Apple II Bits

The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, is an ardent supporter and ally of video game preservation. Their International Center for the History of Electronic Games has collaborated with countless developers to archive personal notes, hardware, and other artifacts of gaming history.

Some games deserve special recognition, and to that end, the ICHEG has instituted a World Video Game Hall of Fame. In June 2015, they inducted six games from a list of fifteen candidates "that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general". But in a gross oversight, none of those six games had their origins on the Apple II.

We retrocomputing enthusiasts now have the opportunity to correct that error. Nominations for the next annual round of inductees to The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame close February 29, 2016. It’s as simple as filling out a form, though two questions will require some thought: "What are your reasons for nominating this game?" and "Tell us a story or experience you had with this game."

So, Apple II fans: what games will you nominate? Lode Runner? Choplifter? King’s Quest? All these games and more resonated with us thirty years ago and continue to inspire games and game development today. Getting just one such landmark from the Apple II recognized should be a no-brainer.

But ultimately, all we can do is make these titles available for consideration: "Final selections will be made on the advice of journalists, scholars, and other individuals familiar with the history of video games and their role in society."

Let’s get the Apple II’s place in gaming history the recognition it deserves!

We could debate endlessly over the best Apple II games — such a list remains one of my most popular blog posts to date. From Adventure to Prince of Persia, Choplifter to Lode Runner, the candidates are endless.

So I don’t envy The Strong Museum of Rochester, New York, home of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games. ICHEG recently announced the World Video Game Hall of Fame, into which would be inducted games with an "undeniable impact on popular culture and society in general" and "games [that] have helped shape the way that people across the globe play and relate to one another," wrote ICHEG director Jon-Paul Dyson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7-rCWsqZ5w

Journalists, scholars, and other industry professionals chose the original list of 15 candidate games. I have bolded the six that were ultimately inducted:

• • Angry Birds (2009)
• • Doom (1993)
• • FIFA (1993)
• • The Legend of Zelda (1986)
• • Minecraft (2009)
• • The Oregon Trail (1971)
• • Pac-Man (1980)
• • Pokemon (1996)
• • Pong (1972)
• • The Sims (2000)
• • Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
• • Space Invaders (1978)
• • Super Mario Bros. (1990)
• • Tetris (1984)
• • World of Warcraft (2004)

It’s regrettable that no native Apple II games made the cut — but we are not entirely without representation: Tetris exists for every platform, including the Apple II; and Doom is the infamous brainchild of John Romero, who got his start on the Apple II and regularly revisits his roots, as he did when he delivered KansasFest 2012’s keynote speech.

You may disagree with the ICHEG’s choices, but it’s important those disagreements be founded not in what were the "best" or most fun games of all time, but which were the most important. In that context, which Apple II games would you have nominated for inclusion n the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s first class?

I’m a fan of museums — their exhibits, their archives, their outreach all serve as a cornerstone to cultural preservation and education. America apparently agrees with that sentiment, as it was recently determined that the United States has more museums (35,000) than Starbucks (11,000) and McDonalds (14,000) restaurants combined.

From as far back as 2003, when Ryan Suenaga and I visited the Boston Museum of Science, I’ve toyed with the idea of a Juiced.GS article that marries these esteemed institutions with my favorite retrocomputer. Whether that story would’ve been simply an overview of the Apple II’s appearances and contexts in such institutions, or something more meaningful about the history of the Apple II, I’m unsure. The closest we’ve come to that pitch was Peter Neubauer’s December 2012 narrative of his experience at the newly opened Living Computer Museum.

If we ever do compile such an index, it won’t stay current for long, as new exhibits feature the Apple II regularly. The latest, having opened just last week, is Digital Revolution at London’s Barbican Centre, "a major new exhibition that explores the impact of technology on art over the past four decades", reports Aaron Souppouris for The Verge. Featured art forms include film, music, games, and more.

Pretty trippy, right? But in addition to the many interactive installation, various displays also let visitors walk the timeline of digital technology — including the Apple IIe.

A proud lineage. Photo copyrighted by the Verge.

It’s not a significant portion of the Digital Revolution, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s enough for modern art to acknowledge that it is where it is today thanks to inventions such as the Apple II.

Now that’s a good story.

Madden NFL is one of the most enduring franchises in video game history. For 25 years, annual installments of this game from publisher Electronic Arts have represented some of the best virtual football experiences on any console.

Such reflection may not interest the modern Apple II user, but it should: as detailed in Wayne Arthurton’s KansasFest 2012 session, "The Apple II’s Gaming Legacy", John Madden Football got its start on the Apple II. ("A surprising number of modern games can directly trace their heritage to games originating on our favorite machine.")

That heritage is now being marked on the occasion of the franchise’s silver anniversary with an exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image of Astoria, New York:

The exhibition explores this landmark series, highlighting the game’s focus on sports simulation, and its aesthetic evolution and enduring cultural legacy. In addition to the five playable games, from the original John Madden Football (1988) on Apple II to the latest release Madden NFL 25 (2013) on Xbox One, presented as a large-scale projection, the exhibition also features a dynamic timeline charting milestones in the series’ development highlighted by gameplay footage from each year.

Take a look at how far the game has come from its Apple II origin:

to this past November’s release of Madden 25:

See an evolution? Robin Antonick did. He was a key developer for the original Apple II version of the game, which he argued in an April 2011 lawsuit entitled him to 1.5% royalties for any subsequent version that relied upon his code. Last summer, a federal court jury agreed with him, "finding that Madden games published on consoles between 1990 and 1996 shared substantial similarities to the original PC game, from in-game playbooks and formations to virtually identical graphics and gameplay style." Antonick was awarded $11 million.

From courtrooms to museums, a single game published on the Apple II in 1988 has been one for not just the playbooks, but the history books.

UPDATE (Jan 24, 2014): The verdict in favor of Antonick has been overturned.

(Hat tip to Dave Tach)

Fifteen miles north of downtown Chicago, Illinois, is an Apple museum you’ve never heard of. It’s not open to the public, but it is nonetheless being put to good use: students of Kenilworth’s Joseph Sears School are learning what computers of yesteryear were capable of and how they evolved into the machines we use today.

In the Wilmette Sun-Times article "Apple display both time travel and education for Sears students", library technology services director Elisabeth LeBris and former school computer coordinator Matt Brackett discuss how they "agreed to keep one of each Apple computer model used in the school (which has a long history of Apple use) even as each made way for successor machines". Students then use these artifacts to research how they compare to today’s machines as part of their expository writing classes. The students’ work is exhibited as a series of narrated slideshows summarizing the models’ capabilities and places in history.

Several of the students’ findings will bring a smile to an Apple II user’s face: "[The Apple II] could not reach the Internet, because the Internet was not invented until WAY after the Apple II’s time", for example. It’s true the World Wide Web, which is often confused for the Internet, wasn’t developed until a few years after the last model of Apple II was released in 1989, but the Internet was certainly something early Apple II users were connecting to — more so now, thanks to the Uthernet card. I’m also intrigued to know the calculations that led to statements such as this: "A modern 16-gigabyte smart phone has as much computing capability as 3.4 million Apple IIe computers." Despite being dwarfed by modern processors, one student admitted, "I was surprised at how much [the IIGS] could do, and how many parts there were." It’s another great example of how classic technology, from Ultima to the BBC Micro, can be used in a modern education environment.

I emailed RJ Bialk, technology facilitator at Kenilworth School District #38, to ask if the video slideshows could be made available in an embeddable, shareable format, such as YouTube. There’s been no response to that email of December 10, but I’m hopeful once the holidays are past and school is back in session, something might come of it. In the meantime, check out the article and videos for yourself and see what today’s students are learning.

Mary Hopper began making waves this August when she announced her intention to found a computer history museum in Boston. News of the Digital Den was picked up by Open Apple, the Retro Computing Roundtable, the Boston Globe, and Apple II Bits.

The museum continues to evolve into a extant institution, as evidenced by the launch party held on October 20. As a backer of the museum’s Indiegogo campaign, I received an invitation to the event, where I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Dr. Hopper, Adam Rosen of the Vintage Mac Museum, and Ian S. King of the Living Computer Museum, as well as catch up with fellow retrocomputing enthusiast Dave Ross. On-hand were classic computers such as the Apple II, TI-99, and Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as newer tech like the Oculus Rift. It was an encouraging occasion for a museum that continues to seek a permanent home.

My photos from the event are posted below and are available under a CC-BY-NC license. The book featured below, Gordon Bell’s Out of a Closet: The Early Years of The Computer [x]* Museum, is available online as a PDF. For more photos from the event, including a silly one of me by Rus Gant, see the Digital Den’s first exhibit photos.

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