Apple II Bits

Despite growing up an avid gamer, I didn’t play many commercial games for the Apple II. (No, I didn’t pirate them, either.) We had the Atari 2600 before we had an Apple, and from there, our console collection grew to include every Nintendo system. It was there, on the 8-bit NES, that I encountered many classics that had been ported from the Apple II: Ultima, Archon — and Maniac Mansion.

That last title was a point-and-click adventure developed at LucasFilm Games. Players chose two of six characters to accompany primary protagonist Dave on his exploration of a mad scientist’s home to rescue Dave’s girlfriend, Sandy. Along the way, gamers encounter a sentient meteor, a disembodied tentacle, an explodable hamster, and one of the first instances of video game cutscenes. Maniac Mansion garnered a cult following, spawning both a sequel and a television series.

The writer, director, artist and programmer responsible for Maniac Mansion was Ron Gilbert, who later wrote several of the Monkey Island games on the Mac, all of which used the SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) game engine. Although Gilbert has moved past these titles and tools, he hasn’t forgotten his roots, as evidenced by recent posts to his blog, Grumpy Gamer:

While cleaning out my storage unit in Seattle, I came across a treasure trove of original documents and backup disks from the early days of Lucasfilm Games and Humongous Entertainment. I hadn’t been to the unit in over 10 years and had no idea what was waiting for me.

Here is the original pitch document Gary and I used for Maniac Mansion. Gary had done some quick concepts, but we didn’t have a real design, screen shots or any code. This was before I realized coding the whole game in 6502 was nuts and began working on the SCUMM system.

If this document… say[s] anything, it’s how much ideas change from initial concept to finished game. And that’s a good thing. Never be afraid to change your ideas. Refine and edit. If your finished game looks just like your initial idea, then you haven’t pushed and challenged yourself hard enough.

His first batch of scanned Maniac Mansion design notes showcases UI mockups, a map of a mansion that never would’ve fit into 320K, and puzzle ideas that didn’t make the cut until 25 years later. A second batch of notes demonstrates the logic and code behind SCUMM.

It’s fascinating and wonderful that Gilbert saved these documents and is now making them available. He likely didn’t know the place Maniac Mansion would earn in gaming history — surely there are countless other point-and-click adventures of the era that have been forgotten. But this one was not, and now the context and process by which it was created can be examined in a new light. I hope these documents (or their scans) eventually make their way to an institution such as the Strong Museum‘s International Center for the History of Electronic Games.

It was a dark and clear night…

Want more Maniac Mansion history? In 2012, Gilbert gave a one-hour Maniac Mansion post-mortem at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). Due to wonky embed code, the video is better viewed in the GDC Vault, but it’s included below for convenience.

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In the Austin Grossman novel You, our hero is asked, "So what’s your ultimate game?

"You know, the game you’d make if you could make any game at all," the long-haired designed explained.

"Forget about budget," the short guy added. "You’re in charge. Just do anything! Greatest game ever!"

"The Ultimate Game," I said, "I can do just… anything?”

They nodded. I felt ridiculous. Was the Ultimate Game the one in which I ride a hundred-foot-tall pink rhino through the streets, driving my enemies before me? The one where the chess pieces come alive and talk in a strange poetry? Is it just a game where I always win?

"So… okay, okay. You’re playing chess, right, but all the pieces are actual monsters, and when you take one you have to… actually fight… it?" Why were they looking at me that way?

"You mean like in Archon? For the C64?"

"Um. Right."

Archon, a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord"¹ — also a monster in Dungeons & Dragons² — was a multiplatform action-strategy game distributed by Electronic Arts in 1983. I played it on the NES, but it was also available for the Apple II. Players took turns moving pieces across a board that fluctuated through a spectrum of light and dark, with each extreme favoring a different team. The game pieces had different strengths and capabilities, from shapeshifting to spellcasting, that they brought into combat. I loved playing Archon with my older brothers, as its mix of fast-paced battle with more thoughtful tactics played to my jack-of-all-trades nature. Some of my brothers were faster than me, and others were smarter, but needing having to be both leveled the playing field more than other games did. (The Super NES game Actraiser would later take a similar approach, to great — and inimitable — success.)

A 1984 sequel, Archon II: Adept, was also published for home computers but never got ported to game consoles, thus escaping my notice.

But I did get to revisit the concept almost two decades later. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2003, my last year attending the still-ongoing event, I visited the LucasArts booth, which had more than just Star Wars games:

I briefly left a galaxy far, far away to observe Wrath Unleashed, an action-strategy game. It struck me as bearing a slight resemblance to another game, but the more I saw of Wrath Unleashed, the less slight the resemblance became, until I had to ask the LucasArts rep, "Have you ever played an old game called ‘Archon’?” Rather than profess ignorance or extort the differences, he simply nodded and said, "Exactly."

But somehow, the core mechanics hadn’t aged well. Perhaps it was because my brothers had grown up, leaving video games (and their gaming sibling) behind. But I didn’t find the same engagement and tension in Wrath Unleashed that I did in Archon. (Sibling rivalry was likely a factor in Austin Grossman’s affair with Archon, too: his brother Lev included it in his list of the ten greatest games for the Apple II.)

Is Archon the ultimate game? No. That title would likely belong to Zork, or The Legend of Zelda, or something equally revolutionary and genre-defining. But what Archon has in common with those games is timelessness: even today, playing the ruler of a shifting battlefield is still fun.

For a more thorough review of Archon, including a "Where are they now?" of the game’s programmers, read The 8-Bit Game: Digesting Archon | 8bitrocket, by Jeff Fulton. (Hat tip to Blake Patterson)

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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There’s a saying among gamers: if a video game is unreasonably challenging, especially as a result of unfair tactics that rely on luck or manipulating arbitrary rules to overcome, that game is "Nintendo hard" — a reference to the 8-bit era of the Nintendo Entertainment System and its ridiculously difficult games.

That term must’ve originated among those unfamiliar with the computer games of the era, as anyone who’s played Sierra On-Line‘s adventure titles or even a classic text adventure knows how inscrutable those puzzles and answers can be. Lately, those old-school computer gamers have risen to represent their memories in video format, spurred first by this compilation of arcade deaths, posted by Rob Beschizza:

Inspired, Blake Patterson followed up with his own montage of deaths specifically from Apple II games, but set to Commodore 64 music:

Since then, a YouTube user named MrWhitman has become fixated on such fatalistic experiences, documenting them in his video channel. His 263 videos, many of them falling under the "Ways to Lose" or "Ways to Die" categories, showcase a variety of ways to not play your favorite adventure games. Although many of the videos, such as those of the original Police Quest, capture the 8-bit glory of early computer gaming, others, such as Space Quest, rely on various remakes with updated graphics.

I don’t remember any Apple II game being so challenging that I would throw the joystick in anger, though maybe I was just accustomed to the illogic of the burgeoning genre. Are classic games more difficult by comparison to today’s entertainment? Would we find ourselves less patient with a classic game today? What has your experience with retrogaming been?

(Hat tips to Open Apple and Seth Sternberger)