Ted Thompson has announced the port of the TI-99/4a version of the lunar lander game, Planet Fall, to the Apple II series computer. According to his Planet Fall Github page:
Planet Fall is a lunar lander genre game that was originally published for the TI-99/4a in the book “TI-99/4A: 24 BASIC Program” (SAMS presents #22247, ISBN 0-672-22247-7) by Carol Ann Casciato and Donald J. Horsfall.
It is a largely typical example of the ‘Lunar Lander’ genre, but with a few unique features.
It has random elements in the startup parameters of any given round, and the random selection of a “target planet” from a list of 5 possible bodies (none of which are the Earth’s Moon).
Sometime around 1984, I typed this game in to my family’s TI-99/4a home computer which we had obtained when TI dropped the price to a mere $49 in a desperate bid to sell the somewhat quirky and slow computer.
I quickly discovered it had become a favorite of my grandfather, who was probably entertained by the ability to use both math and physics playing the game.
When we “upgraded” to the similarly ill-fated Coleco Adam, I ported this game to that system as well, and he continued to spend hours each evening entertaining himself.
Now, some 15 years after his passing and on the eve of the launch of Artemis-I, I have once again ported it. This time to the Apple IIe.
I have attempted to retain its quirks, while fixing a few bugs and adapting its graphics and sounds as best I can to the somewhat more limited capabilities of the Apple IIe, as the IIe does not possess anything close to the TMS9918 Video or TMS9919 Sound chips used in the TI-99/4a.
Still the “soul” of the game is intact, warts and all, and maybe you can find a bit of fun trying to land in such exotic locales as planet CYGNUS X-1.
Planet Fall Github Page
You can download Planet Fall for the Apple II for free from the Github page at:
https://github.com/TedThompson/PlanetFall
