Games That Push the Limits of the Apple II

Noels Retro Lab Apple II Deep Dive
• Apple IIe PAL Color De...
Support me on Patreon
/ sharopolis
It never had much success here, I'm going to dive in and dig up some games that really pushed the Apple II to the limit, a new experience for me! Yes the Apple II never had much success here in the UK or the rest of Europe, so I'll be taking a look at this system for the first time.

[@bobfromsoireegames4309]

Prince of Persia on this computer is actually incredible

[@johneymute]

He should stop talking out of his ass and just talk normal rather then talking too much & too anthousiast, it really get’s annoying pretty fast ,am sorry.

[@caseytwill]

It was the original release of Prince of Persia. After the Apple II version, it was ported to practically every computer under the sun.

[@TrainmasterCurt]

@@caseytwill From the Maker of Karateka (Jordan Mechner)

[@mick82]

I remember buying this when it came out on the Apple II. Still have the disk to this day.

[@r66f80]

The school I went to, for 2nd Grade, still had some Apple II computers. This was in 1995.

[@stevesrover]

It was an interesting machine. Showing the monochrome against the colour screen finally got it to click in my head how our monochrome monitor showed patterns when a colour monitor automatically displayed colour. It’s a shame they didn’t just plug into the telly. We had a few games. Hadron was my favourite but I had no idea what was going on. Fortunately, us kids got a Speccy to play on. My dad bought a Europlus to write a book. The word processor came on its own hardware board with its own monitor cable. Another board drove an electric typewriter that typed the pages out by itself! Amazing stuff for 1980. It must have cost a fortune. Dad bought a Mac 512 a few years later to self publish his works as no publisher would pick it up. It cost the same as a small car. Think mum would have preferred the money spent on a better car car as at the time we had a soggy old Chrysler 180 with rust so bad we kids could poke our fingers through its front wings. Fortunately, she got got her wish as the book became an A Level reading text and we got a brand new Sierra in the late 80s (a superb upgrade from the intermediary Metro after the Chrysler collapsed in a heap).

[@IsaacKuo]

One thing worth noting about the Apple ][ is that it had an analog joystick with two buttons. It was designed before the Atari VCS - before the 8 way digital joystick with one fire button became standard. Back then, practically all home videogames were Pong or similar. So the natural game control for the Apple ][ was two analog paddles with one fire button each. The joystick? The joystick just mashes the two into one controller - two buttons and two analog control axes. The two buttons were useful for a lot of things, like in Lode Runner where you can instantly dig in either direction. The analog control made fine control of stuff possible, which was particularly notable for Wings of Fury (compared to ports that were controlled by digital joystick). The controls in the original Choplifter were less fidgety than the ports.

[@EmmaMaySeven]

"Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior With A Name Change" Not the most obscure game premise from the 1980s...

[@Dorelaxen]

The Apple IIe was essentially what I grew up with. All our schools had them exclusively, so each week at "computer lab", that was what we used. Lots of fond memories there.

[@KennethKolano]

I would have included Air Heart, which had some of the smoothest action I recall seeing on the platform.

[@datacipher]

Yes good call. I bought airheart in the store purely because it was double hi res and programmer was awesome. Was blown away by how fast, detailed, and smooth the animation was when I played it.

[@BrendanRobert]

@@datacipher Not to mention was written by Dan Gorlin (who also did Choplifter).

[@deanolium]

For me the Apple ][ feels pretty similar to the BBC computers - albeit with fewer graphics modes. But there's something about it (probably relying on mostly stock chips) that just gives it that utilitarian, for-school feel. Great machine, and a lot of potential with the card slots. It's also amazing that Apple gave out schematics and even the source code to the ROM with the computer. How things change.

[@JimLeonard]

For someone not familiar with the Apple II, you did a good job. The only serious omission I'd like to mention is not covering "Airheart", also by Dan Gorlin, and is an incredibly fast double-hi-res game.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Holy crap. Those water effects are still beautiful. 1986? That's bloody insane.

[@patsfan4life]

I remember being pretty blown away by Prince of Persia back in the 80s

[@patsfan4life]

@Video games Bloke yeah me.too

[@HelpTheWretched]

I had quite a collection of Apple II games as a kid, and while I can't really tell which ones "pushed the limits", a few come to mind: Karateka: like a much earlier Prince of Persia Neptune & Zenith: both programmed by NASIR!! Robot Odyssey: One of the hardest games ever made, you literally use circuit logic to program your own robots. And, not so much limit-pushers but some of my all-around faves: Conan, Chrono Warrior, and Captain Goodnight.

[@jedgrahek1426]

By far, by light years the best game I ever played on an Apple IIe was Ultima IV, and V also I suppose. Those two were masterpieces, and don't get nearly as much credit today as they deserve. They were so, so ahead of their time, it was like an Elder Scrolls or Baldur's Gate game, so much better than anything else for a long time.

[@HiNRGboy]

The Apple II was great, it was the first computer I remember playing games on.. But you can't forget Lode Runner, that was a true iconic game originally released for the Apple II :) And Gemstone Warrior, that was an early action rpg which I enjoyed far more than the turn based rpgs of the time.

[@bigbaddms]

Lode runner was phenomenal

[@amcadam26]

I'm British and 41. I only heard about the Apple 2 when I read about the history of Apple about ten years ago. I didn't know anyone who owned one and no one at school ever mentioned them. We all had Spectrums, C64s and Amstrads, one kid had an Atari 400.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

You weren't missing much, other than much more reasonable loading times. They were perfect for gaming if you completed your homework early, and not much else. I loved Tapper and Dangerous Dave, but give me Chase HQ, R-Type, and 3d Death Chase any day.

[@francoisvanderlinden3756]

@@juststatedtheobvious9633 nah, you missed a lot ;)

[@robintst]

When I was in grade school, the computer lab there had long since been filled with a few of every model of Apple II. At home we had an Amiga 500 and I used to wonder why these Apple machines had such awful graphics, not realizing at the time that it was hardware from 1977. There was an undeniable charm to them though, they're where I first learned proper typing technique and a little bit of BASIC. Didn't have any inclination to learn stuff like that at home on the Amiga, I was more busy playing Lemmings and Great Giana Sisters.

[@belstar1128]

The apple 2 is probably the oldest home platform that could do more complex long action adventure games with graphics.

[@joneggelton]

It's true the Apple II wasn't a big thing here in the UK, but as it turned out, it was the very first computer I ever used. Our school got lucky, and won one in a competition (around 1982). It was the only computer in the entire school. Many lunch-hours were spent fighting over it - and the Logo Turtle - with my classmates.

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

The BBC model B is probably the British equivalent.

[@tarstarkusz]

In the right hands, the BBC is a competent computer. There's a guy on YT that has like 10 games for it, all of them great and some of them are actually emulators! Emulators of arcade games on the BBC 32k!

[@lironmtnranch4765]

When I was in high school early 80s I dabbled in machine language level programming on the Apple IIe. One of the limitations was displaying pixels next to each other. Some colors you couldn't display next to each other, they could only be displayed as alternating pixels within a block type of thing. This would cause weird color aliasing if you tried to move an object incrementally depending on whether you were accessing the graphics memory directly or using tools and functions like the shape tables that were available.

[@hangonsnoop]

Bill Budge was a programming legend and "Pinball Construction Set" was a favorite of mine.

[@Asterra2]

Grew up on an Apple IIe (and Vic-20 a few years later). Kind of surprised you didn't bring up Airheart. One of the platform's very best. Came late in its lifespan and so made use of the rare 16 color mode. It's the only time I ever heard a game on Apple II use sound effects of varying loudness to provide the impression of distance. It was later remade on the ST and Amiga as Typhoon Thompson. The thing that took up most of my time on the Apple IIe was making music for the extremely rare Phasor card which I happened to get my hands on. It was two Mockingboards in one, for a total of 12 voices.

[@4h0w1e6]

I always liked Star Blazer. My only friend who actually owned an Apple 2 (most I encountered were at school) had Wizardry. That game completely captured my imagination, but I could only play it at his house.

[@lausk9613]

Wizardry 1, proving grounds of the mad overlord. What a game

[@4h0w1e6]

@@lausk9613 Yeah it blew me away.

[@PlayBASIC-Developer]

Karateka on the AppleII was the game that really got it's hooks into me as kid.

[@Sauvenil]

Jordan Mechner made that game... the same guy that made Prince of Persia.

[@jong2359]

I still remember having my tiny little mind absolutely destroyed by the quality from Thexder for my Tandy PC back in the early 90's. It was leagues ahead of most DOS games, even after being 5-6 years old by the time I got to play it... and it came out of the $5 bargain bin, too.

[@joshhiner729]

Great job. I enjoyed the Sierra Adventure games on the Apple II. Kings Quest 1 through 4 etc. Those really pushed the system especially when lots of animation was happening.

[@bigbaddms]

Absolutely they were great. Space quest and leisure suit Larry

[@MarvinMonroe]

I still remember the day we got our AppleiiC. January 1986 superbowl Sunday. When the Bears won. I was 6 years old, turned 7 a month later in February

[@TheSocialGamer]

I love your style of storytelling.. When I see a new upload from you I know it's going to be a fun ride. Thank you! ❤️

[@Sharopolis]

That's great, thank you!

[@karimo40]

Check out a game called Airheart. Not very good in the end, but probably the highest frame rate of any Apple II game I ever saw, and in double high res to boot. Also I think Prince of Persia was done in hi res, only the intro was double high res.

[@BigCar2]

Where can I get "underpants of the wizard"?!? I need it!!! 😉

[@javelinXH992]

Big Car Caverns of Snot is the better game.

[@benholroyd5221]

@@javelinXH992 OMG what are you on about? I agree that later instalments of the Snot franchise did usher in the modern video games industry. UotW is truly one of the 8bit greats though. What else was there to rival that feeling of beating the Brown Wizard in '84?

[@trr94001]

The II puts in a good showing considering it was five years ahead of the systems it's usually compared to in an era when technology was moving fast.

[@LUCKO2022]

Lol, the C64 was far better than the Apple II (not counting the GS model)

[@trr94001]

Yes, and it came out five years later.

[@amerigocosta7452]

You're right, for 1977 this was an achievement for sure. Color and sound on a personal computer when most people had no use for a personal computer yet. I'm sure it helped popularize the concept in those early years. The Atari 400 was a lot more capable but also came out 2 years later.

[@dennisbmx]

In the early '80s I learned that being a pioneer in the old west was full of death and despair with the classic Oregon Trail. This was before we had a computer lab, but the school library had a couple of Apple II computers with monochrome monitors. By middle school, in about '84-'85, we had a few Apple //e computers in something like study hall (It was where they sent hyperactive kids like myself to get me out of the way). I was allowed to play games if I finished my homework. My favorite games were Choplifter and Hard Hat Mack. This is also where I first learned the wonder of computer programming with Basic. At the end of High School (around '89) I finally had my first computer at home, which was a Laser 2000 from Sears, an Apple //e clone I bought with money shoveling driveways and mowing lawns. The nostalgia of all this has me chocking up--good stuff.

[@AdamCoate]

Did The Oregon Trail push the limits of the Apple 2? It's certainly the game that we played the most out here for those who went to public schools in the 80's and 90's. All our schools were seemingly full of Apple 2s and the only game ever installed on them was The Oregon Trail, so we played the hell out of it. Us boys would always do nothing but the hunting, and we'd always end up with about 2000 pounds more than we could carry.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

BBC Computer Acorn DFS BASIC >_

[@mattmyers9351]

Very cool! I never had an Apple 2, and I live in the US! I did get an Apple Macintosh in the late 90's though. Great video!

[@RetroSegaDev]

Another great video from the master! I look forward to these :)

[@TheWrightClanX5]

Outstanding work mate - good to have you back 🙂

[@julienbraudel7109]

Nice video and brit accent. You forgot some impressive games though : California Games, Flobynoid, Pipe Dreams, Batman, The Last Ninja and probably the most impressive of all, Airheart. I recommand you also take a look at French Touch's Apple II demomaking channel : what he can achieve with an apple II is simply fabulous.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

I'm just seeing Airheart for the first time, and it blew my mind.

[@julienbraudel7109]

@@juststatedtheobvious9633 I still don't know how they made the graphics that clean, and the game so speedy. And this is the original version if i remember well.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Well researched and awesome as always!

[@mcrsit]

Truly a terrific video, as always :) Bravo!

[@markstahl1464]

There were a ton of fantastic games on the Apple IIe. The graphics and sound were weird, but they are very nostalgic because it’s what I grew up with. Some of my favorite games on the Apple IIe are Below the Root, Conan: Hall of Volta, Montezuma’s Revenge, Aztec, Karateka, and Bolo. These games all played extremely well on the keyboard and were very well designed.

[@julienbraudel7109]

Sound and graphics were not weirder than others machines that went out in 70s, as the Apple II is one of the first home computer ever (the graphics card changed on the Apple IIc, around 1984). Around 83 and 85, except for the colors and the sound, C64 games converted on Apple II had really good graphics that were close to the Commodore version (Winter Games, Bard's Tale, Skyfox..). Apple II is actually one the best gaming machine of all time, with tons of great games. In addition to the one you listed, i would add those now classics that were originally designed on the Apple II : Ultima, Lode Runner, Choplifter, and of course, Prince of Persia.

[@JustMe99999]

I'd add Kareteka to this list -- came out way before Prince of Persia (same developer) but still had those incredible animations.

[@cbnewham5633]

Hmm. No mention of the SubLogic flight simulator, Night Mission Pinball, Wizardry (written in Pascal) or the Apple II version of Zork. These were all pivotal games for the early Apples.

[@tarstarkusz]

Great video Sharapolis...

[@junker15]

Double hi-res is 560*192 with 16 colors. Standard hi-res is 280*192 with (technically) 8 colors, but with two blacks and 2 whites, you got 6. The Bilestoad was a game that exploited standard hi-res to get colors standard hi-res couldn't make. For a game that involved chopping up your opponent with your weapon, having "red" as a color was important! ;o)

[@Sharopolis]

Double hi-res was 560*192 in monochrome mode, it went down to 140 in NTSC artifact colour mode.

[@SalivatingSteve]

I bet Prince of Persia for Apple II sold a lot to schools. Apple IIs and Macs were ubiquitous in American schools. My elementary school still had some of their old Apple IIe systems set up in the media center til at least 2000. Each year as they added new Macs, that Apple II section of the computer lab kept shrinking. I played Oregon Trail at school on both computers.

[@larkefedifero]

"The old 'Beige Delicious...' " HAH!! Never heard it called *that* before!!! ;-P

[@mariowario5945]

Most people would shrug to why breakout is on here, but remember how the apple 2 came out considerably earlier than the Atari 2600 and is providing an almost 1 to 1 arcade experience at home

[@ncf1]

The Apple II was unreal back in the day,.. and incredulously no half decent books about its games.

[@tsvtsvtsv]

love these vids

[@naderhumood1199]

I love this vedio.....i had all apple // type machine....lovely days ...lovely past, back 80's....👍👍👍💖💖💖💖💖

[@MarginalSC]

Captain Goodnight is a good one too. Gemstone Warrior if you want more 4 directional scrolling IIRC.

[@rog2224]

For some reason, there were a lot of Apple II (i forget the model - it was almost 40 years ago)units in education in Humberside in the early 80s. I think there was a copy Oregon Trail at my Tech, but I never saw it

[@marcholman291]

Into the Eagles Nest. And, as of a couple years ago, Nox Archaist - available on steam!!

[@Kand1nSky]

Atari 8-Bit has the same usage of colors the NTSC system in the hi-res mode, f.e. Ultima II is simply b/w in europe but colourful in the us.

[@bryede]

The Atari was designed with the capabilities of the typical home TV in mind. This meant they didn't try to do much with color in 320 mode thinking 160 would be easier to see. But, they did include sprites, 4 channel sound, a wide color palette and hardware scrolling.

[@MagesGuild]

At 9:33 ... High spec //e with I suspect, a Vulcan controller. Odd that it does not have the Vulcan enclosure around that drive, but it is not dissimilar to one of my high spec machines. I suppose that could also be a SCSI drive. I did not zoom in to count the number of wires. Vulcan is IDE, 44 pins, and SCSI is 50 pins.

[@AcornElectron]

Where’ve you been fella? Hope all is well. Keep up the good work and stay safe chap!

[@hangonsnoop]

The Apple ][ was the first personal computer with built-in graphics support. It made it first personal computer that could be a gaming platform. It wasn't as good as the offerings from Commodore or Atari but those came later.

[@OrfinMusik]

Prince of Persia was probably the last game I played on my apple IIc (which I still have in box to this day with the Blavk/green monochrome monitor and dot matrix printer

[@therealhardrock]

The way the Apple II makes color needed a special video card in PAL regions to display color.

[@therealhardrock]

You missed the Wolfenstein games. "Halt!" "Kommen Sie!" "Aushweis!" "Heil!" Voice samples were very hard to do on a beeper speaker.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

That is freaking nuts!

[@rager1969]

Castle Wolfenstein and it's sequel Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. 2D game in the vein of Robotron, it was the inspiration for id's Wolf 3D.

[@ParzivalSask]

Wow this brought back many memories. However, reliving my childhood through emulation.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

Also remembered another game that was soft of a "better Choplifter": Rescue Raiders.

[@ellebhee5045]

I have to admit that Prince of Persia looked smooth! Pretty good imo :)

[@FatNorthernBigot]

My Cantonese cousin had an Apple II... I thought it was very exotic as I piddled about with my 16k Spectrum.

[@ykkzm2743]

In Japan, Atari800 and C64 hardly sold. Therefore, until the introduction of the NES, the Apple II was the best gaming machine.

[@johnsensebe3153]

The first computers I was exposed to were all Apples, but I ended up with a C64 because it was much cheaper. I loved the games on the C64, but was disappointed that Commodore BASIC didn't have the graphics commands the Apple's BASIC had.

[@lazarushernandez5827]

Well it didn't have the same graphics commands, all of the 8 bit computers of the era had their own version of Basic, with each having specific commands. My school growing up had the TRS-80s and the Apple 2s as our initial computers. Most kids had either a Commodore Vic 20 or C64, or an Atari 400/800. The C64 had a midi chip, so it had specific commands regarding sound that the Apple 2 did not (or the Atari 800 for that matter). The 800 had several color and resolution modes that weren't on the Apple or Commodore. I had an 800XL and its BASIC was good enough to get the computer class homework done.

[@johnsensebe3153]

@@lazarushernandez5827 The sound chip in the 64 wasn't a MIDI chip. MIDI is a specific interface for playing music. CBM BASIC didn't have commands to control this chip or the VIC II graphics chip, either, unless you count POKE. Everything was proprietary back then. Each computer was completely different, until IBM came to market with a computer assembled from generic parts and other companies just copied it.

[@lazarushernandez5827]

@@johnsensebe3153 you are correct, it did have a Midi interface iirc? That's what I meant as well, each computer's BASIC had specific commands all to itself.

[@johnsensebe3153]

@@lazarushernandez5827 Not built in. Maybe there was a third party peripheral.

[@grymmjack]

Underpants of the wizard! Lol

[@fearlessjoebanzai]

Now for the Acorn Electron!

[@overdriver99]

I would recommend 'Bliestoad' game : which plays background music without having any sound card. I haven't seen any other Apple II games does that. It has 3 FPS though LOL!!!

[@johnsensebe3153]

It looks very much like Death Sword simply copied the graphics directly from the C64 version of Barbarian with only some color changes to fit the Apple's palette. The wide pixels give it away.

[@RemoWilliams1227]

I was just downloading the game cube pop games earlier, still a great series.

[@rokljhui864]

Conan, Karateka, Gemstone Warrior

[@socialistsuccubus822]

If the ZX Spectrum is the quintessential British home computer, the Apple II is ours. All the expansion an Apple II offers is a good representation about how americans think about things in the same way the cheap but simplistic and reliable design of the ZX Speccy represents the british zietgeist fairly well. I want an Apple II or Apple IIGS so badly. Old school Apple has a special kind of soul. The 6502 is probably one of the greatest CPUs of all time btw.

[@zeoxbg]

Swashbuckler was the sh*t! This may sound strange coming from a bulgarian, born behind the iron curtain. But strange enough in the early 80's bulgaria produced Apple II clones. And that was the first computer experience we bulgarians got.

[@PartyDude_19]

Once this video gets over 10,000 views, I'll be able to say that I remember when this video had 593 views.

[@19822andy]

Well we're nearly there!

[@nelbazan8391]

Awesome!

[@SuburbanDon]

Choplifter was great !

[@MaxOakland]

I love Wizard’s Snot! You should do a video with that next

[@tempestfury8324]

There was a game released on the Apple ][ in 1988 that led to probably the biggest video game franchise in history. Any guesses? Trip Hawkens? ...... ...... John Madden Football! Yep! That entire franchise that continues today, all started on the Apple ][.😲

[@ballandpaddle]

Ah yes, the good ol' Apple ][. The system whose game boxes often showed screenshots of the C64 version of the same game and just really made me want a C64.

[@theyamo7219]

The Apple did have some great early RPGs though

[@IsaacKuo]

@@theyamo7219 The C64 version of Ultima IV was worth the wait. And the wait again because I moved to the next section of the map ... and the wait again because I moved to the next section of the map .. and the wait again ... AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!! No but seriously I do think the C64 version of Ultima IV was maybe better, but ... the patience required with the unaccelerated 1541 loading ...

[@lazarushernandez5827]

@@IsaacKuo You didn't have the Fast Load cartridge? My friend had a C64 and that cartridge was a must for loading games of the floppy drive.

[@Sinistar1983]

Maybe a episode on technically impressive ds games.

[@ParzivalSask]

Played Thexder on Apple 2GS back in the day

[@RevDrCCoonansr]

The Apple II was the first home computer I played a game on. It was a river raft ripoff game but it was incredible to see in a living room considering it was more fun than my Atari 2600. I actually got a II and a IIe from a friend and I am not an Apple collector...not sure what to do with them now. Have an iMac G3 too and a 2012 Aluminum Intel MacBook Pro. I don't use any of them. I started a collection but it got trashed in a basement, I was going to recollect but it's way too expensive now. Insurance gave me peanuts for what would be over $100k worth of consoles and computers.

[@mstcrow5429]

Helicopter even has red and green nav lights.

[@osgeld]

the apple 2's graphics was a shift register, it had no hardware period, next high resolution mode has 2 pages (or screens) and if used wisely can be used to double buffer of sorts increasing speed

[@rapidpig]

Hi, great stuff as always, but not quite clear on what honour was being bestowed upon Choplifter in the arcade...?

[@markstahl1464]

I believe he means that Choplifter is a rare instance of a home computer game being ported TO the arcades instead of vice versa.

[@rapidpig]

@@markstahl1464 - Aha, of course. thanks!

[@MotownBatman]

My Older cousins had a lot of cool stuff; Apple ][ was one of em We played Temple of Doom & Summer Games Constantly

[@Kazuo1G]

"Wheel of Fortune" isn't a pixel pusher by any standards, but it is actually more colorful than Thexder and Death Sword.

[@ActionGamerAaron]

6:18 "A very early fighting game, indeed. It may well be the first to employ the standard side-on-view."" So far as I can tell, yep! Beats International Karate by 3 years.

[@OrfinMusik]

Swashbuckler choplifter were my shizz as a kid

[@Kennephone]

Akalabeth is most likely the very first game to use 3D, and to top it off it was written in BASIC, which is probably the least efficient actual programming language ever.

[@Highretrogamelord]

Underrated system that gave us some of THE best educational games: Lemonade Stand, Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, Number Munchers, the Carmen Sandiego games and more. It also gave us some of the best RPGs as well: Champions of Krynn, Deathlord, Dragon Wars, the Might and Magic games, Phantasie, The Ultima games, Wasteland, the Wizardry games .. and more. It also gave us the very first Prince of Persia game.

[@tarstarkusz]

It's the most overrated machine and people say the "best" educational games largely because that is what their school had and that is what they played while in school. Had they grown up playing different games on a different platform they would signing the praises of that system and its games. Where the Apple II really shined, was, ironically enough, as an actual computer capable of doing real work in a home, small business and even in an educational environment. The Apple II was, by a very wide margin the best home 8-bit computer. I say this as not being a person who used it at the time. I know all of the limitations of the Commodore 64 because it's the one I used albeit for school work. The Apple II either does not suffer these problems to begin with or has upgrade cards available.

[@Highretrogamelord]

@@tarstarkusz I didn't grow up with the Apple II, we didn't have it in school (well, I attended elementary school in the late 90s) and yet I still think it gave us some of the best educational games. Also the keyword here is *some*. You also say it is the most overrated machine and yet at the same time you also say it was, by a very wide margin, the best 8-bit home computer. That, to me, sounds rather contradictive. Now the Apple Ii is not my favourite home computer, the C64 and the Atari 8-bit home are much better - at least gameplay-wise, but I still feel like credit is due where credit is due.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@Highretrogamelord I fully concur that the Atari 8 bits and the Commodore machines sans pet are far more competent game machines. Even the plus 4 has some pretty wicked looking and sounding games. (tried to break it up for easier reading of my wall o text) When I say it was the best, I mean as a computer doing real work. It was just a much more serious machine than anything by the likes of Atari or Commodore or Sinclair or any of the other bit machines. It seems like a small thing, but it was much better built. It had internal power supplies. There was no snake of wires and parts that don't stack. It had 80 column screen, which is absolutely necessary for real work. It had a usable keyboard. A keyboard you could actually do work on. It had internal expansion for RAM and many other things by having bus slots, which no other major 8-bit system had. Everything and anything could be had for the machine. Better video, better sound, processor upgrades, ram into the megabytes etc. It also had professional quality software for business/accounting and the like. This is something all of the 8 bits lacked. At best you had sub-par 40 column limited software. The lack of RAM really harmed the other computers in this sense. Limited to the 16b address bus (65536 address) of their respective CPUs like the 6502/6510, z80 and other 8 bit CPUs, several of those precious kBs lost to screen RAM, the first page of RAM on a 6502/6510, the character set both upper and lower case plus any needed grammar marks and other miscellaneous stuff, the program itself and then you are left with like 10 or 20k which is nothing. The average paperback small form fiction book is about a MB in pure text with no formatting or crazy file stuff, just txt files (I know this so well because back in the early 2ks I downloaded 10s of thousands of books, all of which I still have in txt form). I used an Apple II in high school for programming I (basic) and programming II (pascal) in 84/85 and 85/86. They were the only computer classes I was offered in K-12 (class of 87). So educational computer games for younger students were just not my generation. But there are only a few games I ever hear anyone talking about. Oregon Trail and Where is Carmen San Diego are 2 I hear about constantly. Also, none of the schools had the other 8 bits because they were toys sold in toy stores and K-Mart. Had the Commodore 64 been the computer of choice in those days for elementary and middle school aged kids, we'd be hearing about how great those games were. Because as gaming systems, the 64 is another league than the Apple II. There is literally nothing the Apple II can do as far as gaming goes that the C64 cannot. Even if you use a later model like the IIe with 128k, the C64 had a cartridge slot and games as large as 512k were made, literally dwarfing anything to ever appear on the II.

[@Highretrogamelord]

@@tarstarkusz Thanks for clarifying, now got more input in your thoughts. Yeah, it was powerful, but not as powerful as it could've been - especially for that price back then. Also I agree with you that many people mention Oregon Trail when it comes to Apple II (I almost neve see someone mentioning the Carmen Sandiego games though) and it has more than this game to offer. While I also mentioned it, I mentioned plenty of other games as well.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@Highretrogamelord I don't really know about the RPGs because I have never been interested in them. Prince of Persia was a masterpiece at the time for sure. It was the first game I'm aware of that had such realistic and fluid animation. Also, I wasn't really saying there are no good games for it. There were some pretty good games. Frankly, many of these exceptional games are testaments of the talent and determination and clever use of the hardware of the developers. I was about 10 years old the first time I saw what we would consider a modern arcade game, which was space invaders (there were a LOT of games before that, but most were electromechanical) and so my tween and early teen years were at the height of arcade game popularity. That has always been my favorite type of game. I used to spend every quarter I could get my hands on playing games. The Apple II just isn't very good at recreating the arcade games for the most part and so it always held very limited interest to me as a games machines. A game designed from the ground up on an Apple II and specifically designed to look good on the hardware and not trying to shoehorn a different computer's color scheme and graphics into that hardware, can end up looking and playing great. I guess this was a really long winded way of saying I think people who look back so fondly on those educational games says a lot more about their childhood than it does about the prowess of the Apple II as a games machine.

[@Astinsan]

The apple two and apple one were actually platforms to build 6052 arcade games and embedded development like a raspberry pi is today. If you open the case look at the back half of the motherboard.. i/o pins

[@Nikku4211]

Do you ever plan to do one for the Apple 2GS?

[@StonerJames]

Damn! I got my NES in 1986 and that blew away the graphics on Prince of Persia on the Apple II! Thought computers back then we're supposed to be better than consoles. Guess not!

[@StormsparkPegasus]

One important game left out, that was much better than Choplifter, was Wings of Fury. And Karateka (also Jordan Mechner).

[@CorporalDanLives]

The Apple IIgs version of Thexder is boss, but the //e version is arguably even crazier given the insane limitations.

[@shmehfleh3115]

It's worth noting that the original Apple II did support regular (non-artifact) colors, and with a wider palette. You have an example of it at 9:45. It's just that, in color mode, the Apple II was limited to a resolution of 40x40, which obviously would've sucked for games.

[@owaing]

Those colours were also produced by artifacts. That's why the lo-res colours are the same 16 as in double hi-res.

[@SomeDudeInBaltimore]

Wow, how many clowns fit into that helicopter?