Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine Volume 36, Number 1 — January 2026

World’s Largest Apple User Group Magazine — Since 1978

Issue Summary

The January 2026 issue opens Volume 36 with Call-A.P.P.L.E.’s annual Games Edition, packed with new releases for the Apple II. Bill Martens shares a playable 40-column demo of Apple Rogue II with its complete Applesoft source. Paul Wasson’s new arcade game Froggo gets its official announcement, and Michael Schaffer reviews Jeremy Reichmänner’s brand-new text adventure Escape from Castle Dracenstein. The issue also celebrates the Macintosh’s birthday with a look back at Apple’s legendary “1984” commercial and Andy Hertzfeld’s tale of the Mac’s short-lived “Bicycle” code name, while RETRO365 chronicles the making of Sierra’s Space Quest. On the technical side, A.P.P.L.E. previews its new Mac OS SAB Pilot app as Forrest Lowe’s reconstruction of the SAB 4K Pilot interpreter reaches Part IV. Rounding things out are the Floppy Days interview with Kaypro’s David Kay, a RetroMacCast recap, VCF PNW 2026 registration details, a refreshed emulator rundown, and updates to GSSquared, Applesauce FDC, and a host of Apple II utilities.

Table of Contents

The Editor Still Bytes Back!
by The Editor (Bill Martens)
The editor welcomes 2026 and the annual Games Edition with a slate of announcements. Moon Base Alpha is now in the store as A.P.P.L.E.’s first Inform 6-based release of the year, complete with user’s guide and walkthrough. Also coming are a game based on Colossus: The Forbin Project, a full Z-Machine converter for bringing Inform 6 games to the Apple II, and Raphael Rezende’s Zoin-X, with Cake Man on the way. He also reports that the long-sought Woz Talks recording is in hand and being recovered for release alongside an enhanced WOZ Speaks DVD.

Apple II Series Emulators: The Complete Rundown Updated
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
This no-favorites directory covers more than 50 Apple II series emulators, from 8BitWorkshop and ActiveGS to Virtual II and XGS, listing each project’s URL, author, and status. It is reprinted this month to correct a glaring omission in the previous issue and now includes Jawaid Bazyar’s GSSquared.

RetroMacCast Episode #723: Holiday Shopping Lists
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A recap of the RetroMacCast episode in which James and John run through their latest eBay finds: a 1992 Montgomery Ward newspaper ad, a lot of Mac NuBus/PCI cards, and a Macintosh on RISC SDK. They also check out the iPhone Pocket, look back at iPod Socks, and cover news including a Macintosh Classic bug and the Floppy Flopper diskette game.

Floppy Days #157: Interview with David Kay, Kaypro Computers
by Randy Kindig / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Randy Kindig talks with KayPro’s David Kay about his path from windmills and Johnson O’Connor aptitude research to Non-Linear Systems and the birth of the KayPro. They cover the Ferguson Big Board taken to the Moscone Center and the bundled software and hefty manuals that let KayPro undercut bigger rivals. David also recalls competing with Osborne, courting the computer press, rewarding top dealers with trips abroad, the logic behind KayPro’s model names, the move from CP/M to MS-DOS, and his later ventures Wordsmart and Knowledge Crunch.

Rogue II — A New Apple II Game
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
The 10-level, 40-column demonstration version of Bill Martens’ Apple Rogue II, a take on the classic dungeon crawler Rogue. It is written in Applesoft BASIC and runs on any 64K Apple II from the II Plus to the IIgs. Includes the complete program listing, a quick reference, a note on a known weapons/armor bug, and a preview of the commercial 25-level Pro (40-column) and 80-Pro (80-column) editions.

Happy Birthday Macintosh
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Marking the Mac’s anniversary, a look back at “1984,” the Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl XVIII commercial that introduced the Macintosh. Covers its creation at Chiat\Day, its Orwellian storyline, the Apple board’s attempt to pull it, and its lone Super Bowl broadcast. Also covers the awards, parodies, and reinterpretations that have made it one of the most celebrated commercials ever made.

VCF PNW 2026 Registration
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Registration details for Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2026, hosted by the Interim Computer Museum May 2–3 (load-in May 1) at the Tukwila Community Center. Covers what makes a good exhibit and what exhibitors receive: no fee, passes, a T-shirt, tables, power, and Wi-Fi. Also explains how to propose a presentation and where volunteers are needed, with registration closing in mid-February.

Another One from a Long Time Ago — Apple II
by Ed Solie / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Ed Solie’s compact Applesoft hi-res program that animates a hysteresis loop with a drifting phase shift, written to fit within the 1,024-byte “kiloliner” limit, with the full program listing.

An A.P.P.L.E. Review: Escape from Dracenstein
by Michael Schaffer / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Michael Schaffer, who helped beta test the game, reviews Escape from Castle Dracenstein, Jeremy Reichmänner’s new text adventure from SEMI-RAD Productions for 64K Apple II computers. A wrong turn while returning VHS tapes to Blockbuster strands you in a monster-filled castle packed with more than 100 ’80s pop-culture nods. The review covers its moderate puzzles, maze, limited inventory, and fate-deciding choices, plus the $29 boxed edition (the digital version is currently free).

Apple Folklore — Bicycle
by Andy Hertzfeld / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Andy Hertzfeld recounts how, after Jef Raskin’s 1981 leave of absence, Rod Holt tried to rename the Macintosh project “Bicycle,” inspired by Apple’s “bicycle for the mind” ad, only to have the team quietly ignore him. The Macintosh name then survived a consultant’s naming study and a trademark conflict with McIntosh before Steve Jobs christened a prototype with champagne in January 1983.

Mac OS SAB Pilot
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A first look at A.P.P.L.E.’s in-house Mac app for SAB Pilot, the highly modified 4K PILOT dialect created for the 1979 Apple II adventure Journey. The app runs Journey and other sample programs and includes a command reference, a tutorial, an example adventure, and a forthcoming book of 50 example programs and three full games. An iPad version is also in the works, with a final release targeted for this summer’s VCF PNW, VCF Midwest, and KansasFest.

RETRO365 — Space Quest, A New Saga
by Ernst Krogtoft / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Ernst Krogtoft chronicles how Sierra On-Line, battered by the video game crash, regrouped around IBM’s PCjr and its AGI engine. Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy, the “Two Guys from Andromeda,” then turned a side project about hapless janitor Roger Wilco into Space Quest: Chapter I – The Sarien Encounter. The story follows the game’s 1986 debut, its box variants and ports (including the Apple IIGS version with Al Lowe’s reworked score), the parodies that drew legal attention, and the 1991 VGA remake.

Froggo — A New Apple II Game
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Paul Wasson’s announcement of Froggo, a fast retro action game for the Apple //e. Features include double-buffered hi-res graphics, smooth per-pixel scrolling, 25 levels (including a bonus level for completing challenge mode), casual and challenge modes, two-tone Electric Duet music, and an included graphics editor. Followed by notes on the free version 1.2.2 update, which extends collision detection, fixes landings on blocked tiles, speeds restarts, and redraws the train tracks.

SAB 4K Pilot — Part IV
by Forrest Lowe / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
The fourth installment of Forrest Lowe’s recovery and analysis of James A. Baker’s 4K PILOT interpreter dissects the TYPE (T:) command processor. Covered are its Y/N modifiers, the # and $ functions that print numeric and string variables, the semicolon that suppresses the carriage return, and the binary-to-decimal print routine at $11A0. Includes annotated original and revised assembly listings and full symbol tables.

GSSquared: Apple Series Emulator 0.6.0 Released
by Jawaid Bazyar / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Release notes for GSSquared 0.6.0, Jawaid Bazyar’s C++ Apple II series emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS. This maintenance release lays groundwork for Apple IIgs emulation with a 65816 core, IIgs MMU code with a test harness, SHR display support, and an Apple IIe-with-65816 profile. It also adds a 100% accurate Apple IIgs RGB rendering mode, cycle-accurate PAL video, better Mockingboard sync at high speeds, automatic gamepad detection, a new integer-math speaker engine, and 25% faster frame rendering.

Genius 1-3 for the Apple II Release 20 Downloads
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Download links for all three Genius episodes (Into the Toy Warehouses, Into the Toy Caves, and Into the Toy Planets) for the Apple II (via the A.P.P.L.E. store), Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, and Atari 8-bit.

The Handy Reference Directory — Quickdraw Demo for LISA
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A.P.P.L.E. brings back the LISA Quickdraw Demo Workshop, its handy reference to the Lisa’s QuickDraw, Hardware, and SysCall Pascal routines produced courtesy of David Redhed. It is now available in the A.P.P.L.E. Store with a newly updated PDF manual and the original 3.5-inch disk image for the Lisa and Mac XL.

Applesauce FDC: 2.06 Software Update
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff / John Morris
Release notes for Applesauce FDC software 2.06 through 2.06.2. New support covers the HP 9885/9895 disk format and file system with HPI images, more Amstrad CPC and CP/M definitions, 40-track Tandy CoCo RS-DOS disks, and IMA/VFD image loading. Also includes better IBM-sectored data recovery, assorted import/export fixes, and finalized support for the upcoming xpand-o-rama hardware with new firmware for the Applesauce and Applesauce+.

Apple II Files and Utility Programs
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A quick-reference roundup of essential Apple II software and where to get it: ADTPro 2.1.0 for disk imaging and bootstrapping over serial or Ethernet, Apple Game Server 3.1 for floppy-free booting, the Highlands Computer Services (HCS) software archive, Virtual II 13.0.1, and the KEGS 1.38 Apple IIgs emulator.

itty-bitty-vtty 1.06 / Clock Signal Emulator
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Kelvin Sherlock’s itty-bitty-vtty delivers accurate, operating-system-free VT100 emulation on the Apple IIgs via the modem port at 9600 baud 8-N-1 (matching MAME’s defaults), leaving out only a few hardware-limited features. Also covered is Tom Harte’s latest Clock Signal multi-platform emulator release, which updates its Apple II and Macintosh emulation.

TimeOut Edit BASIC / ROM-inator for Mac
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Hugh Hood’s TimeOut Edit BASIC 5.4 lets AppleWorks 5.1 users load, view, and edit Applesoft BASIC programs without leaving AppleWorks (source code included). Kay Koba’s Mac ROM-inator I kits for the Mac Plus, 512K, and 128K remain available in Economy, Standard, and Luxury versions.

Ciderpress II 1.1.0 / Apple II Disk Browser II
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Two essential disk-image tools. Andy McFadden’s CiderPress II, the successor to CiderPress, offers a Windows GUI and a cross-platform command-line version supporting numerous archive and disk image formats, multi-partition layouts, physical drives, and file conversion. Denis Molony’s DiskBrowser II, a JavaFX rewrite, lets you flip through disk images down to the sector level, with full source available.

AppleCommander 13.0
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A brief spotlight on AppleCommander 13.0, the Java-based disk image utility that runs on most major platforms and converts and exports files between Apple II disk image formats.

URLs used in this month’s issue

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