Yesterday, Boing Boing posted a video compilation of many classic arcade death scenes, set to a chiptune rendition of Mad World. It’s pretty awesome.
After watching it, I was inspired to attempt a similar video, but featuring death scenes from the games I was closest to, growing up. Apple II games. And so, I spent the afternoon playing some of the games I spent the most time with as a kid, running under emulation on AppleWin. Not a bad way to pass the day, really.
So, have a look. I hope readers enjoy.
The games shown in the video are, in order: Archon, Dino Eggs, Drol, Aztec, Talon, Galaxians, Lode Runner, Evolution, Starglider, Airheart, Cavern Creatures, Wavy Navy, Choplifter, Spy Hunter, Sammy Lightfoot, Conan: Hall of Volta, Situation Critical, Rescue Raiders, Montezuma’s Revenge and Wings of Fury.
The chiptune (C64 SID) version of Final Countdown was done by the talented Andrew Lemon, and used with permission.
It just occurred to me that six months have passed and I’ve not posted about the new tattoo I had inked. Geek tattoo, that is — the best kind. And this, after reaching out for help from readers to choose the proper squid (TAITO says it’s a squid) to use for my Space Invaders tattoo I had inked back in ’08.
So, I was talking to my long time friend Chris Bernick (who is now the backend guy for AppShopper) and tattoos came up in the conversation. I don’t remember the specifics, but he said something that made it occur to me just how awesome it would be to get “a chip on my shoulder.” And, what better a chip to have emblazon upon my skin than the venerable 8-bit MOS Tech 6502, heart of the Atari VCS, Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 800, and various others?
And, so, here it is, in all its glory.
Now, despite planting the seed that sprouted into this majestic bit of body art, Chris has harshly criticized my new tattoo because of the fact that it’s supposed to be a likeness of the 6502, but sports a mere 14 pins, while the standard 6502 DIP sports 40 pins. I just felt that 40 pins seemed too complex — would require too intricate a design.
At any rate, I love it and am proud to walk the earth for the rest of my days with a most notable (8-bit) chip on my shoulder.
Last week I wrote a post about FTA’s recent iOS release Active GS – Best of FTA [App Store]. (I wrote one for TouchArcade too, actually.) The app is a collection of Apple IIgs demoscene productions from FTA and associated groups, wrapped in an iOS port of the group’s ActiveGS Apple IIgs emulator. ActiveGS is a front-end for KEGS and is perhaps best known as the web plug-in that powers the Virtual Apple ][ website which allows anyone with a modern browser to play Apple classic games on the web.
Developer Olivier Goguel has been kind enough to provide me with a build of the “full” version of the app, that can pull down and play every disk image online over at Virtual Apple ][, to test out on my iPad 2. And, I don’t think I need to explain to anyone reading this website just how awesome this app is.
I put together a little video of me running through a few of the available Apple II disk images on the iPad 2. Have a look.
I considered posting this over at TouchArcade but, since this version of the app will never hit the App Store, it would just seem cruel…
Yesterday was iPad 2 launch day and, of course, I was there to grab Apple’s most powerful iOS device by far. I got about 2 hours of sleep last night, as I just couldn’t put the thing down. I’ll post more about my reactions to the iPad 2 in a bit but, until then, read my thoughts on the first iPad and just go get get one in your hands for a few minutes at an Apple Store.
The point of this post is to share a little video I shot, edited and posted while waiting in line at the Clarendon Apple Store in Arlington, VA. The line formed at around noon, and when this video was taken there were a little over 200 people in line. But, before the store swung its doors wide at 5 p.m., the line got to near 300 people. (I was about 15th in line.)
The line was so long that I had to abbreviate the stroll. Do please pardon a bit of whimsy in the audio track…
Long-time readers may be aware of the fact that I’ve long been a big fan of the demoscene. I saw my first true demoscene production (or “demo”) the night I received my mail order Amiga 2000 back in 1989. I called up The Board, a local BBS run by Myron Sothcott, and downloaded a demo called Raster Magic by Megaforce. From that moment, I was hooked.
I had that Amiga for a few years, but had recently been an Apple IIgs user, and a few friends of mine were still rocking the IIgs, among them @ArnoldKim of MacRumors, TouchArcade and AppShopper and @ChrBerni of AppShopper. They were quite impressed with the Amiga demos I showed them and were thrilled when Apple IIgs demos started to appear on the scene.
The IIgs demoscene was a smallish one, and without question the most prominent demogroup for the platform was a French group known as the Free Tools Association or FTA. Arnold, Chris and I engaged in a bit of friendly ribbing of the platform rivalry sort — me with the Amiga and those guys with the IIgs. Of course, the Amiga was vastly superior from a technical perspective, but the IIgs was a nice machine and these guys were among the faithful. (The GS actually had much nicer audio hardware, but it was hobbled by a mere 64K (kilobytes) of audio RAM as compared to the Amiga’s 1MB.) And it was FTA demos with which they countered my volleys. The Amiga demos I had to show were clearly more technically impressive, but FTA’s demos were polished beyond most anything I’d seen on the Amiga. (I didn’t admit this at the time, mind you.)
FTA hasn’t faded away into nothingness like so many demogroups of yore. They have been hard at work on ActiveGS, a front-end for the Apple IIgs emulator KEGS, perhaps best known as the web plug-in that powers the Virtual Apple ][ website which allows anyone with a modern browser to play Apple classic games on the web.
FTA has recently released an iOS version of ActiveGS bundled with a number of demos and games of theirs and associated groups [App Store]. It’s a free app that provides a means for folks to see these GS programs running “live”, as opposed to in video form, which just isn’t the same. And, it’s a very interesting release in a way that I won’t here discuss, as I like the app available for all to download…
See FTA’s best loved demo, Modulae, running under PC emulation.
FTA and the associated groups Apple Chemical Software (ACS) and Second Sight Software were well known in the pre-web online Apple II communities for their to-the-metal, assembly-coded demos, games, and utilities that pushed the Apple II to its limits. Among the included productions are Nucleus and Modulae, probably the most well loved and beautifully executed demos to be found on the IIgs, as well as the playable demo of the group’s take on the pseudo-3D shooter Space Harrier. Those checking out this collection who have no Apple II in their past should note that the Apple IIgs, which was released in 1986, is an 8/16-bit computer that runs at 2.8MHz — and that’s in “fast” mode.
FTA has shown a version of the app chock-full of IIe and IIgs games and demos…
…but that version isn’t likely to land in the App Store anytime soon. No surprise, there. But I’d encourage anyone reading this to grab FTA’s app and spend some time exploring something new or walking down memory lane.
My friends over at the Vintage Computer Festival East just reminded me that the VCF East 7.0 is just around the corner, May 14-15, 2011 in Wall, New Jersey.
The event, which is entirely indoors, is held rain or shine and admission is a mere $10 for one day or $15 for both days — and is free for those aged 17 and younger. Hours are 10am – 6pm on Saturday and 10am – 5pm on Sunday.
I’ve got to get up there one of these days and, if all goes well, I’ll make it this year. Here’s hoping.
Have a look at some past exhibits, to see what VCF East is all about. The event’s Yahoo Group can be found here.
As I type this I’ve just returned home from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which I covered for TouchArcade. I also attended the Apple iPad 2 press event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Wednesday where — surprise! — Steve Jobs unveiled the next version of the leader of the tablet market that his company created.
GDC is the biggest and most significant conference of the year in terms of its relevance to TouchArcade as well as the sheer amount of good times to be had among the greatest of great people.
It was an epic week, as expected — and I may make a dedicated post regarding the conference — but the purpose of this post is to share some media that I collected at the Bethesda, MD showing of Video Games Live!, which I attended with the two Imangi guys, Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova at the Strathmore last weekend, a day before heading off to GDC. What a way to kick off the conference week!
I will borrow some text from the event’s website to convey just what Video Games Live! is all about. The event is…
An immersive event created by the game industry featuring the best game music performed by top orchestras and choirs combined with synchronized lighting, video, live action and audience interactivity. The first and most successful video game concert tour in the world.
And, that seems an apt description. It was an insane event with plenty of folks in cosplay where awesomeness abounded. Have a look at a few clips I grabbed during the event.
And here’s a gallery of photos from the event. I can’t recommend Video Games Live! highly enough to anyone who considers themselves a true gamer.
Just a quick one here. I dug out my Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 the other night to take a video to share around of the Dancing Baby app put together by Arnold Kim (of MacRumors.com) back in 1997 or so. The app is basically a custom movie player of sorts that plays back a pre-processed video of one of the early memes.
While I had the Newton out and powered up, I puttered around the various drawers full of apps and stumbled upon my only real effort in NewtonScript, The Vintage Computer Pocket Reference. It’s basically just a little reference app that lets you choose make and model of a computer and see various details about the system. Sadly, I never finished it, having moved on to some other project that usurped my interest.
I put a couple of screenshots up the other day and I see they’ve gotten some attention, so I thought I’d point them out here.
I did most of the development for this rather simple application in late 2004 on my old snow white G3 MacBook, which gave up the ghost long ago when I inadvertently emptied a glass of water into it. It connected to the MessagePad by way of a Keyspan USB-to-serial adapter that’s currently keeping my Apple //c tied to the world.
While it’s quite unlikely that I will soon be jumping back onto this app, I do still have the code, I just verified. Here’s a snippit. And here’s the setup I used for development:
It’s with some shame that I admit to not putting my Newtons to frequent use, but I do love to pull them out every so often and play around with a bit of the bleeding edge from the good old days. I don’t think it makes my iPhone jealous.
Today I ran across an amazing video by Patrick Jean of onemoreproduction that depicts the end of the world in oh, such pixellated goodness. I have to say, this would be a pretty awesome way to go.
If this is how it goes down, please let me be here to see it!
Last week I wrote 
The IIgs demoscene was a smallish one, and without question the most prominent demogroup for the platform was a French group known as the 
