Tag: apple II

New Web-Based Utility Brings Classic Z-Machine Text Adventures to Authentic 5.25″ Floppy Images for Apple II Hardware and Emulators The A.P.P.L.E. (Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange) Users Group, is pleased to announce the immediate launch of the Apple II Infocom Disk Image Creator (InfocomGen), a free online tool that instantly converts Z-machine story files into bootable 5.25″ Apple II disk images. Available immediately at https://www.callapple.org/zgen/, the drag-and-drop web application allows users to upload any .z3 or .z5 file and receive…

Kelvin Sherlock has released the latest update to the Ample Mac OS MAME Emulation Interface. Version 0.286 brings the following updates and changes to the Ample emulation interface: A2retroNET is a Super Serial Card that also supports 8 prodos/smartport disk images.It’s probably the easiest and simplest way to use a large number of disk images.You might want to back up your disk images just in case though. Note: Previous versions apple2gs and apple3 roms will need to be updated. You…

Henry Lowe has announced the latest version of his Card Cat application. Card Cat identifies cards in the slots of Apple II series machines and can accurately identify over 100 different Apple II series specific cards. The latest version of Card Cat includes the following changes and updates: Card Cat version 1.92 is a free download and is available in both DSK and PO format disk image from the Card Cat webpage at: https://henrylowe.net/card-cat/

Emmanuel Castello has announced the availability of a playable demo version of his Ultima style game, Andoria. According to his post, “Hello everyone from the A2SE group. After years of videos and pictures, I am happy to share the first Demo Version of my Ultima RPG Game, Andoria. https://andoria.neocities.org On this link you will find a quick introduction of the game, as well as basic instructions on the gameplay. I hope you enjoy that demo, even if it is a…

The Apple II Desktop or Mousedesk as it was known originally has been updated. The A2Desktop project, led by Joshua Bell, is now in its fourth full rendition since the initial release of the initial updated platform. The Apple II Desktop is a graphical user interface built upon ProDOS which gives the user a fully mouse controllable Macintosh like experience on the Apple II series computers. Changes in the Apple II Desktop App since the full version 1.5 release include…

Paul Wasson has announced an update for his Apple II game, Froggo. According to the announcement: “Thanks everybody for all the support for Froggo. I’ve been blown away with all the nice feedback. Seems like people like my silly game. I made a new release to address some of the issues raised. See the webpage for the complete release notes, but here are some highlights: Please let me know if you find any other issues. And thanks for playing.” The…

Jeremy Reichmänner has produced a fun little throwback to the 1980’s with his release of the Apple II text adventure game, Escape from Daracenstein. Filled with all of the fun bits of American Society of those days, anyone who loves thing from that era will enjoy this game. The game was written entirely in Applesoft BASIC and through a release of several versions of the game, Jeremy has worked it into a fun reminder of simpler times. Be sure and…

BurgerDisk is a Smartport hard drive for the Apple II. Its main unique feature is that it is daisy-chainable.

Paul Wasson has announced the immediate availability of his new Apple II game, Froggo. According to the press release: Announcing FROGGO a new fast retro action game for the Apple //e. Available today for download! See https://www.lasermego.com/a2sw/froggo for download link and more information. Features *Complete challenge mode for an additional bonus level!

For those Mac OS users who have downloaded the latest version of the Virtual II Emulator, you will need to download the latest update to it. The Virtual II version 13.1.1 release addresses an issue, introduced in version 13.1, that caused some Apple II programs to fail. This latest version is available from the Virtual II Emulator website at:https://virtualii.com/

Gerard Putter has announced the immediate availability of the latest version of the Virtual II Emulator, a full featured, shareware Apple II emulator for the Mac. This release addresses a number of issues reported by users of the emulator and included the following changes and updates: Further information about the Virtual II emulator, license information for the full Virtual II package and downloads of the latest update for the emulator can be found on the Virtual II website at:https://www.virtualii.com/

Dongsu Jang has released an Apple IIe Double Low Resolution graphics library. Including 12 APIs and 15 ampersand commands for Applesoft, the library gives the user a simple method of using low resolution graphics in their programs. According to his posting on Facebook, “I’d used Apple II+ 40 years ago. At that time, I was so jealous Apple //e and its double hi-res and lo-res graphics. After 40 years, I have Apple //e Platinum. This is small 6502 assembly and…

From David SchmenkThat time of year again for yet another New Year fireworks demo loop. Written in PLEAIDES FORTH, feel free to edit the code and make it do something new. Self running boot disk here: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA/blob/master/images/apple/PLFORTH.po

The Ample emulator interface for MAME on MAC OS has been updated. Ample version 0.283 is the 75th release of the interface and brings it in line with MAME version 0.283. Some of the current features of the Ample emulator interface include: Kelvin Sherlock, the curator of the project has made the latest version of the App available along with all source code on the Ample GitHub Page at: https://github.com/ksherlock/ample

The famed hacker A2_4am has announced the release of the latest version of his Wizardry Replay front end for playing Wizardry Games. Version 2.0 includes a number of updates including all of the Wizimore games as well as fixes allowing the games to run smoothly on the Apple IIgs. Some of the features of this latest release include: According to the GitHub page, this will run on any Apple II series computer with at least 64K of memory and a…

The latest version of the Apple II Desktop graphical user interface for the Apple II series computers is now available for download. Version 1.5 includes well over 100 new changes and updates over version 1.4 and now comes in 10 languages. You can download the latest version of the Apple II Desktop from the project’s GitHub page at:https://github.com/a2stuff/a2d

Rebecca Heineman, a brilliant and accomplished programmer and video game creator, passed away today after an unexpected battle with cancer. She shared her battle on Bluesky, where she highlighted some of her many achievements, “First video game champion (1980 Atari 2600 Space Invaders National Champion). Created Bard’s Tale III: The Thief Of Fate & Dragon Wars.” I’d like to share a few memories of the fun and joy she brought into my world, which is rather difficult on the day…

Note from Brian Wiser:  This interview was first posted August 2, 2015, and is being reposted in honor of Rebecca Heineman who passed away November 17, 2025, and Jennell Jaquays who passed away January 10, 2024.  I had the pleasure of meeting both Rebecca and Jennell a year before this interview and spending several hours with them.  Their artistic, creative and technical talents always impressed me, along with their naturally caring and expressive way.  Rebecca and Jennell will be deeply…

From Randall Frank Announcing the general release of DIAFLW, an ‘adventure’ game for the Apple II. This is a game we wrote in 1986 and had been talking with SoftDisk magazine about publishing. College intervened and it sat on 5.25 media until 2024 when I found the original source code. It was refactored to cross-build on Windows/Linux and all the source code pushed to github (more details can be found there). Anyway, one can download the latest .2mg build image…

The Clock Signal Emulator (CLK), a multi-platform emulator for Mac OS by Tom Harte has been updated. This update is primarily focused on the BBC Micro emulation and includes the following changes: CLK is a clock accurate emulator that supports a number retro computing platforms including the following: the Acorn Electron, BBC Micro and Archimedes, Amstrad CPC, Apple II/II+/IIe and early Macintosh, Atari 2600 and ST, ColecoVision, Enterprise 64/128, Commodore Vic-20 and Amiga, MSX 1/2, Oric 1/Atmos, early PC compatibles,…