Apple II Bits

Oregon Trail has been adapted, reimagined, and rebooted more times than we can count. It’s become a live-action role-playing game, a movie trailer, and a zombie apocalypse. But at no point has the real-life journey of American pioneers circa 1836 been recreated — until now.

The Oregon Trail is a hardcover book released last summer, with the paperback hitting just this month on June 7. With a title like that, I assumed it to be an ode to the computer game that introduced a generation of students to personal computers. But this book — the fifth from Rinker Buck, born in 1950 — is something far more daring. Here’s an Amazon.com synopsis from Jon Foro:

Well into middle-age, Rinker Buck found himself divorced, at the edge of bankruptcy, and growing blunt through the twin demons of ennui and alcohol … On a whim, he found himself in a museum at the head of the Oregon Trail, realizing that even as a fairly serious American history buff, he knew virtually nothing about the pivotal era when 400,000 pioneers made their way West in quests for land, gold, and new lives. On a much bigger whim, Buck decided to travel the 2,000 miles of ruts and superseding highways in a mule-driven wagon on his own “crazyass” quest for a new beginning. The result is a dense-yet-entertaining mix of memoir, history and adventure, as Buck– joined by another brother, Nick, and his “incurably filthy” dog, Olive Oyl–struggle with the mechanical, environmental, and existential challenges posed by such an unusually grueling journey. Buck is an engaging writer, and while the book pushes 500 pages, the story never lags. By the end, you’ll know more about mules than you ever thought you would (just enough, actually), and you’ll have a better perspective on the Trail, its travelers, and the role it played in shaping the modern United States. (And is Rinker Buck not a pioneer-worthy name for an tale such as this?)

The book is available now on Amazon.com. Here’s an excerpt of the author reading from the audiobook:

I’m not a huge fan of history, but The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey hits a sweet spot by intersecting with real and digital history. Even if the book never once mentions the game, I may need to pick it up to see what Buck’s experience was and how it compares to that of the early settlers after two hundred years.

Self-publishing has paved the way for scores of books about computer history and retrocomputing to be published. Niche markets can now economically demand a small printing of a book, giving authors with stories to tell a means to reach their audience. Juiced.GS has been reviewing many of these books as part of its "Cover ][ Cover" series, but new books are hitting the shelves faster than we can read them, as evidenced by the pending release of Dr. Steve Weyhrich’s Sophistication & Simplicity.

It therefore seemed a good time to compile a list of all the books that have been released in the past decade or so that would appeal to the Apple II user. Andy Molloy already has an exhaustive list of vintage Apple II books, so with his permission and with contributions from Bill Loguidice and Mike Maginnis, I’ve compiled this spreadsheet of recent books:

Anyone can edit or copy the information in this Google Drive spreadsheet, should they choose to adapt it its scope. For example, this revision doesn’t focus on books about the history of Apple Computer Inc. or its most famous founder, Steve Jobs. It tries to list all books whether they be print, digital, or audio; you may wish to narrow the list to just one medium.

Regardless, I hope this compilation is a useful starting point for anyone looking to expand their Apple II library or provide such a resource to our fellow retrocomputing enthusiasts.

Earlier this month, Tim Shafer and Ron Gilbert, the team behind the sequel to the Apple II classic Maniac Mansion, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to create an original adventure game. That they raised $3.3 million on a requested $400,000 is mind-boggling. That’s like selling 87,142 tickets to "a Steven Spielberg movie" before the plot, genre, actors, length, or rating have been published or even decided.

Inspired by this success, Brian Fargo, formerly of Interplay and now of inXile Entertainment, promised to launch his own Kickstarter campaign to create a PC sequel to the Apple II game Wasteland, which already has its own spiritual successor with the Fallout series. True to his word, the same day Schafer closed his project, Fargo launched his. And like Schafer, Fargo’s video offers a humorous demonstration of the challenges faced by retro game designers in the modern publishing environment.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

Success was swift: within two days, Fargo met his $800,000 goal. At the time of this writing and with 25 days to go, the project has earned $1,493,522; just $6,478 more, and the development team will add Mac and Linux editions.

But why stop there when you could get even more money? As Schafer discovered, Kickstarter processes pledges via Amazon Payments, which may not be very friendly to international customers or those without credit cards. inXile has created an elegant solution: now that the project has met its goal and pledges are guaranteed to be converted to charges, customers can skip the grace period and hand over their money directly via PayPal.

Just $15 will get you your copy, with additional exclusive rewards all the way up to $10,000. I haven’t forked over my money yet, and it’s a bit frustrating to do so when there are plenty of indie developers on Kickstarter trying to make a career like the one Fargo already has behind him. Still, how can we not support furthering the Apple II’s legacy? Kickstarter offers a reminder feature that will send you an email 48 hours before the project’s closure, so if you’re unsure, you have time to think it over. Chances are I’ll find a spare $15 necessary to guarantee my copy of Wasteland 2 when it ships in October 2013.

UPDATE (Mar 22): Fargo has created the "Kicking It Forward" campaign, in which developers promise to put 5% of profits from their successful Kickstarter projects toward other people’s Kickstarter projects. How cool is that?