Filed under Game trail; Comments Off on No More Heroes: Apple Strikes Again
If I had to say what my brand was, it’d be a mix of Apple II, video games, Star Trek, and WordPress. Of them, those first two are the likeliest to intersect — but even I am sometimes late to catch those crossovers.
One recent video game I overlooked is Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, a Nintendo Switch exclusive released just three days ago, on January 18, 2019, and the latest in the No More Heroes franchise that started on the Wii in 2007. I’ve not played any games in this series and wasn’t planning to start now. But then the Australian video game website Vooks made this passing remark in their review of the game: "The cutscenes … [are] handled through a visual novel with an Apple II filter."
I wondered what "an Apple II filter" was, suspecting it was just lazy shorthand for pixel art or some other retro aesthetic. Some searching on YouTube revealed that Vooks was in fact quite accurate in its description.
It’s not a perfect match for the Apple II: the resolution is a bit too high and the font is off, to name a few. (Another review called it a "Apple II / TRS-80 style"; maybe that’s the influence.) Regardless, if I were to see these cutscenes without context, the Apple II would probably be the first thing I thought of, too — either that or Plangman, another modern game with an Apple II vibe.
I continued poking into the history of the No More Heroes franchise and discovered this sequel is not the first to reference the Apple II. The original 2007 game featured the Orange II, "a retractable, cleaver-esque beam katana model designed by Orange Computer… The name is a parody of Apple Computers and its first computer sold for public use, the Apple II."
I apparently need to add Travis Strikes Again to my gaming backlog!
I’m not one to hack, crack, or jailbreak; I tend to use products as they were designed. One notable exception was the Nintendo Wii, a video game console released in 2006. Its innovative point-and-click interface made possible a variety of console game genres and experiences that were previously impossible. I wanted to see what hobbyists and enthusiasts could do with these tools, so I installed the Homebrew Channel.
Ironically, my favorite use of the channel was the SCUMM emulator: once this tool was installed, I could play classic LucasArts games. I owned a legal copy of Day of the Tentacle, but it required a version of Classic Mac OS that I didn’t have. By copying its files to an SD card, I was able to play it on the Wii’s ScummVM. It remains the only way I’ve ever played this game, despite its 2016 remastering and release for modern systems such as Mac OS X, iOS, and PlayStation 4.
I deleted the Homebrew Channel before migrating my data to the Wii U in 2012, and it’s only now that I realize what an opportunity I missed: the original Wii could emulate not only SCUMM, but also the Apple II. Christian Simpson explores this feature on a recent episode of his YouTube series, Retro Recipes:
The video is more an overview of the Wii’s many emulation modes; we don’t get to see the Apple II until 5:36 into the video. At that point, we discover the emulator, WiiApple, is a port of AppleWin/LinApple — neat! But the only game we see it play is Frogger — not more popular or original games like Choplifter, Lode Runner, Prince of Persia, or King’s Quest.
WiiApple is a nine-year-old emulator running on a twelve-year-old console. Nintendo has since released the Wii U (2012) and Switch (2017), but Apple II emulators for either have not yet surfaced. If you want to emulate the Apple II on a home game console, Simpson’s video shows you what’s still the best way.
The Switch edition retails the voxel graphics style of its Windows counterpart, as well as its multiple modes: adventure; puzzle; and world levels, where players can craft and exchange their own creations. Best of all, its "classic" mode features all 150 levels of the Apple II original! At only $11.99, it’s hard to beat.
Still, I have a habit of buying games and never finishing them (or sometimes even starting them!), making me hesitant to purchase Lode Runner Legacy, despite its generally favorable Metacritic score of 77%. Fortunately, the Switch edition offers a free demo that includes ten playable adventure levels and five puzzle levels. I gave this trial edition a spin in my latest Let’s Play video.
Legacy plays a bit slower than the Apple II version I remember — but then, I remember playing it with an accelerator, so that may not be a fair comparison. Legacy also features much bigger sprites, and thus smaller levels, than the original — though the game hints at later, more sweeping levels that pull the camera back a bit, allowing for a larger play field.
Although I’m not a huge fan of the art style or the loading time between levels, I didn’t see anything in Legacy that would keep me from buying it. I just need to clear some other games off my plate first…
In the meantime, you can hear me rave about the original game in episode #35 of the New Game Plus podcast.
Filed under Game trail; Comments Off on Final Fantasy V by Chris Kohler
The Apple II and its software and community had a tremendous influence on my evolution as a gamer. But as much as I enjoyed its games, many of them would today be described as "casual" games — something I could play for a few minutes before moving on. My Apple II collection didn’t include the deep, engrossing titles of Ultima or Wizardry; for those role-playing experiences, I turned to my Nintendo. It was on that gaming platform that I lost myself in the worlds of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. These two Japanese RPGs offered worlds, characters, inventories, and more complexity than any of the action games I was otherwise accustomed to.
So when Boss Fight Books launched a few years ago with the promise to delve behind the scenes of such console games, I was quick to back all four of its Kickstarters — for seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4. Each "season" featured several books by different authors who would offer their own personal experiences with a game, woven with the original interviews with the game’s designers.
Boss Fight Books hasn’t always lived up to my expectations: of the four I’ve received, two of them were pretty good, and two were horribly unreadable. Despite that uneven experience, I had no hesitation in backing the latest season, as I knew what I’d be getting when I saw Chris Kohler was assigned to cover Final Fantasy V. Kohler is the founder of the games section of WIRED and is now a features editor at Kotaku, two websites that have done exemplary work covering the video game space. While I don’t know Kohler personally, I’ve read his work and have attended his conference talks, and we were scheduled to be on a panel together at PAX East 2017 before circumstances conspired against us. (I’m still hopeful we’ll have a future opportunity to collaborate.)
Sure enough, Kohler’s book is a tight, enjoyable, informative tale of this JRPG that never saw an English-language release during its day. It’s a game that inspired Kohler to import the Super Famicom version to try playing on his Super Nintendo, and ultimately to study abroad in Japan during his college years.
Having never played FFV, I had much to learn about this missing title in the popular franchise. I thought I knew everything else about the series, though, including the original Final Fantasy, which I’d spent the summer of 1990 playing. Kohler surprised me with an origin story I’d somehow never learned or had forgotten:
Eventually, [Final Fantasy creator Hironobu] Sakaguchi got his act together, graduated school, and entered Yokohama National University to study electronic communications. Unfortunately for his renewed interest in scholastic achievement, he quickly discovered video games. A classmate named Hiromuchi Tanaka owned an Apple II, and their group of friends would stay up all night playing Western RPGs like Wizardry and Ultima. Sakaguchi didn’t go in for arcade games, but these RPGs were something else: They had fantastic stories like the ones he devoured in the volumed of Guin Saga, and you could play them for hours on end. Which he did. Sakaguchi and his friends would pull all-nighters on Tanaka’s Apple II. He battled monsters in Ultima II until he maxed out the amount of gold his character could carry, and the counter rolled over from 9999 back to 0.
Though the Apple II was not as popular in Japan as it was in the USA, I had no idea it had landed in just the right hands to inspire an entire RPG franchise that continues to this day. While I didn’t play Wizardry and Ultima, I’m immensely relieved that Sakaguchi did; the games they inspired him to create became my Wizardry and Ultima.
The official launch date for Kohler’s book is tomorrow, but as a Kickstarter backer, I received my copy several weeks ago. I recommend it without reservation to anyone interested in the story of Final Fantasy and the early evolution of JRPGs. A further excerpt is available at Kotaku.
Filed under Game trail; Comments Off on Pokémon GO
On July 6, 2016, Pokémon GO was released for iOS and Android.
This mobile game in the 20-year-old franchise throws good UX/UI design and traditional social engagement out the window — yet it’s quickly garnered more users and engagement than Twitter, Tinder, Snapchat, and Instagram. Not only that, but it released fewer than two weeks before KansasFest.
While at Rockhurst University, roommate Andy Molloy and I took an evening stroll around campus, finding and capturing the infamous pocket monsters while I introduced him to the game’s mechanics. Only a week earlier, Kay Savetz and I had been learning the basics ourselves as we explored downtown Portland, Oregon.
It wasn’t Pokémon that brought me, Kevin, and Andy together in the first place, of course — it was the Apple II. And just like with Kerbal Space Program, we’re not above porting our favorite games back to our favorite machine.
What would Pokémon GO look like on the Apple II? Charles Mangin tried but failed to conceive of such a thing:
Meanwhile, Steve Weyhrich, a long-time gamer, "gets" Pokémon GO and how to adapt it to the Apple II — if not programmatically, then thematically:
OK, game programmers, here is a concept for you to work on:
"Retro Go", a game in which Professor Woz sends you out on a quest to "catch ’em all"! You start with an Apple II, a TRS 80, or Commodore PET and then set off on your journey.
Along the way, you will see various retro computers, peripherals, or software appear in your path. When you see them, frisbee-throw a floppy disk to capture it for your collection.
When you capture enough retro equipment, take it to the user group meeting to battle it out between the various platforms and level up. Apple II versus Macintosh! Atari versus C64! ZX spectrum against IBM PCjr!
Don’t let retro arguments be battled out in terms of rational platform performance – see how a level 124 TRS 80 Model 100 with the power of "LCD dazzle" fares against a level 80 Atari 800 with with modem and its "ANTIC smash" attack!
Don’t spend REAL money on eBay- use this game to collect every Apple II model "in the wild" and put it on display in your retro bag. Earns the respect of Professor Woz as the greatest retro trainer of them all!
Filed under Game trail, History; Comments Off on Maniac Mansion design notes
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.
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.
