I tried. After confirming Target had the game in stock, I asked a store clerk about the game and provided them with DPCI (similar to a SKU) 087-10-2886. They looked it up in their inventory and found that all 12 of the store’s units were still sitting in a box in the back room, yet to have been put on display. Knowing how hard it’d be to find these games once they were released, I asked if there was a limit to how many I could buy. Indeed there was: I was limited to the 12 they had in stock.

I, uh… I may have gotten a bit carried away.

I’ll continue my exploration of this handheld journey to Willamette Valley in Juiced.GS!

(Hat tips to Kay Savetz and Kirk Millwood)

As art imitates life, so too does life occasionally imitate art. Such is the case with Oregon Trail, a 2,170-mile wagon route that became the basis for a timeless Apple II game. The edutainment software has in turn been adapted to real-life interactive events, as with Oregon Trail Live, an annual event in Salem, Oregon, that will next be held on Saturday, September 8.

But for those in Colorado who didn’t want to wait that long, the non-profit History Colorado recently hosted Oregon Trail IRL, a one-day event officially sponsored by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Relive your childhood, as the vintage The Oregon Trail video game becomes a live-action experience set throughout the museum. Test your pioneering skills as you hunt for food, ford a river in a human hamster ball, play the original game in our ’90s throwback library computer lab, plus so much more. Finish your immersive experience in our graveyard lounge with cash bar and music.

Colorado itself has few ties to the historical Oregon Trail; according to Wikipedia, “A branch of the Oregon trail crossed the very northeast corner of Colorado if they followed the South Platte River to one of its last crossings.” But the state does lay claim to Chris Torrence, renowned Apple II blogger and videographer. The latest episode of video podcast series, Assembly Lines, features his expedition to the sold-out Oregon Trail IRL.

Oregon Trail IRL looks just like the game it’s based on: both fun and educational. My thanks to Chris for capturing this experience for the rest of us!

(Full disclosure: I support Chris on Patreon.)

The Game Developer’s Conference is an annual event that invites members of the computer and video game industry to collaborate, inspire, and share their stories and best practices. This professional affair is expensive to attend but nonetheless attracts developers both mainstream and indie.

One of the flagship offerings of each year’s GDC schedule is the post-mortem, where developers take attendees behind the scenes of their memorable games, be they modern or historical. Past post-mortems have included games Maniac Mansion for the Apple II and Raid on Bungeling Bay for Commodore 64.

At GDC 2018, to be held in San Francisco on March 19–23, another classic game will enter the post-mortem vault: The Bard’s Tale I and II. Dr. Michael Cranford, creator of The Bard’s Tale series and programmer for the Apple II version of Donkey Kong, will host the session:

Cranford… will share the vision that led him to the game’s conception, design, and development from his years as a dungeon master. The games are an expression of Cranford’s personal love for the genre and desire to surpass the experience of tabletop gaming. The session will explore the vision behind the game and help illuminate a trajectory in gaming which has remained strong to the current day… [and] many elements in current RPGs are developed in ‘The Bard’s Tale’.

… this talk is not going to be technical. This session targets those who are interested in concepts behind game design (RPG game design in particular), how that came together in the early ’80s, and how it impacted so many people.

Although I’ve not played many games in The Bard’s Tale series, I recognize the role it played in gaming history, as it was named among the top RPGs of all time by both Game Informer and Retro Gamer, inspiring me to back the Kickstarter for The Bard’s IV. I would love to be in the audience for this upcoming talk… but alas, attendance at GDC is not for the casual gamer, with passes starting at $999 $149. I will instead hope the video and slides will eventually make their way into the GDC Vault, where they will be preserved and made available to the wider audience interested in RPG history.

(Hat tip to Gamasutra)