The other day, during one of my many sojourns on the Internets, I came across a site that instantly transported me back a quarter-century and restored my faith in humankind all at once. First, some background…
Back many many years ago, my dad used to take us out to the Illinois Bell building on Hazel Dell Road, where us kids dipped our toes in the pool of computing using machines that ran PLATO. I have limited memories of this, as I was a mere 4 or 5 years old at the time, but I do recall the banks of machines with monochromatic orange screens.
Our PLATO sojourns came to an immediate halt once we got our first home computer. For Christmas 1980, I believe (Johann, back me up on this), our dad sprung for a newfangled Apple ][+, which came with an astounding 128K of RAM. It was here that the seed of nerditude was planted in me.
My dad was part of Capitol Apples, a local Apple Users Group, where members would freely and enthusiastically trade pirated software, which would proudly carry such marks as "Pirated by X" or "Cracked by Y." And thanks their efforts, we were waist-deep in all manner of computer games.
So by age 6, I was addicted. Mine was a misspent youth, playing titles such as Eliza, Phantoms Five, Eamon adventures, Dung Beetles and Dino Eggs, among easily hundreds more.
And now, you and I can play them all over again thanks to the wonderful humans at Virtual Apple 2, whose Web-based emulators allow users to play several hundred games from the old Apple ][ machines. You just pick a title out of the alphabetical listing, and an authentic Apple //e boots up in the next screen. You can also download the ROMs of the individual games.
I've found that I'm not as good as I used to be at many of these games. Keyboard control also can be awkward if you remember using the joystick for some titles.
Some of the highlights include:
- Cannonball Blitz: This Donkey Kong clone featured what appeared to be an Evil Royal Soldier instead of an enormous gorilla who rolled cannonball rather than barrels.
- Erving and Bird Go One-on-One: This pioneering game was one of the first Electronic Arts titles and one of the first endorsed by professional athletes. The graphics were a little crude, but the controls were good. The best part is that you could occasionally shatter the backboard. A janitor would then come out and curse you as he swept up the shards.
- Olympic Decathlon: Back in third grade, my friend Chris and I were obsessed with the Olympics, so this early Microsoft title was right in our collective wheelhouse. Up to four players could compete in the contests comprising the decathlon.
- Oregon Trail: Of course. One of the most beloved games of all time deserves a mention. A bug I noticed with the game back then was that the No. 2 person in your party always died first, so we used to put names of kids we didn’t like in the 2 slot.
Aren’t computers awesome?!
Man…blocked by work as a “games” site, go figure…will have to check that out. I remember us selling our Apple IIe and all its periphery to my mom’s coworker sometime in 1988 for like 500 dollars, which even back then was pretty amazing…Scored a pair of Nike Air Max out of that deal. They got Hard Hat Mack?
Hell to the yeah, dude. It’s pretty sweet. I’ve got my dad’s old ][GS and a crap-ton of old 5.25″ disks, too. I wonder what you need to convert them into ROM files.
This is too cool.
I do believe you’re reasonably correct ref. us getting the ][+ circa 1980. As I recall, I was a high school frosh (when did the “fresh” of “freshman” get changed to “frosh”?!) when we got that, so Christmas 1980 would be accurate.
I’m going to have to force myself to stay off the curse-ED Facebooks long enough to devote some time to the retro gameage. Maybe I can wind myself up at death’s door knocking loudly.
Thanks for passing this site along.
Wow that brings back memories. My earliest Apple exposure was from the Apple II’s we had in grade school. They only had a few, so they were on carts that got shared between rooms. A buddy of mine had an Atari 800 that we lost many hours of our childhood on. Some of the games were similar between the two systems, but Oregon Trail and Lode Runner were my favs on the Apple II.
I recently decided to give the Virtual Apple 2 site a try.
I was amazed to discover that in order to run Apple IIgs software on Virtual Apple 2, you must be on a Windoze computer. Apple IIgs software on Virtual Apple 2 cannot be run using Mac OS X, even an Intel Mac (unless of course your are running the Windows OS on your Mac). How ironic!!!