{"id":439,"date":"2014-05-07T10:42:35","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T17:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=439"},"modified":"2014-05-07T19:28:17","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T02:28:17","slug":"the-apple-e-monochrome-memories-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=439","title":{"rendered":"The Apple \/\/e, Part 2: More Influential Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a great time last week<\/a>\u00a0reminiscing about some of the Apple \/\/e games that influenced me at a young age, so what the heck — here are several more that I loved from my gaming formative years.<\/p>\n

\"20140502_choplifter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The game that I constantly heard about back in the early ’80s was this one, Dan Gorlin’s Choplifter<\/em> from Broderbund. The Apple wasn’t a fast computer, so to finally see and play an arcade-style game that was as smooth and responsive as this was really special. Like many Broderbund games back then, it was all about the details. I thought the design of the helicopter was great. It displayed convincing flight dynamics, and the way it would subtly “bounce” when you touched down created a nice visual marriage that added to the game’s realism.<\/p>\n

Controls were easy to learn, and understanding how yaw affected your weaponry was key to success. More nice touches included the perspective\/parallax effect on your home base’s barrier and the way rescued hostages would wave in thanks as you dropped them off to safety. A lesser game wouldn’t even bother with such details, but Choplifter<\/em> was no ordinary game.<\/p>\n

\"20140507chopliftersms\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Several years later, I would play Choplifter<\/em> again on the fledgling Sega Master System. It was a good arcade-to-home port in its own right, but I’ve always preferred the Apple original. There’s a purity to its straightforward, distilled design and fun, tight controls, and it still plays brilliantly today, 32 years after its release.<\/p>\n

Speaking of helicopters, another game that my friends and I just loved was Sabotage<\/em>. Its concept was simple: defend your single turret from bombs and falling paratroopers with a stream of artillery. What made this game memorable — for better or for worse — was the violence. Even though the paratroopers were only constructed of a handful of pixels, they would meet their doom in any number of ways, accompanied by “watery” sound effects that were strangely satisfying. My favorite was hitting a parachute with a well-placed bullet, sending the paratrooper falling to and splattering on the ground. If you were lucky, they would fall on someone who already landed, eliminating both of them.<\/p>\n

\"20140502_sabotage\"<\/a>For a game with such simple controls, it was surprisingly deep. You could also select steerable shells, giving you the power to sweep the screen with a spray of bullets. It did nothing to help your score since bullets ate away at your point total, but boy was it fun!<\/p>\n

Games like this and the more well-known title\u00a0The Bilestoad<\/em><\/a> were some of the earliest examples of games where violence was a big part of their gameplay. The Bilestoad<\/em> in particular was extremely violent for its time, where pools of blood and body parts would be strewn across the game’s arena, accompanied by nasty sound effects and an ominous soundtrack. Sabotage<\/em> was tame by comparison. It wouldn’t be until Midway’s Mortal Kombat<\/em>\u00a0in the early ’90s that videogame violence would become such a controversial issue.<\/p>\n

\"20140507brucelee\"<\/a>One of my favorite genres is the run & jump platformer, like Super Mario Bros.<\/em>, Sonic the Hedgehog<\/em>, Super Meat Boy<\/em>, and Rayman<\/em>. While I credit early arcade games like the perennial classic Donkey Kong <\/em>for sparking my love for them, I spent way more time at home with Datasoft’s\u00a0Conan<\/em>\u00a0and Bruce Lee<\/em>. Both games consisted of challenging screens to conquer, with good controls, nice graphics, and swift gameplay. Bruce Lee<\/em> was particularly fast, which made it a thrill to play. Having a ninja and sumo wrestler constantly chasing you around added to the tension and pacing, and remains one of my all-time favorite games. It was also unique for boasting a nice 16-color title screen in double high-resolution, a rarity back in 1984. Two-voice music also helped set it apart from the single, linear sounds so common at the time.<\/p>\n

\"20140507drol\"<\/a>Finally, for this installment, one more from Broderbund: Aik Beng’s Drol<\/em>. Like many kids, I loved cartoons, so games that had cartoon-like graphics really appealed to me. Drol<\/em>\u00a0was one of those, possessing superb visuals and nice animation. When we would later get a composite color monitor around 1986, it was one of the first games I played on it, just to see what it looked like in something other than green. Another game had a similar style — Tony & Benny Ngo’s Bandits <\/em><\/a>(Sirius Software) — and looking back, these two games had a notable influence on my art style over the next few years, especially when it came to fonts. They both still look super-clean to me, fueling my belief that good art, no matter what the medium, never gets old.<\/p>\n

That’s it for now. Thanks for putting up with the green screenshots, by the way. Although I would soon go on to play all of these games in color, my fondest memories of them are from that old, 12″ monochrome monitor.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a great time last week\u00a0reminiscing about some of the Apple \/\/e games that influenced me at a young age, so what the heck — here are several more that I loved from my gaming formative years. The game that I constantly heard about back in the early ’80s was this one, Dan Gorlin’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56],"tags":[86,107,105,91,104,106,103,100,102,101],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-memoirs","tag-apple-e","tag-bandits","tag-bruce-lee","tag-choplifter","tag-conan","tag-drol","tag-master-system","tag-sabotage","tag-sega","tag-the-bilestoad"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4yrob-75","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":347,"url":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=347","url_meta":{"origin":439,"position":0},"title":"The Apple \/\/e, Part 1: Monochrome Memories","author":"Mike","date":"May 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I touched on the Apple \/\/e's influence on me a bit in last week's Industry Memoirs post, but when I thought about it afterwards, I realized just how big of an impact it had on me. More so than our Atari 2600, Apple's popular home computer -- and more specifically\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Industry Memoirs"","block_context":{"text":"Industry Memoirs","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?cat=56"},"img":{"alt_text":"20120318apple2_3","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20120318apple2_3-300x114.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":659,"url":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=659","url_meta":{"origin":439,"position":1},"title":"The Apple \/\/e, Part 3: Quest for 16 Colors","author":"Mike","date":"May 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Apple \/\/e might have been the most popular computer in the mid-'80s, but it certainly wasn't the most technologically capable when it came to gaming. Armed with a standard array of 7 colors in high-resolution mode (jokingly referred to as the \"Big Seven\" in development circles), it was only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Industry Memoirs"","block_context":{"text":"Industry Memoirs","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?cat=56"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20140522_dragonwars.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20140522_dragonwars.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20140522_dragonwars.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":170,"url":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=170","url_meta":{"origin":439,"position":2},"title":"My start in the videogame industry","author":"Mike","date":"April 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: This is a revised version of an email I had sent to my Quality Assurance (QA) team while working at THQ in 2010. I was a Sr. Manager in Phoenix, Arizona at the time, and these were meant to be a regular, ongoing series about my experiences in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Industry Memoirs"","block_context":{"text":"Industry Memoirs","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?cat=56"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/20140423_ip.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/20140423_ip.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/20140423_ip.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":582,"url":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=582","url_meta":{"origin":439,"position":3},"title":"Review: Monument Valley (iOS & Android)","author":"Mike","date":"May 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: The Android version was used for this review. Played on a Google Nexus 7 (2012) running stock KitKat 4.4.2. It was only a few years ago that premium mobile games were the norm and not the exception. They'd cost as little as a dollar, with some \"expensive\" ones being\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews: Android"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews: Android","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?cat=132"},"img":{"alt_text":"Screenshot_2014-05-19-09-11-14","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screenshot_2014-05-19-09-11-14-168x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1551,"url":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=1551","url_meta":{"origin":439,"position":4},"title":"Gaming with my sister Cheryl (1978-2002)","author":"Mike","date":"August 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll never forget the night my dad called to say that my younger sister had passed away. I had just returned to Los Angeles from a business trip to Outrage Games in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Actually, I don't remember most of the details of that night, as I was simply\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"20140818_cheryl","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/20140818_cheryl-226x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":621,"url":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?p=621","url_meta":{"origin":439,"position":5},"title":"The Nintendo Entertainment System, Part 1: The cool kids","author":"Mike","date":"May 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Whenever I see forum threads to the tune of \"What are your most shocking gaming secrets?\", the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that I never owned a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). No, I instead chose to ask for a Sega Master System for Christmas back in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Industry Memoirs"","block_context":{"text":"Industry Memoirs","link":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/?cat=56"},"img":{"alt_text":"20140521_smb","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20140521_smb-300x236.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.grayhairedgamer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}