Comments on: Apple II madness!

Apple II madness!

blahblahblah — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:17:03 -0800

1,100 Apple II games you can play online. If you are too overwhelmed by your memories to know what to play, some playable classics: Oregon Trail *, Ultima IV *, Archon *, Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear *, Drol *, Wings of Fury *, Choplifter *, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?* and Taipan *. Or you can play the first game mod in history: Castle Smurfenstein, a modification of the 1983 original Castle Wolfenstein. What did I miss? [Young whippersnappers can click the asterisks to find out why the game was important. Use the left and right alt keys for joystick buttons, the other instructions are on the site. Emulator only works with IE, sorry. See also this.]

By: mazola

mazola — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:19:39 -0800

Doesn't work on a Mac -- ha!

By: mrballistic

mrballistic — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:20:48 -0800

rescue raiders, of course. man, that was my fav. game for years. it's kinda tough to play it now without my old ch joystick.

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:24:29 -0800

doesn't like my firefox, but works in IE.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:26:59 -0800

And of course, Oregon Trail.

By: lekvar

lekvar — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:27:22 -0800

Could someone with a Windows machine tell me whether or not the "Conan" game listed is "Conan:Halls of Volta"? I've had the sweetest jones for that game for the past year and this would really make my week.

By: mcstayinskool

mcstayinskool — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:28:41 -0800

cool, but boo: (Note: Requires Internet Explorer and Windows)

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:28:52 -0800

*reads teeny tiny print* *blushes*

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:29:42 -0800

Holy Cats! Ruskki Duck!

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:35:53 -0800

Sweet mother of chemistry.... Dungeon Master..... there goes any hopes for a productive afternoon!

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:36:41 -0800

Ah, Choplifter...one of the first games I was truly bad at.

By: robhuddles

robhuddles — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:37:42 -0800

Oh, hey, I have a great idea. Let's take a whole bunch of classic APPLE games, and then make them playable again ... but only on WINDOWS. Nice. Good times, though.

By: leesh

leesh — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:39:05 -0800

Getting to play Oregon Trail again is worth using IE!

By: danb

danb — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:40:24 -0800

Heh. I've played three of these games in the last month.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:41:50 -0800

What did I miss? Hard Hat Harry.

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:43:46 -0800

Wow, now I can play Balance of Power again. The most boring, pointless game on the planet.

By: leesh

leesh — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:48:58 -0800

Aw, Oregon Trail totally breaks at disk 2.

By: dbiedny

dbiedny — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:53:18 -0800

Apple II games that can only be played on a Windows box? The End Times™ are here folks, strap yourselves in, it's gonna be a rough, rough ride. Next up: Atari 800 games that can only be played on a Timex Sinclair.

By: n9

n9 — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:53:54 -0800

Balance of Power was the shit, man! I used to play it almost every day. Great multiplayer games are games where they backstabbing jerk (==me) usually wins.

By: Spatch

Spatch — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:54:09 -0800

I can't view the games from this here computer, but does the Captain Goodnight game come with the super secret decoder wheel that was used for copy protection? And if they have Sabotage, turn guided shells on and kiss your entire afternoon goodbye.

By: kableh

kableh — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:58:15 -0800

Does Oregon Trail get it on with you?

By: dame

dame — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:59:29 -0800

Oregon Trail! Yay!

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:07:32 -0800

Not only do they have Archon it's actually the same cracked version I had, awesome. I wonder if the same house phone number is still active? :)

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:10:30 -0800

My daughter keeps breaking her legs. Damn you Oregon Trail.

By: NationalKato

NationalKato — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:11:22 -0800

Following in mrbill's footsteps, I'd like to link to Oregon Trail.

By: tylermoody

tylermoody — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:18:11 -0800

can someone link to a mac-friendly version of Oregon Trail? This post has me jonesing to ford some rivers.

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:22:28 -0800

Forgot Below the Root.

By: briank

briank — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:24:31 -0800

Wow, now I can play Balance of Power again. The most boring, pointless game on the planet. Balance of Power was the shit, man! I was a QA play-tester on that game when they were porting to other platforms (notably Amiga). It was a great idea, but playing it hour after hour for weeks at a time drained whatever interest I had in it right out. The guy who designed the game had another one that never saw the light of day which I also play-tested in its beta stage, some of the elements of which are reminiscent of what would become "Civilization".

By: Dantien

Dantien — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:24:39 -0800

God I lost many hours to Archon in the day. But why isnt this available on the Mac? I mean, isn't that just the most ridiculous thing ever?

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:26:34 -0800

What did I miss? When I was in Grade 2 and was done with the Phonics books I rather liked Karateka, Alpine Encounter, Rescue Raiders and Mario Bros. Oh, and awesome post. Goodbye day, and maybe week.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:35:26 -0800

I could have sworn that the first time I read the post, Oregon Trail wasn't listed...

By: kowalski

kowalski — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:38:45 -0800

But where is Odell Lake?

By: j-dub

j-dub — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:38:46 -0800

Mmmmm.... Karateka. Prince of Persia, but further east and with better music. The irony of all this relying on a PC is indeed ridiculous, in a salt-in-a-wound sort of way.

By: Liosliath

Liosliath — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:42:40 -0800

Looks like Halls of Volta, but fails after the intro screen :(

By: PissOnYourParade

PissOnYourParade — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:44:45 -0800

Aww kids, I'm sure the multiplatform santa is just a couple clicks away.

By: o2b

o2b — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:45:25 -0800

Hella nice, Oregon Trail. (not what you think)

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:50:21 -0800

Is there a win32 binary of the emulator so I can play locally? I'll second the awesomeness of rescue raiders too.

By: raedyn

raedyn — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:54:05 -0800

Funny, my employer's nanny software block access to the gaming info sites, but I can play the games.

By: cmyk

cmyk — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:54:42 -0800

Yay! I made it to Oregon! Anyone remember a game with a deserted island and pirates who capture you? What was that one called?

By: GeekAnimator

GeekAnimator — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:54:48 -0800

Loading up Tass Times In Tone Town again has made my day. Thanks!

By: plinth

plinth — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:54:54 -0800

Obligatory meta-self-link: if you are inclined you can play "Suicide!" (incorrectly listed as "Suicide"), which only has three things going for it:

It was the first arcade-type game with punctuation in its title.
I wrote the bulk of it when I was 13.
The splat sounds when the guys hit the ground are pretty good.

By: JanetLand

JanetLand — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:57:03 -0800

Ah, Oregon Trail in BASIC. Now yer talkin'.

By: das_2099

das_2099 — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:57:28 -0800

yeah, there are mac emulators...just download the file if you are really jonesing: Here is one

By: NationalKato

NationalKato — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:57:52 -0800

What's going on with the deja-vu in this thread?

By: absalom

absalom — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:01:18 -0800

[yay]

By: rogue haggis landing

rogue haggis landing — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:01:19 -0800

My favorite part: start up Micro League Baseball and on the title screen you get the note "Kracked by Hot Rod. Distributed by The Racketeers. Kracked on 09/15/84." Good work, Hot Rod!

By: majick

majick — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:03:27 -0800

Alright, so the browser-based part doesn't work in anything but IE on Windows, but that's okay. At the bottom of every page are links to the disk images! Use those in something like OSXII for the Mac, or xapple2 for various other Unices. You Windows people might want to nab a copy of AppleWin to play the games offline.

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:03:45 -0800

Oh, Thexder! Yippee!

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:05:45 -0800

What's going on with the deja-vu in this thread? Simple. No one reads the posts down here.

By: lekvar

lekvar — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:08:42 -0800

Looks like Halls of Volta, but fails after the intro screen :( <vader>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!</vader>

By: squidfartz

squidfartz — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:16:34 -0800

Oh man... I really wanted to play Choplifter. Won't work on my Mac -all I see is a Lego brick.

By: snofoam

snofoam — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:23:49 -0800

but did anyone link to ingrown nail (on the oregon trail)?

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:24:48 -0800

Okay, because I only do full service FPPs, for those people who can't play online: If you have a Mac: You can use Virtual ][ (shareware) If you have a PC, but are having trouble using the site: You can use Apple Win (GPL) ROMs are available from the Virtual Apple site, just scroll to the bottom of each game page. And yes, Below the Root and Rescue Raiders are incredible! Also great (I didn't list it because it didn't run in the browser) is Earth Orbit Stations -- make sure to download it if you get an emulator.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:26:07 -0800

or what majick said...

By: scblackman

scblackman — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:44:22 -0800

Shit. There goes my whole night. Where's that foam donut?

By: tzikeh

tzikeh — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:56:30 -0800

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I want so badly to play Fool's Errand and 3 in 3 again, but the guy who wrote them only has them up on the web in a format that plays in classic mode. I don't even *have* classic mode anymore. Phooey.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:03:33 -0800

Bolo !

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:03:40 -0800

I only mention that this post is a bit of a double because y'all forgot I/O Silver, damnit.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:06:32 -0800

Crap,old link went bad. here.

By: Onanist

Onanist — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:22:06 -0800

Wow, thanks! I haven't even thought about some of these games since I last played them in the 80s, yet I remember some bits so vividly. I'm completely tripping out over Captain Goodnight...

By: Malor

Malor — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:33:46 -0800

tzikeh, look into BasiliskII.... it's a very good emulator of 68K Macs. Runs like a dream on PCs, and I'm pretty sure it runs well (albeit somewhat slower) on the Mac.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:34:26 -0800

Wow, thanks! I haven't even thought about some of these games since I last played them in the 80s, yet I remember some bits so vividly. I'm completely tripping out over Captain Goodnight... Yeah, that is what freaked me out the most. I started up Rescue Raiders and immediately the correct strategy came to mind. I also realized I remembered the location of all of the towns in Ultima IV. That scares me...

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:47:57 -0800

Wow, this hasn't been on Metafilter before? Virtualapple's been around forever!

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:49:45 -0800

It has been on MeFi but usually with an external emulator, this is the first I've seen where you just surf, click and play (and where the speeds are set correctly).

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:51:39 -0800

Firebird. The one where you tried to 'catch' people jumping out of windows. Now that was a game. In the kind of way "if I ever wrote a game and it was this bad I should shoot myself" way.

By: peeedro

peeedro — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:11:11 -0800

What's amazing to me is that these games that are four floppies worth of data are more fun than modern games that span four cd's worth of data. How is that?

By: yeti

yeti — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:12:35 -0800

After 12 years I finally beat Oregon Trail. It helps to not have the session trucated to the length of a study hall. And now I'm in the Top Ten! Woooo!

By: graymouser

graymouser — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:23:15 -0800

blahblahblah writes "I also realized I remembered the location of all of the towns in Ultima IV. That scares me..." Bah. Ultima IV is, considering its technological limitations, pretty much a perfect game. It's an open-ended quest that provides countless hours of fun; while the later Ultima games had better stories and real dialogue and intricate graphics and the bar was not likely to say "BAR" in big letters, none of them has given me a tenth as many enjoyable hours playing as Ultima IV. It's simple, but wonderful fun with what it's got.

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:25:20 -0800

Okay, first... Firefox : IE :: Flying in the concord : banging your head against a rock until you hallucinate that you've travelled somewhere pretty. But I'm sucking it up for this. Secondly, and I'm willing to admit that this is probably because I'm a moron, but Carmen Sandiego has been giving me the message to insert the second disc when the intro starts for, like, the last fifteen minutes now, with no intro. When I try to "insert" the second "disc" it gives me an error message, so I do a run command to bring me back to the original screen. All I want is to play the game, how do I get past the Apple II obscurity that I didn't grow up with?

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:30:14 -0800

And when I said "obscurity" I of course meant intricacies.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:51:25 -0800

No Reader Rabbit :-( And are there some virtually copy-protected games we can use the virtual copy of Copy II Plus on?

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:56:07 -0800

Oh, lord, Wings Of Fury! I loved that game. Torpedo runs at a destroyer with the anti-aircraft fire splashing in the water all around you. . .and I feel kind of guilty about it now, but to my ten-year-old self, the tiny little stick figures being flung in the air by your machine guns was almost unaccountably hilarious.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:59:24 -0800

Oh, and Sherlock Holmes--Another Bow. I rented it when I was a kid, loved it but didn't get to finish it, returned it after a week and could never find it again. Now I get to play all the way through! Thanks, blahblahblah!

By: rhythim

rhythim — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:17:32 -0800

Oh heavens...Ultima IV...now i've got to go out and find some mandrake and deadly nightshade to be able to cast some wicked spell I can't remember the other reagents for...

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:37:36 -0800

graymouser and rhythim have lost an eighth.

By: rks404

rks404 — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:43:04 -0800

holy cow. This site is complete .. even the unpopular games that I for some reason loved like Pooyan and Aztec. I can even play Karateka now, which I was never able to do on my old //c. Awesome post blahblahblah!

By: Kwine

Kwine — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:54:08 -0800

Cool site, but lack of Spellevator dampens Kwinean nostalgia.

By: belling

belling — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:21:16 -0800

OM OM OM

By: jeribus

jeribus — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:22:02 -0800

oh! so much joy! anyone know a way to port the emulator to a emate newton platform? googling bring up too many site for either, but not a site for apple II on newton. that would bring my ultima/taipan needs to a happy place!

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:48:29 -0800

no Autoduel :(

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:54:32 -0800

Yes, Autoduel.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:54:49 -0800

also, what about King of Santa Paravia? I wanna be a Marquis, yo. Marquis.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:57:32 -0800

ho-lee-shit! Thanks blahblahblah! I was (mistakenly) looking at IIGs games. And they also have Santa Paravia! I wonder if it still has that bug where it throws an overflow error if you have grow too many steres of wheat.

By: oraknabo

oraknabo — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:57:44 -0800

Text adventure fans should take a crack at Pinsky's Mindwheel.

By: 40 Watt

40 Watt — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:21:51 -0800

Holy shit, Drol! That game was HOURS of mindless fun.

By: Hicksu

Hicksu — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:07:39 -0800

Bah! FUCKFACE has died.

By: djeo

djeo — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:22:58 -0800

graymouser and rhythim may have lost an eighth, but they know their shit. Ultima IV is the best gaem evar! I oughtta know, look at my profile. -==(UDIC)==-

By: haricotvert

haricotvert — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:56:11 -0800

seadragon. Seadragon! SEADRAGON!!!! (early voice synth, if I recall correctly)

By: patricio

patricio — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 04:39:19 -0800

Am I the only one not to be bored witless by Taipan?

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 06:57:23 -0800

Does anyone remember the game (it may have been for the early Macs, not Apples) where you're exploring a dark castle in platformer style, and you have to throw rocks at bats? I can see it in my head, but I can't remember the name for the life of me.

By: dansdata

dansdata — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 07:03:27 -0800

I, also, found Taipan tedious when I played it at school 20 years ago. You could make it a lot more tedious by cheating, though. Change a few BASIC variables and you could edit your ship's specs. Hold space, money, crew... and number of guns. Number of enemies in combat was, as I recall, a function of the number of guns on your ship. So your man o' war with 65536 guns would invariably face some hilarious number of pirates, and each combat turn would then last until proton decay destroyed the universe.

By: Sreiny

Sreiny — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:08:30 -0800

"From the animals you shot, you got 1921 pounds of meat. However, you were only able to carry 100 pounds back to your wagon." Seriously, still disappointing. More than one trip? Also, small flashback that I had. On the tombstone that you can look at on this particular game, it says somethings like "Cheez and peporoni". There was a commercial at the time for Tombstone pizza where they would say "what do you want on your tombstone?" We would always do this too, I love how it got saved and preserved in this version. Oh to be five again.

By: eatdonuts

eatdonuts — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:46:02 -0800

Hm. Does anyone remember the name of that Apple //e game where you ran a farm in a kingdom, planned which crops each year to plant, bought more land, and slowly raised yourself from lowly farmer to king? Arg! That's killing me!

By: oraknabo

oraknabo — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:41:47 -0800

Does anyone remember the game (it may have been for the early Macs, not Apples) where you're exploring a dark castle in platformer style, and you have to throw rocks at bats? You remember it better than you think.

By: misanthropicsarah

misanthropicsarah — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:55:27 -0800

OREGON TRAIL!!!!! ZANY GOLF!!!!!! alas, with this one, it's hard to 'release' the ball. sigh.

By: Sparx

Sparx — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:14:44 -0800

Djeo? No shit! DragonSpawn -==UDIC==- Also Kabul Spy! Finally - after all these years I will understand what the hell it was on about and why there werethe first few rooms from collosal cave in the middle of it.

By: Inkslinger

Inkslinger — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:31:19 -0800

My god. It's full of stars.... Thanks for posting this, blah.

By: kyleg

kyleg — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:56:14 -0800

Now that this has won, I can say it: Dammit, I would have made this post in December if it wasn't down then!

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 02:22:45 -0800

The Ultima Dragons are a large virtual club founded in 1992 on Prodigy who have since moved to the Internet due to Prodigy's outrageous rate structure. The club is dedicated to helping others with their Ultima questions, discussing Ultima, and, most obviously, sharing information and creative exploits