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Now theres a classic. I never beat the game back in the day, and for those of you in the same boat, have a look at this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GTkRXKPXq4&noredirect=1

Makes you want to break out that Apple II right

LOL! Classic.

That made me think of a question for you Apple enthusiasts. Did any Apple II games make use of the Mockingboard sound card at all? Was it the SoundBlaster16 of the Apple II world? I have one of these cards but I've never installed and/or used it in any of my units.

tezza wrote:LOL! Classic.

That made me think of a question for you Apple enthusiasts. Did any Apple II games make use of the Mockingboard sound card at all? Was it the SoundBlaster16 of the Apple II world? I have one of these cards but I've never installed and/or used it in any of my units.

The bigger ambitious, multi-disk adventure games like ultima and bards tale did I believe. (and a music editing package)

It was as close as the Apple II got to a "standard" but as far as SB16 type ubiquity? Not really.

Right to the end the target for pretty much every package released was a minimum of a standard IIe. The only major transition that occurred was that later, it became common to expect the IIe "enhanced"... You can use pretty much anything (non-IIgs) from the entire range of the Apple II with a bog standard 128k "Enhanced" IIe.

tezza wrote:LOL! Classic.

That made me think of a question for you Apple enthusiasts. Did any Apple II games make use of the Mockingboard sound card at all? Was it the SoundBlaster16 of the Apple II world? I have one of these cards but I've never installed and/or used it in any of my units.

There were a few and I'm pretty sure theres a list of supported games floating around on the internet - Skyfox (another classic A2 game - check out http://www.bionictoad.com/skyfox/) was one. Personally tho, I never owned one, and recently I gave away an AE Phasor (mocking board clone amongst other things) because it wasnt part of the authentic experience for me

Although the Apple II (excluding the GS) line wasnt known for its audio capabilities (they were particularly poor), it didnt stop some people from trying to use it to create music - heres a pretty good site about it - http://eightbitsoundandfury.ld8.org/index.html

gavo wrote:Although the Apple II (excluding the GS) line wasnt known for its audio capabilities (they were particularly poor), it didnt stop some people from trying to use it to create music - heres a pretty good site about it - http://eightbitsoundandfury.ld8.org/index.html

Yes, it's amazing what could be done. The TRS-80 Model I/System-80 managed to come out with some cool harmonics for games too, despite having nothing but cassette audio to manipulate. And usually with nothing but 16k to play with!

It astonishes me how creative these guys were (and it was almost always guys). And how young they were (often in their teens..sometimes early teens).

Conan had to be one of my favorite games back in the day! and yes we did finish it and got the cool finish screen

Burnt up many an hour getting that one sorted - thanks for the reminder Gavo.... In fact I think I will have to bust that one out again and see if I still have what it takes

tezza wrote:
Yes, it's amazing what could be done. The TRS-80 Model I/System-80 managed to come out with some cool harmonics for games too, despite having nothing but cassette audio to manipulate. And usually with nothing but 16k to play with!

It astonishes me how creative these guys were (and it was almost always guys). And how young they were (often in their teens..sometimes early teens).

I can remember my brother & I using a home baked assembly language prog to digitize "Hello Again" by the Car's and play it back using our DickSmith Cat's white noise generator, it was pretty raw but it worked!

not bad for 85! If we had kept at it, who know's we could have beaten the napster... lol

coogie wrote:Conan had to be one of my favorite games back in the day! and yes we did finish it and got the cool finish screen

Yes, finishing screens were an incentive. One of the TRS-80/System-80 games I enjoyed playing was Penetrator. The mission was to fly deep into enemy territory and, at the end, drop a single missile down a very narrow vent to blow up the whole complex (a la Star Wars). You only had one chance at this. It took a long time and a lot of screens to get to that vent. You had to fly through and over lots of obstacles most of which would shoot at you.

After weeks if not months of trying I finally got to that final screen and managed to slam dunk the missile in the narrow opening of the vent. I was then treated to a sound and light show as the whole complex blew up. (Well, as much of a sound and light show as was capable on a System 80 )

Anyway, point is it was quite a thrill to see it and know the mission had been accomplished!

If I remember righly, you then had to go through it all again to find your way OUT of the complex!