Apple II Bits

Six years after I backed its Kickstarter, and four years after the final product was due, I received the documentary GIRLS GAME: Women Who Game (originally entitled No Princess in the Castle). The film features interviews with women gamers and game developers about their experiences and passions.

GIRLS GAME features a few names that will be familiar to Apple II users: Jeri Ellsworth and Rebecca Heineman. Jeri has been a KansasFest attendee, a Juiced.GS cover story, and a guest on my Polygamer podcast. Alas, the topic of her Apple II origins and passions did not come up in the documentary.

Fortunately, Burger Becky ensured our favorite retrocomputer was represented. Toward the very end of the film, she holds up two games from her impressive résumé, declaring "They said it couldn’t be done!". The movie offers little context to that statement, but it’s not hard for us to figure it out.

The games in question are Out of This World and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate. It’s no wonder they said Out of This World couldn’t be done: when Jess Johnson asked Becky what her greatest achievement was, she cited this game.

That’s a tough call, since I’ve done so many projects in my career so far. I think I’d have to say was the evil MOD I had to do to get Out Of This World for the SNES to copy backgrounds quickly. Since Interplay wouldn’t pay for a SuperFX chip, I found a way to do it with static RAM on the cart and DMA which got me a great frame rate. Interplay wouldn’t pay for the static RAM either, so I ended up using Fast ROM and a MVN instruction. Interplay wouldn’t pay for a 3.6 MHz ROM either. So, frustrated, I shoved my block move code into the DMA registers and use it as RAM running at 3.6 MHz. It worked. I got fast block moves on slow cartridges and made a game using polygons working on a 65816 with pure software rendering.

This impressive feat could be worth a documentary of its own. In the meantime, thanks for working it into this film, Becky!

Brian Fargo is at it again. After creating The Bard’s Tale and Wasteland on the Apple II for Interplay three decades ago, he revived the latter franchise in 2012 via Kickstarter; the result, Wasteland 2, has an 81% average rating. Now Fargo seeks to crowdfund a revival of The Bard’s Tale:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv

More than a concept, the game already has an in-engine graphics demo that looks quite impressive:

However, there’s more to a series than its titular lineage or polygon count. Any time a franchise is revived years after its debut, there’s a question of how much of the original talent is still involved. Two years ago, Richard Garriott successfully crowdfunded a game called Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. It doesn’t have the name "Ultima", and it wasn’t published by Origins or Electronic Arts — but it’s nonetheless an Ultima game in all but name only, as only the creator of that fantasy world could produce.

@blair_leggett I can't control EA plans for the word Ultima. But we all know that only my team can create the true heir to my previous work.

— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) April 6, 2011

Similarly, The Bard’s Tale may not involve the most prominent developers and designers to contribute to its last outing. Rebecca Heineman, programmer of 1988’s The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate, says she offered to contribute to Fargo’s latest project — an offer that was declined. Her team at Olde Sküül is instead working on a dungeon crawler of their own, entitled Dragons of the Rip — prompting her to ask on Facebook, "Do you want a game by someone who financed Bard’s Tale, or by the people who actually MADE Bard’s Tale III?"

Fortunately, we do not live in an either-or world. Fargo’s Kickstarter will almost certainly achieve its crowdfunding goal of $1.25M — at the time of this writing, it’s 85% funded with 34 days to go — so we can look forward to playing both The Bard’s Tale and Dragons of the Rip. It’s a good time to be a retrogamer!

UPDATE (11-Jun-15):

Exciting news today: every backer of The Bard’s Tale IV ($20 or more) will get free digital copies of the original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate!

The emulated versions of the classic games will be released for free at the end of the campaign for every backer at $20 or higher, and distributed through our backer web site. This is our way of giving our thanks back to you for all your support and helping us bring back The Bard’s Tale.

Some of you may know that the emulated versions of these games work on most modern machines, but are a little rough around the edges. Thus, we have an agreement with the original The Bard’s Tale III programmer Rebecca “Burger” Heineman and her company Olde Skueuel to update the games for modern machines! She will be working to make the games run natively, without needing emulators, on PC or Mac. This re-releases will be primarily based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games, along with updated art.

Followers, fund this. You know you should. https://t.co/oLqtzts8PH

— Rebecca Heineman (@burgerbecky) June 10, 2015

With a portfolio that includes games like Baldur’s Gate, Earthworm Jim, and Fallout, software publisher Interplay may be better known to PC and console gamers than to retrogamers. But Interplay, founded in 1983, was a friend to the Apple II for nearly a decade. Over the years, they developed and/or published such memorable titles as The Bard’s Tale, Tass Times in Tone Town, Neuromancer, Battlechess, Dragon Wars GS, and Out Of This World. And let’s not forget the first-person role-playing game, Dungeon Master, which TSR’s Dragon Magazine granted the “Beastie Award” for best Apple IIGS game of 1989.

Many of these titles are thanks in no small part to Interplay founder Brian Fargo hiring as one of his first three employees prolific Apple II programmer Rebecca Heineman, who was recently interviewed on the Matt Chat. This video podcast series is hosted by gamer and historian Matt Barton, author of Dungeons & Desktops. Now, Barton has turned the camera on Fargo, who left Interplay in 2002 but has many fond memories of the company’s humorous titles and the creative geniuses behind them. For a fun reminiscence of early Apple II gaming, check out the entire three-part series.

(Hat tip to Blue’s News)