FPGA Apple II+ Plays Carmen Sandiego & Oregon Trail! - MiSTer New Year Countdown #15 | SmokeMonster

[@anthonyjacoway7364]

I'm on my mister journey right now, and I think the apple 2 will be the platform I get up and running. I was in Kindergarten in the late 80s and for what ever reason each of the class rooms had 2 of them. I remember having to wash our hands every time we wanted to use the computer. I remember using apple 2s untill highschool.

[@tbx59]

The city was clearing these out in the mid 80s and so got one as a kid, and my mom was a teacher, so easy access to programs and games to copy. Had a lot of fun with it, even if it wasn't the best PC.

[@siskavard]

"hasn't aged very well" "looks and sounds aweful" YOU SOLD ME

[@SmokeMonster]

Haha, well, I tried to give an objective opinion.

[@zachreddy]

Karateka and Prince of Persia were also standout games on the Apple II

[@xythen052]

Really enjoying these videos! There were a few important games you missed that were made for the Apple II though: the first Might and Magic, the first Wizardry game, and Ultima I were all originally developed for the Apple II. Unfortunately the core doesn't currently support disk writing, so there's no feasible way to play them fully on the MiSter yet. Hope it gets updated in the future, for preservation purposes if nothing else!

[@amoore2600]

Watching this video reminds me of good times as a kid.

[@SmokeMonster]

Aww, thanks :D

[@berighteous]

I develop Apple ][ games. I have videos on my channel playing my games on MiSTer. The Apple ][ came out in 1977, and was the first home computer to HAVE any graphics and sound capability at all.

[@SmokeMonster]

Cool, hopefully I wasn't too hard on it?

[@DentedRazor]

Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego and Number Munchers were popular back in Elementary school.

[@zeikjt]

What a ridiculously specific/limited location for a Carmen Sandiego game! Had no idea that existed :D

[@SmokeMonster]

Wow, they got very local with that one :D

[@DentedRazor]

It was on all Apple IIgs at my elementary schools (in Minot, ND). I almost got to the highest rank of Rough Rider during 6th grade. It was neat to have towns from my state in it, as wel as bad villain names like Imma Nodak. I thought each state got their own "Where in * is Carmen Sandiego?", but I found out later it was just ND that got it.

[@cohibadad]

Choplifter was great. Wolfenstein when you get to the room with Hitler is a must see. I loved Wizardry 1 and 2. I was mesmerized by it back in the day but that's mostly nostalgia as there just wasn't anything else like it at the time.

[@adamdavis6958]

Smoke, I’ve seen all of your MiSTer bringing in the New Year videos a couple of times …. Still fantastic even today even though you sold me into this hobby a couple years ago when MiSTer project was still new … watching this again tonight thinking about getting the Apple iie core fired up on a monochrome Apple green screen monitor I bought and this is the first time I noticed that “Sorge” broke his leg on the Oregon trial 🤣 Didn’t know who Sorge was when I first saw this video but I definitely do now. You’re hilarious man, wonder if he ever watched or noticed 😝🤙🏼

[@otakujhp]

Is the Apple IIGS on MiSTer? That's actually not half bad as capabilities go.

[@amoore2600]

I thought for sure we were going to see Print shop with it's trippy visuals!

[@wishusknight3009]

or Newsroom!

[@SmokeMonster]

Missed opportunity here :D

[@Deltax5]

I remember apple 2 in elementary. They had a few games. We had a bunch of apple computers in the computer lab. Had some fun with kid pixs, sim city and that truck game. Sadly all macs, but there was one super computer that no one was allowed to touch. it had a bunch of connections.

[@Colin_Ames]

I never played games on the Apple. We used one at work for writing programs for our proprietary PLC.

[@SmokeMonster]

I only ever saw them in my elementary school.

[@xminorthreatx]

I LOL'd at DiG dUg! It's the SANIC of the Dig Dug universe!

[@SmokeMonster]

Definitely :)

[@AceHardy]

🍎

[@SmokeMonster]

🍏

[@Galgomite]

I remember a title called “Hard Hat Mack” that I thought was amazing (this would be pre-NES in my home). Also Galaga was excellent. But yeah, owning and buying games for an apple II often meant bringing home a really awesome looking game and seeing that in fine print, the screens on the box were from an Amiga or an IBM.

[@siskavard]

hard hat mack was insanely hard lol

[@wishusknight3009]

@@siskavard agreed!

[@bootmii98]

Why isn't this in the playlist

[@SmokeMonster]

It is now, thanks!

[@chrishooper68]

2:49 I think it's just Mario Bros., not Super Mario Bros., my dear sir. 🙂

[@SmokeMonster]

Oh yeah, you're right :D

[@infopackrat]

So which has the worse sound? The Apple 2 or the IBM PC on the built in speaker?

[@SuperNicktendo]

I can't get any games to run this :/

[@skideric]

Bought the Original Alf game for C64 at Electronics Botique,wayyyyyyyy back in the day.... The Apple IIGS is the classic Apple to play!

[@SmokeMonster]

That's awesome :D

[@ramshambo2001]

Number munchers! Yes!

[@SmokeMonster]

I had to play it :D

[@markbessert1883]

My friends and I were into the Atari 800 when the Apple II was popular.

[@NightSprinter]

I'm curious if this supports the MockingBoard, which the 128K ports of Zaxxon, Skyfox, and some of the Ultima games supported for better sound and music.

[@SmokeMonster]

I don't think it does, but I'm not an expert on that.

[@rager-69]

You're a bit harsh about the graphics and sound of a computer that came out in 1977. Compare it to the Commodore PET and Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I.

[@wishusknight3009]

][e was a few years later sadly.

[@rager-69]

@@wishusknight3009 The Apple iic and later revision Apple iie added a double high res mode that didn't get used much. That wasn't being shown here.

[@SmokeMonster]

Probably true.

[@jbmaru]

Try: Bandits, Drelbs, Burger Time, Hard Hat Mack, Cavern Creatures, Sammy Lightfoot, Boulder Dash, Spy's Demise, Pinball Construction Set!

[@DrJ3RK8]

YES!!! All of these... However, do it on the C64 ;)

[@jbmaru]

@@DrJ3RK8 Not sure the C64 has them all though ;)

[@DrJ3RK8]

@@jbmaru Not sure about Cavern Creatures or Sammy Lightfoot, but the rest are on the 64. My brother and I played Drelbs, Hard Hat Mack, Boulder Dash, Spy's Demise a lot when we were kids. Drol was another good one from that era.

[@SmokeMonster]

Noted, thanks :D

[@TheSulross]

Among the 8-bit micros, from a hindsight perspective, the legendary status of the Apple II now seems way overblown, as you are right; at the hardware level the computer was rather dismal. The most famous Commodore 64, by comparison, had its famous SID sound chip and VID-II video chip. So the quality of 2D arcade games was way beyond the pathetic Apple II. And it had a cartridge port to make distribution of games straightforward for game publishers. And it cost about a third of what an Apple II would cost. The VisiCalc thing kinda gave the Apple II some cred as a business computer - at least until the IBM PC and PC clones eclipsed it in that arena. And it had wide adoption in education markets. So as one computer in the home it could be used by parents for productivity software and then by kids for education stuff they were doing at school, and then games. And there was the expansion bus and 3rd party cards. It were these factors combined that propelled the Apple II into the legendary status it enjoys - oh, and people like that story of two Steves in a garage.

[@SmokeMonster]

That, I wondered if my take on the II was just something on my end, but I just think it's not the best looking or feeling computer nowadays. C64 and the others we have on MiSTer seem to have aged much better, and gaming on them is still a lot of fun. But, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for II since I think it's what was in a lot of my classrooms growing up.

[@NickWestgate]

You're comparing a computer created by one man out of discrete logic in 1977 to one created by a team with dedicated I/O chips in 1982. Is there really any contest?

[@nrnoble]

Yeah, it is easy to be critical of Apple II graphics and games because they lack the bells and whistles of modern games. Hard to believe even young kids would be entertained by any of them. But, like in the days when people didn't have indoor plumbing, it was as game changer to have running water inside the home and indoor toilet. Back when the Apple II came out, no other micro computer had any form of graphics, so it was a game changer despite how crude and boring it looks by today's standards. Prior to that, any type of graphics were on computers that cost 100s of thousand or millions. Arcade games had specialized hardware that were tweeked to play one game, and cost at least a few thousand. I think Steve Wozniak did a pretty good job at creating the Apple II hardware\software pretty much by himself without a team of engineers and a few million in funding.

[@James-nj8gx]

I hated these computers back at school with a passion.

[@wishusknight3009]

c64 user?

[@James-nj8gx]

@@wishusknight3009 Nah, they were just old and slow, I'm a mid 80s model, do you can imagine what I was comparing it to

[@wishusknight3009]

@@James-nj8gx Ahh, yeah they were still around in my elementary school even when I was in grade 7 in late 90/91. I inherited my older brothers apple ][e and all of its goodies. And even got a good start in the mac world around then. But since I was about 5 years old, (or 6ish) I remember programing all sorts of stuff in wozbasic. My mother had a Laser XT/3 which only had MDA display, so no graphics to speak of, and I thought the apple was just so far ahead of it, though what can i say, I was a little kid who loved playing choplifter. I am full on into PC's now, but i have a lot of memories on that old wedge. I even thought it was superior to the C64 as a kid, only because I didn't understand how the C64 basic worked, let alone how slow its floppy disks were. But I was 7, what did I know. lol... However in retro gaming, I find I have hardly ever touched my Apple ][ in the last 20 years. Not sure if it even works now. I play with my first mac more, an se 30 or my vintage PC's like 386's and such. So yeah, I think I can say it hasn't aged well, and it really wasnt as good as some of our childhoods wanted to believe.

[@BrickTamlandOfficial]

BRUSH YOUR HAIR

[@jmssun]

Apple never gets games.. still