Comments on: The 10 Greatest Games for the Apple II

By: henrymiller404

henrymiller404 — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:49:05 +0000

Auto Duel, Anyone? What about Sundog?

Taipan had an interesting glitch in that if you borrowed money from your brother, was it? then paid him back more than you owed, you could get rich from only the negative debt and the rate at which it grew

A lot of the RPG’s were fun to hack with a sector editor, too… hmmm… long time ago…

and don’t forget brick-out? break-out? shipped on the System Master Disk…

I also did a hack to sample audio through the joystick port digital inputs… it basically timed 0-1 and 1-0 transitions and toggled the speaker accordingly… this gave sampled audio at about the same quality as the Wolfenstein audio samples…

By: Hutch

Hutch — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:52:11 +0000

Was I the only person that played The Magic Candle? Straight out of the Ultima genre, but the story was wonderfully crafted and I think it nailed the mechanic of the RPG.

By: dennitzio

dennitzio — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:47:25 +0000

Dude, you have a couple of hits (esp. Choplifter), but the top ten you forgot that I couldn’t stop playing:

#1: Ancient Art of War (tie)
#1: Bard’s Tale series (tie)
#2: Karateka
#3: Taipan
#4: Zork Zero (came with a coin!)/Time Zone
#5: Pinball Construction Set
#6: Swashbuckler
#7: Depth Charge (ASCII version)
#8: Flight Simulator
#9: Wizardry series
#10: Pirates!

One note: I switched to Mac in 1988, so I *could* remember playing one on that instead.

By: jsamuels14

jsamuels14 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:25:09 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._J_and_Larry_Bird_Go_One_on_One

By: jsamuels14

jsamuels14 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:18:07 +0000

this post just blew my mind. and the youtube videos are classic. i played all these games but i really lost myself in a iie game called “fahrenheit 451.” and you cannot sleep on “dr.j vs. larry bird” by ea sports!!!!! that was the all time best.

By: Church

Church — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:54:57 +0000

Plus ten for knowing how to play Choplifter, but minus several million for timeliness…

By: Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:20:46 +0000

I probably played Stellar 7 for 6 months before I realize that the proper way to parse “Warplink” was probably “Warp Link” and not “War Plink”

By: yogi

yogi — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:11:54 +0000

Stellar 7!!! I totally forgot about that game. We never had the Apple II, but did have the Mac SE (the original iMac). We’d spend countless hours playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego”.

By: grape_crush

grape_crush — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:34:00 +0000

Oregon Trail was a First Person deer shooter, historical RPG, and it allowed me to waste time in class legitimately! That sorta hat trick is an epic win for me…I remember having so much fun on that Apple IIe.

By: omahalawyer

omahalawyer — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:16:15 +0000

I spent WAY too much time playing Sierra’s games, as well as AutoDuel (the Car Wars computer game), Ultima, and HHGTTG. I can never remember if I was playing on a IIe, IIc, IIgs, original Mac, or 8086 PC because my father was the manager of the local Heathkit (later Heath Zenith) store, and was always swapping/upgrading/selling our home computer (the first of which I helped solder together — it was cool to have a dad who was a former avionics officer in the USAF). I really liked creating new levels in Lode Runner — some of which were highly suspect. On an an unrelated note, one of my older brothers spent so much time playing Defender on our Atari that he would play only looking at the small navigation window at the top of the screen and block the rest of the screen with a pillow. Oh, those were the days!

By: keirapelican

keirapelican — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:15:17 +0000

If I could get Strategic Conquest for my PC, I would be playing it right now instead of reading this blog.

By: Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:33:22 +0000

I think we could get school credit in junior high for playing Oregon Trail. That immediately disqualified it from being fun.

By: gratiaplena

gratiaplena — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:30:48 +0000

Man, I miss the old IIe. I used to spend HOURS playing Epyx Summer Games, and text-based RPG called Eamon, and King’s Quest.

Wait, no, I played King’s Quest on my dad’s IBM PC Jr. Which he bought at Egghead. Anyone remember Egghead?

By: grape_crush

grape_crush — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:18:50 +0000

No love for Oregon Trail…

By: Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:04:18 +0000

I didn’t hear you say YEAH!

actually I’m so old I think Prince of Persia showed up too late for me. I was in college by then. it probably belongs on this list, but I just never played it.

By: loonyboi

loonyboi — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:30:00 +0000

I suppose you disqualified Prince of Persia for the same reason you didn’t count Zork? That’s probably my favorite from that era.

My favorites were mostly text adventures like Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Suspended, etc. Also Sierra adventure games like King’s Quest/Space Quest.

Also great: Aliens. Oft forgotten, but man, that game was amazing.