Category: Vintage

The Eamon Deluxe Newsletter for March 2013 has been posted on the Eamon Adventurers Guild Online website at www.eamonag.org.   Eamon Deluxe is the creation of master Eamon adventure writer Frank Black.  He recently released Eamon Deluxe 5.0 for multiple platforms and this month talks about the possibility that Don Brown and Jon Walker could be one and the same person.  For more, check out the newsletter at: http://eamonag.org/newsletters/acrobat/Eamon_DeluXe_NewsletterV3n01_03-2013.pdf

France, March 22nd 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software, in partnership with Jean-Louis Le Breton (CEO of Froggy Software) and Richard Soberka (programmer, author of Pleins gaz), is happy to announce the relase of the arcade game Zéphyr for the Apple II. This monochrome DHGR arcade game had to be released by Froggy Software in 1987. As the company shut its doors, the game has never been released nor distributed by its author. Together, in 2013, we have decided to release…

Brutal Deluxe, the French software company known for bringing a host of super enhanced Apple IIgs products to market over the years, has been taking a page from Apple, Inc.’s playbook during their latest product release. Over the past week, Brutal Deluxe Software has released a series of clipped photos including the one from yesterday seen above.  Each photo has shown a bit more of the product cover image but yet no one apparently has figured out what the product…

The Eamon Adventures have long been one of the favorite adventure systems available for the Apple ][.  With over 255 adventures written for Eamon, it is also likely the most prolific adventuring system as well. Eamon was designed in 1980 by Donald Brown and released in Recreational Computing Magazine as a public domain system.   While the first dozen or so adventures were written by Donald Brown himself, most of the following 200  plus adventures have been written by over 50…

Bill Buckels, the curator of the Aztec C Museum website has released his latest graphics tool for the Apple ][ computer.  BMP2RAG converts a 280 x 190 Windows BMP file to Apple ][ based HGR or High Resolution Graphics files.   The converter is a free tool and is available for download from: http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/bmp2rag.zip The manual for the program is also available in PDF format from the website at: http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/BMP2RAG.pdf Other graphics tools and compilers are available from the Aztec C…

Gerard Puter, developer of the Virtual ][ Emulator has released a maintenance update to the Apple ][ emulator.  Version 7.2.1 addresses an issue with sound compatibility in the emulator with Mac OS X 10.7. Virtual ][ is a Mac based Apple ][ Emulator which contains many advanced features including Print to PDF as well as interface card control.   The program is shareware and costs $49.95 for the full version of the program. You can download the latest version of the…

Two new Eamon reviews from Thomas Ferguson are now available on the Eamon Adventurers Guild website.  The Reviews of Adventure # 253, The Prisim of Shadows and # 254, Dawn of the Warlock, both of which were written by Wade Clarke and James Anderson give the new offerings high praise and marks. Eamon is an Adventure design system developed by Don Brown in 1979 and has over 255 adventures currently written for the system.   Recently, the system has made its…

The ActiveGS Plugin, a combination browser and standalone Apple II gs emulator has been updated.  Version 3.6.1307 was released yesterday in coordination with a server move and upgrade by the Free Tools Association.   You can download the new plugin from the ActiveGS support website at http://activegs.freetoolsassociation.com/ or through the Virtual Apple ][ website at http://www.virtualapple.org

Chiu Keung, a Hong Kong based Apple fan has debuted his Lego Apple ][.  The machine, created totally from Lego bricks, details the entire machine, internals, the lid, the dual floppy drives, and  the monitor.  From the outside, it looks nearly as if it would start right up and run the latest in Apple ][ software.  Sadly, the machine does not actually run and is truly for appearances only, yet was cool enough for a note here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiukeung/8565233993/in/photostream

The 25th edition of the Open Apple Podcast is now up and available for immediate enjoyment.  This month’s issue of the podcast features Egan Ford talking about the Apple Game Server Online and the state of Abandonware. Open Apple #25 (Mar 2013): Egan Ford, 8088, Voyager, and abandonware

Have an old Parallel interfaced Connectix Quickcam sitting around collecting dust?  David Schmenk may well have just found a purpose for it.  Using a standard Apple //e and Low Resolution graphics on the //e for display, David has managed to get real time data into the machine and displaying fairly respectably. While this setup does require a massive wired connector as was so stated by David in his video, it is a setup which works and proved that there is…

Darren Crawford has managed to do what no one ever considered possible:  Post a Facebook posting from an Apple //e computer.   In what is a first ever event, Darren posted his message using a combination of Lynx and the mobile version of the  Facebook website. It wasn’t just an instant success, but instead was a work of some trial and error.   In discussions in the A2C.Chat channel of A2Central’s IRC, much of the discussion was about issues with character loss…

Paris, March 3rd, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce Mr Sprite, a command-line tool to manage sprites and to simplify the integration of sprites into Apple IIgs games. Programmers spend a lot of time to prepare Sprites sheets : – You have to ensure the Sprite width is a multiple of 4 pixels (16 bit), – You have to prepare both Even and Odd aligned version of the Sprite, – You have to organize your Sprites into 320×200 pictures to…

WITA2GS has added a bevy of home brew courses for the Apple IIgs Golf Game from Accolade, Mean 18.  According to the posting on the website, “Sorting through many miscelleous archives forwarded on from Antoine as he comes into contact with random collections and images each disk from them, I came across 8 disks worth of golf courses for Mean 18, the excellent golfing sim from Accolade.” For more information check out the WITA2GS website posting at: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/homebrew-helpings-lots-of-courses-for-mean-1/

The Apple ][ specific Cassette Tape collection maintained by Brutal Deluxe has reached 589 tapes and is continuing to grow nearly daily.  Antoine Vignau, curator of the site has added a number of items in the past few days including items from the following vendors: A.P.P.L.E. (Library pak 1C/2B), Hayden (Applesoft utility programs, Engineering mathematics-1, Revive, Slow list/stop list) MUSE (Maze game) Programma (Ampersoft, Jumpout/Shooting stars, Saucer war, Time clock) Systems design lab (Funpak I by Chuck Sommerville) Tsukumo (Apple…

Gerard Puter, the developer of the Virtual ][ Emulator has released an update to the emulator.  Virtual ][ Version 7.1 is primarily a bug fix release witht he following items changed: Fixed an issue that could cause Apple II screen pixels to be randomly shown or hidden. Improved implementation of the “mounted OS X folder” feature to fix an incompatibility with EDASM. Some of the Applescript demos didn’t work in version 7.0; this has been fixed. Virtual ][ is a…

This month on Open Apple, the Apple II community’s only co-hosted podcast, Mike and Ken chat with Jimmy Maher, the historian behind the renowned blog The Digital Antiquarian. A published author, Jimmy provides us with his perspective on the pros and cons of going with a publishing house over the recent trend in retrocomputing toward self-publishing. We gripe about the Steve Jobs film sacrificing historical accuracy for mass appeal and recommend some alternative movies that get it right. We’re still loving…

I’m a pretty happy camper at the moment. After buying IIGS games like Mean 18, World Games and Winter Games some 25 years ago, I can now finally play them from a hard drive, thanks to some instructions I found on the TABBS CD-ROM. Thanks to Speccie for making TABBS available to all and for some guidance on using Byte Bagger and understanding sector editing! The article by Joe Jaworski can be found here: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/files/MOVING_DEPROTECTED_SOFTWARE_TO_HARD_DISKS.txt which was originally taken from…

The Latest version of Brendan Robert’s Apple // Game Server  is now available from the Apple // Game Server Sourceforge website.  Of particular note with version 3.1 of Apple // Game Server is the requirement of Java 6 on machines using the Apple // Game Server progam. The Apple // Game Server allows the user to send floppies directly to the Apple II computer over a serial connection, eliminating the need for floppies to play games on an original Apple II series…

Dr. Steven Weyhrich, a well-known character in the world of Apple II for over two decades, is publishing for the first time a revised and expanded edition of his famous Apple II History in a book called Sophistication & Simplicity: The Life & Times of the Apple II Computer. This book is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com with a price of, at this time, just $20. Despite humble beginnings, today Apple, Inc. enjoys unprecedented popularity and prosperity with its products, and…