Category: Apple News
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…
The Digital Retro Park is one of the premier museums of digital culture. Falk Heinzelmann and Stefan Pitsch are the guys who started it all, and they’ve taken some time to talk to AJ and Joerg about the museum, as well as take us on a virtual tour while we’re all stuck at home! (interview starts at 10:05) https://scene.world/drp
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…
One of the most expected and respected contests in the retro computing community is turning 10 years old and ready to roll! The Tenth Edition of the BASIC 10-Liner has started and already waiting for your submission. This edition’s rules are pretty much the same as last year’s. BASIC games can be written for all 8-bit computers, as long they…
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…
A few days ago, Christie’s Auction house sold another Apple 1 for whopping $470,000 and when I read about it my first reaction was “yet another one…moving on”. That thought made me wonder why I would think like that. The Apple 1s are no less rare than they were a few years ago when the first ones had surfaced, and…
As many software created last century, Wordperfect for Apple IIgs wasn’t year 2K compliant. If you were one of the last Apple IIgs regular users by the end of the 20th century, you couldn’t use the text editor date features properly. Following the mantra that is never too late, Brutal Deluxe’s Antoine Vignau managed to fix the archaic word processor,…
