Apple II Bits

Ready Player One was my favorite novel of 2011, providing a dystopian cyberpunk adventure targeted at geeks who grew up immersed in 1980s pop culture. I’ve since recognized the book’s problematic elements with gatekeeping, transphobia, and fan service without substance … yet I still can’t help but be fascinated by all the elements author Ernest Cline wove into his narrative.

With Ready Player One‘s recent adaptation to film, audiences are discovering anew the Oasis, the fictional virtual world created by James Halliday (played by Sir Mark Rylance), a virtuoso computer programmer who sets himself up as the massively multiplayer online role-playing game’s benevolent (but absent) god. Many of Halliday’s (and thus Cline’s) favorite games make appearances in Ready Player One, and in this new WIRED interview, Cline details each and every game in the movie — with one in particular being of interest to Apple II users.

Turns out one of the Apple II’s own played a major role in the story:

Akalabeth is one of the first attempts by a computer programmer to translate the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons into a computer game. It was created by Richard Garriott, who also helped serve as the inspiration for James Halliday. Richard Garriot is a famous video game designer from Austin, Texas, where I live, who has an alter-ego: his Dungeons & Dragons and game avatar called Lord British. He would dress up as Lord British in public at press events and things. He eventually ended up using his video-game money to travel into space and go on the International Space Station. He was really an inspiration to me as like a geek with unlimited funds and what could be accomplished. So he and Howard Hughes helped inspire James Halliday in my book. And his game, Akalabeth, and the games that followed it: Ultima I, II, III, IV, and then Ultima Online, the first MMO, those all helped inspire the Oasis in my novel.

While Garriott was directly referenced in the book, I didn’t pick up any mentions in the movie. Little did I know that an entire, integral character was based on Lord British himself!

(Hat tip to Hades Kong via WTF Dragon)

In March 2013, Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, aka the Tony Stark of gaming, announced his return to Ultima with a spiritual successor called Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. This computer role-playing game, which will be playable both online and off, is scheduled for release in 2015. But we don’t need to wait until then to see Lord British return to his roots.

This April, Garriott released the source code for his 1977 game called D&D #1, a precursor to Akalabeth, which itself was a precursor to Ultima. The code is BASIC and was written for a teletype machine. But it wasn’t solely the code’s historical significance that motivated its release. As a promotion for Shroud of the Avatar, Garriott announced a contest to port this ancient game to either Unity or a Web browser interface. Winners would receive the equivalent of the $500 backer tier from Shroud’s Kickstarter. As always, the snarky team at LoadingReadyRun has the details:

I marvel that this programming contest could be seen as a challenge. Admittedly, the original game, roughly 1,112 lines of code, dwarfs a similar game I wrote in in 1996, a mere 624 lines of Applesoft. But a game for a teletype machine has to be even more basic than one for the Apple II, and development tools such as Unity make far more complex games even easier to develop than a BASIC game was 35 years ago. How hard could it be to port, or even develop from scratch, a new D&D #1?

Turns out a straight port might not be enough to win; it’s the flair each developer implemented that earned them recognition. Sean Fahey recently alerted me that the contest winners had been announced, and that across the two categories were 24 entrants and six winners. Mundi King produced the winning Web port, though I’ve not been able to get past the initial prompts, being stymied by passive-aggressive “WHO SAID YOU COULD PLAY” responses. I prefer Santiago Zapata’s runner-up entry, which sports an authentic interface:

Richard Flemming won the Unity version, which can also be run in your browser but requires a plugin. Flemming called the original "1,500 lines of single-letter variable names, magic numbers, and spaghetti logic."

These ports are neat bridges between Ultima’s origin and future—and a timely one, given Juiced.GS‘s recent cover story on the fiftieth anniversary of BASIC. Though I’m not likely to spend much time playing these ports, I’m heartened to know that a new generation has the freedom to enjoy Garriott’s legacy across the ages.

If you want to hear Garriott speak further about Ultima, he was interviewed by Greg Kasavin and Felicia Day at this month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

Brian Picchi: I’m your biggest fan. You were a great guest on Open Apple; your Apple II videos on YouTube are informative and entertaining; your Deadly Orbs game is killer; and your website runs WordPress.

But where have you been all my life — or at least, the last month? I haven’t heard so much as a peep out of you, so I went digging through your YouTube channel to find the latest. Uploaded on September 14, your rundown of the most expensive Apple II games on eBay was a fun watch:

For your fans in a rush, here is a summary of your findings:

I’m not much of an eBay user, having taken 14.5 years to earn my 100-star rating this month. The only Apple II software I’ve bought on eBay is Microzines; I’ve never paid more than $20 or so for anything Apple II-related on the auction site. That anyone has so much money to spend on these games is a little baffling to me. I understand the appeal of collecting items of historical significance — no one is buying Akalabeth to play it — but that’s a lot of dough to drop on something of esoteric interest. A framed Akalabeth over your mantle won’t engage many house guests.

But hey, I know you’re not just trawling eBay to pick up some games, Brian Picchi; you’re one of those hawkers of rare goods, with a copy of Akalabeth all your own. I’m sure your wife will be happy when you cash in those chips.

So keep up the good work, Brian Picchi — just don’t go a whole month between videos, if you can help it.

Kickstarter has been a boon not only for indie developers, but for established game designers looking to return to the virtual worlds upon which their careers were founded. Shadowgate, Space Quest, Wasteland, and Leisure Suit Larry are just a few of the franchises that got their start on the Apple II and are now slated for a well-funded modern resurrection.

But none of these games carry the impact, the longevity, or the fame as the Ultima series. Lord British has heeded the call of the fans and is turning to Kickstarter to return to Britannia.

On Friday, March 6, at 10 AM CST, Richard Garriott joined fellow Austin gaming company Rooster Teeth to host a live announcement:

The punchline was Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a new computer role-playing game that lacks the Ultima brand that Garriott can no longer claim, but which only his team owns the legacy to.

The announcement didn’t need the full hour that the above video runs, but the extra time gave Garriott and hosts Burnie Burns and Gus Sorola time to reflect on how Garriott built this empire. Working in a computer store at the age of 19, Garriott began selling Akalabeth, making twice as much money in one year as his astronaut father. Garriott brought along several artifacts from those early days, including the Apple II Plus on which he developed Akalabeth. Highlights from that interview are in this gallery of screen captures from the above video.

As much fun as the reminiscing was, it wasn’t hard to forget that it was a thinly veiled sales pitch. Garriott wants one million of our dollars via Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0

Donation levels include the $10 “Guilt Pledge” (“If you ever pirated an Ultima game or used an exploit to grief other players in Ultima Online, here’s your chance to repent! For your $10 donation, you will receive a clear conscience and Lord British’s undying gratitude”) to the $10,000 “Lord of the Manor”, which comes with one of 12 known copies of Akalabeth. For those of us with humbler wallets, $40 gets you early access (December 2013) to the final game (October 2014), while $125 will also get you a cloth map feelie — just like the old Ultimas!

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a role-playing gamer, and even longer since I’ve done so on a computer instead of a video game console. Yet I didn’t hesitate to fork over my money to Lord British. Some folks may not be sold on this heir to the Ultima empire:

https://twitter.com/mattpeckham/status/310063782342840320

But there’s no denying that Garriott has earned a chance to return to his world. As Benj Edwards tweeted:

I'm supporting Richard Garriott's new game even if I never play it, because the man made magic in the 80s-90s http://t.co/cNMp0Altlo

— Benj Edwards (@benjedwards) March 8, 2013

Last month I blogged about classic gaming inspirations, a session I presented at KansasFest 2009. It’s a pretty simple setup: I present to the audience a self-running YouTube video of an Apple II game, after which they watch me play a few minutes of a Mac game that’s similar, with my narration consisting of comparisons and contrasts. Each year, I prepare to draw far more parallels than the time allows, which is great, because it gives me fodder to revisit the topic next year.

This year gave me the opportunity to address many of the games I’d planned for 2009 as well as add several new ones that have been released since then. I still focused on Macintosh gaming, but this year also listed at least one PC-exclusive game and presented no online Flash equivalents. Click the checkmark to visit the Web site that offers that game for download.

As before, I ran the session without Internet connectivity or emulation; all Apple II games were represented using previously downloaded YouTube .FLV video files. Those files are compiled into this playlist:

I also captured a video of the session itself. It’s available on Vimeo, but the sound isn’t great — especially when the audience’s enthusiasm for my topic requires me to ask if I can have my session back!

I still have more games to present next year, if anyone is interested. If you enjoy these sessions or have titles you’d like to see demonstrated, please comment here!