This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with David Finnigan, proprietor of the Mac GUI Web site and author of the upcoming book, The New Apple II User’s Guide. Our eyes are caught by another new book release, The Best of Creative Computing: Volume 3, as well as the upcoming biopic based on Steve Jobs, in which actors have been cast to play Apple’s two co-founders. Prince of Persia is still big news, with the source code for Jordan Mechner’s classic Apple II game having been salvaged, released, and modified, while classic games like Leisure Suit Larry, Dungeon Master, and even Repton are enjoying literal and spiritual remakes. On eBay, we crack open the case to examine broken Apple III boards and prototype Apple IIGS boards.
Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.
- Randy Brandt’s homepage
- Randy’s fried Beagle Bros Apple IIGS
- MS Challenge Talk podcast
- Mike Willegal’s homepage
- A conversation with PCB designer Howard Cantin
- Brain Board with Wozanium Pack
- Apple-1 Mimeo Project
- David Finnigan’s Mac GUI City
- Usenet Archive
- GeoCities "Neighborhoods"
- Macintosh SE/30
- Microsoft QuicKBASIC
- The New Apple II User’s Guide book by David Finnigan
- Glenn Jones’ Uthernet
- Amazon CreateSpace print-on-demand service
- Steve Weyhrich’s Apple II History
- KansasFest
- KansasFest committee
- David Greelish’s Kickstarter
- The Best of Creative Computing: Volume 3, by Kevin Savetz & David Ahl
- New Jersey-based non-profit Beyond the Walls
- Ashton Kutcher to play Steve Jobs
- Josh Gad to play Steve Wozniak
- Noah Wyle impersonating Steve Jobs at Macworld 1999
- Double Fine’s Tim Schafer goes indie with Kickstarter
- The lost Steve Jobs tapes (1985–1986), also available via the Fast Company iOS app
- KansasFest alumnus Stan Marks passes away
- Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, passes away
- The Apple II from Commodore? It almost happened
- Jordan Mechner Q&A (begins at 1:49:24) at PAX East
- Prince of Persia ported to Commodore 64
- The geeks who saved Prince of Persia’s source code from digital death
- Prince of Persia source code on GitHub
- The original Prince of Persia for Xbox 360
- Hacks and ports of Prince of Persia
- Jordan Mechner’s Deathbounce
- Al Lowe revives Leisure Suit Larry via Kickstarter
- Why funny games need a kickstart: an editorial by Al Lowe
- Repton remake for iOS (with YouTube gameplay video)
- ActiveGS
- Legend of Grimrock (not Grimlock) available on Good Old Games
- Shadowgate Classic for Game Boy Color
- The CRPG Addict and its GIMLET ranking system
- Alex Lukazi’s WALTR robot
- Brian Picchi’s Applesoft Action & Dogfighters of Mars
- Daniel Kruszyna’s DRIFT demo disk
Apple Pickings (1:17:53 – 1:32:27)
- Vintage Micros
- Appe III Logic boards — guaranteed to not work!
- Prototype ROM 3 Apple IIGS
- Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overload for Apple II + III
- Brian Fargo’s Kickstarter for Wasteland 2
- Wizard and the Princess reprint from Sierra (see also Wikipedia)
- Juiced.GS, a quarterly Apple II journal
- Mac GUI Vault
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33:00 — 48.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS
Tags: ActiveGS, Al Lowe, Alex Lukazi, Amazon, Apple III, Applesoft Action, Ashton Kutcher, Beagle Bros, book, Brain Board, Brian Picchi, Chester Bolingbroke, Commodore, CreateSpace, Creative Computing, CRPG Addict, D.Finnigan, David Ahl, David Finnigan, Deathbounce, Dogfighters of Mars, DRIFT, Dungeon Master, e-book, Fast Company, GitHub, Grimrock, Howard Cantin, Jack Tramiel, Jason Scott, Jordan Mechner, Josh Gad, KansasFest, Kevin Savetz, Kickstarter, Legend of Grimrock, Leisure Suit Larry, logic board, MacGUI, Macworld, Mike Willegal, Mimeo, movie, multiple sclerosis, Noah Wyle, PAX, Prince of Persia, prototype, Randy Brandt, Repton, robot, ROM 3, Shadowgate, Sierra On-Line, source code, Stan Marks, Stanley Marks, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Best of Creative Computing, Tony Diaz, Uthernet, WALTR, Wizard and the Princess, Wizardry, Woz
3 Comments to 'Open Apple #15 (May 2012): David Finnigan, new books, CRPGs, and prototypes'
May 12, 2012 7:43 AM
I particularly enjoyed this episode because of the large amount of time you spent on gaming. I don’t think you need to apologise to the non-gamery because this emphasis is probably in the minority across the overall output of your shows.
When most of the panel said that they had not played Prince of Persia on the Apple II, I was all like… pffft! Seriously, the animation on the Apple II is like silk! That went completely bye-byes as soon as they changed platforms and the artwork. That quality is really intimately attached to the hardware.
When most of the panel said that they had not used a C64, I was all like… pffft! The C64 was my other major computer growing up, but never because I owned one. It was something I would frequently play at friend’s houses, and in my experience or memory or even in nostalgia it doesn’t need to compete with the Apple II because the two systems were quite unalike, and I found them to be complementary as part of a whole experience.
The context of the Apple II, whether at my house or at a friend’s, was always that it would be on a table or desk with its own monitor (never a colour monitor). Often this table or desk would be in a room whose purpose was the computer. You would always be sitting in a chair when you played on the Apple II. The system obviously had some great action games but it also has lots of intense or intellectually absorbing adventure and RPG games which were especially suited to it, what with the fast random disk access and such. Also, it was very accessible programming wise, and solid in its behaviour.
Now let me present a contrasting picture of the context of the Commodore 64. It was always hooked up to the family colour TV, and therefore usually in the social hub of the house. You didn’t sit in a chair to play it, you would sprawl on the lounge or lie on the floor or in bed after a sleepover or whatever. It had what most would now recognise as the ambience of a PlayStation or Xbox well before that ambience had been effected by real PlayStations and Xboxes. The feel of everything to do with it was completely different to the Apple II. Its purpose in my friends’ houses was always gaming, awesome action gaming with colourful graphics and killer sound.
So what were the shortcomings of all this? Well, unlike the Apple II, C64s were never solid systems. Loading times were immense, even on the disk drive, and the hardware was always flakey. It was the kind of system where sometimes a game would load and sometimes it wouldn’t. Holding your finger up under the disc while it was loading could sometimes help. Random access by the drive was crummy. The digital joystick worked by inputting characters to the computer as if they had been typed. You can test this by wiggling a joystick at the Commodore’s BASIC prompt. But also, wiggling a joystick (and therefore inputting characters) while a program was loading could ruin the load! So compared to the Apple II, it was a bad system for adventure games that benefit from reliable random access and just reliability per se. Its BASIC was also far from robust or dependable VS the Apple IIs, so while I would share programming experiences with my friends on the Apple II, I never did on the C64, and we never team-played longterm games on a C64 either, like we would on the Apple, only action games.
May 12, 2012 8:22 AM
When I heard Ken hadn’t heard of Wizard and the Princess, I was all like… pffft! That would have been the 2nd adventure game I played on the II. I guess I was about 6… The first was Mystery House. My dad bought both in the ziplock baggie versions.
May 14, 2012 9:51 AM
ActiveGS works just fine on the iPad 3. As for looking better or different on the 3, hard to say, it looked awesome on the 2.
See my URL above for tips on how to add any II disk image to ActiveGS.