Open Apple #77 (March 2018) – Kay Savetz & Carrington Vanston, Eaten By A Grue

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Kay Savetz and Carrington Vanston of the Eaten By A Grue podcast. Eaten By A Grue is a game-by-game style of podcast where the intrepid hosts are playing every Infocom game. They both play the game, then discuss it in detail, with and without spoilers. They discuss the amount of cheating required, how mapping was done, the quality of writing and puzzles, and so on. The show has a very nice structure wherein they discuss the show with no spoilers to the halfway point, so that you can stop and go play it yourself if you are so inclined. If not, you can keep listening and hear gory details of all the puzzles.

Kevin talks about getting beasts into bed, and other reasons not to play these games on real hardware. Meanwhile Carrington gets his feelies on and brags about how he has so many original copies of Infocom games that he sits on them for fun.

Meanwhile Mike and Quinn debate dubious silicon valley histories, wedge computers, and competing with other 8-bits in BASIC. Tune in to hear us malign our guests, misremember important names, and get super pedantic about connector nomenclature for no conceivable reason. You won’t want to miss a moment of the drama.

More information on everything discussed in this episode, after the jump.

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Open Apple #26 (Apr 2013): Earl Evans, Z80, Zephyr, and LucasArts

Earl Evans

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Earl Evans, Retrobits podcast host and Commodore 64 enthusiast — but we don’t hold that against him. Registration for KansasFest 2013 is open, and we all want to go, but Earl has another destination in mind. Tech history is being unearthed before our eyes, with schematics for operating systems and circuit boards appearing in museums (where the price is right) and art galleries (where it’s not). Brutal Deluxe is on a tear, releasing retroprogramming utilities for Windows and commercial games for the Apple II; we’re big fans! But not all news is happy news: the Steve Jobs film has been delayed, and LucasArts has closed its doors — will we ever get another Maniac Mansion game for the Apple II? Maybe not, but Richard Garriott’s successful Kickstarter gave fans a chance to pick up an original copy of Akalabeth. Better late than never!

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 9:20)

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Open Apple #23 (Jan 2013): 2012 year-end roundtable

Open Apple roundtable 2012's panelists

Having gathered the treasures of 2012 and being tempted by the promises of 2013, the hosts of Open Apple are joined by Andy Molloy of Juiced.GS, Peter Neubauer of KansasFest, Vince Briel of Briel Computers, and Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe to reflect on all that has happened with the Apple II and its community in the past year. We pick our favorite products, share memorable events, and make predictions for 2013. Topics include Apple-1 auctions, Kickstarter-funded sequels, progress in emulation, and more.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 4:58)

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Open Apple #12 (Feb 2012): Michael J Mahon, chiptune, source code, and demodulation

Michael J Mahon

This month on the Open Apple podcast, Mike and Ken chat with Michael J Mahon, software and hardware developer extraordinaire and creative genius behind both recent DMS Drummer software and the ever-popular AppleCrate parallel processing computer. We talk about 8 Bit Weapon, the chiptune music scene, and the importance of commenting and documenting one’s code, whether it be commercial or open source. Michael’s not much of a gamer, but Ken and Mike are enjoying new versions of classic games, including Eamon, Choplifter, and possibly Rescue Raiders. We consider entering a Robot War competition, despite our poor showing at the RetroChallenge contest. Several new pieces of hardware to convert video signals are now available, which you can use with a pair of complete Apple IIGS systems, for sale and shipping for free from Bulgaria.

Congratulations to Bryan Letcher, who won a set of Microzine issues by completing our listener survey!

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 12:00)

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