Category: Apple II
The Crow Cousins (Daniel Henderson and Roby Sherman) have released a new graphic adventure for the Apple II, featuring beautiful low-resolution graphics using the double lowers mode of the Apple II. Murder Manor follows a similar plot and gameplay of a Clue game where you have to walk around, going to different places of the Screenhole Manor, interacting with objects…
During the ongoing KansasFest 2020 “online edition”, one of the most surprising presentations was the demake of MYST for the Apple II! If porting down MYST for the Apple II is a feat by itself, imagine if it was done using only low-resolution graphics? That is what Vince “DEATER” Weaver decided to do. A seasoned 6502 programmer, Deater had made…
Starting from the //e enhanced, the Apple II featured a double LORES mode with 80 x 48 pixels in 16 colours. Although still blocky, the smaller pixels and full access to 16 colours brought new graphics capabilities for the Apple II. The only problem was that BASIC programmers didn’t have available easy-to-use commands to access this mode and with sparse documentation and complex implementation…
A month ago I published on YouTube a video showing my vintage computer collection from when I was living in my old place (the video was shot in Nov/Dec 2019) and my main point when posting it was to raise the discussion about the differences to be a collector or simply accumulating old computers just for the sake of it….
Manic Miner, one of the best-sellers games released for the ZX Spectrum, has been ported for the Apple II, and the source code is available on Github. I’ve reached out to the author, “StewBC”, and he was kind enough to answer my questions and more! Stefan Wessels, a fellow Canadian living in British Columbia, first saw Manic Miner at a…
The traditional Apple II enthusiasts summer camp is following the trend and moving the event to the virtual world. Although the event happens in July, the organizers rightfully decided to cancel the face-to-face gathering due to the current pandemic. Initially it was hoped that the world and national situation would be sufficiently improved by July that we could proceed as…
ArsTechnica has posted a video where Jordan Mechner talks about the development of his most successful game, Prince of Persia. In the 20-minute video, he shows some interesting bits of the development process when he was a college student, including the famous technique to design the human-like animation for Karateka and Prince of Persia and tricks used to make Prince…
ReactiveMicro announces the availability of new Apple II Plus, Rev 7 motherboards. The new board is meant to replace existing Apple II/Plus with a modern version built with high-quality parts and sockets while keeping the same look as the original one, preserving the “retro” side of your machine. The boards are sold fully assembled for US$ 299 or as a…
It was released a few weeks ago a new episode of the Apple Time Warp podcast, a show hosted by John Romero (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom… you know him) and Craig Johnston. The podcast has a sparse schedule, with only eight episodes published in the last 6 years. This year, however, they managed to release two episodes, and with very prominent…
As a retro computer collector, I know (as my wife!) that space is the most concerning aspect when you get your hands on computers like the PET, the TRS-80 Model III and many other big and bulky ones. Thanks, ZX-81 to keep the footprint small! If you also face that challenge, maybe you would be happy to have a smaller…
