Step Back In Time and Meet… Apple II Games

Video games are not for me. As a result, this post appears disingenuous, but there’s an exception to my aversion to video games: the Apple II games which came out alongside this early 1980s computer.

I only played a couple of these ancient (in computer years) digital distractions, when I was between the ages of seven and eleven, but I loved them. Correction: I still love them, thanks to the Internet Archive, which has dozens of Apple II games available to play for free. My favorite is Sneakers, maybe because it’s so weird. You are a spaceship that can only move back and forth along the bottom of the screen, and you get five lives. You have a bottomless supply of lasers, but you can only shoot in one direction: straight up. You pass through the following 7 levels of creatures:

• Sneakers

Cute little orange smiley creatures which wiggle their legs and annihilate you by floating down and touching the ship, unless you vaporize them first.

• Cyclops

Orange and blue creatures which move across the screen and seem harmless, until one of your shots misses. Then they move down a centimeter. Kind of like the garbage compactor in Star Wars.

• Saucers

These look like the spaceship hanging on a string in the notoriously bad Ed Wood film, Plan 9 From Outer Space. And they drop a lot of bombs. A lot.

• Fangs

These are vampiric-looking creatures that rock back and forth in the air and…. that’s it. Laughably easy to nail.

• Meteors

A meteor shower with two sizes of boulders: small and large. The big ones delighted my 8-year-old brain because when you shot them, they made a farty noise. Well, confession time: I still like that noise.

• Scramble

Literally a bunch of arrows that move down and then across the screen to hit you. Unlike the Fangs, these are tough targets.

• Scrubs

Blue and orange spaceships that come at you on an angle. Is there a reason they can only fly sideways? Why are they called Scrubs? Only the programmers know.

The other game that captures my heart (and my time) is Chivalry, which has a medieval-themed story and follows the format of a board game. Alas, the Black Knight has kidnapped the King, and of course your mission is to save him. But first, you must help the baker move flour sacks at the mill, pick the right door to pass safely through the evil forest, use a catapult to open a drawbridge, evade a thug who chases you through a maze, and throw a mean game of darts at the tavern to please the local bandits, among other tasks. Oh, and there’s a good chance you’ll be mauled by a bear at least once before you reach the final face-off with the nefarious knight who has your liege in a dungeon.

Given the cache of fond memories I have of playing these games, as well as the original Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (from which I learned most of the geography I know), it’s strange that I stayed off the video gaming train. Seeing these games now, it’s hardly a surprise to see how quaint they are, but it is a shock to be reminded of just how much we loved pastel colours in the 80s.

The original games were stored on floppy disks, which were loaded into these drives. Photo courtesy of Openverse.

While I lack an explanation for why I never continued my gaming journey, I know revisiting Sneakers and Chivalry reminds me of how new and exciting the Apple II computer and its accompanying games were to 80s kids, and some adults, all those years ago. Like Choose Your Own Adventure books and Cabbage Patch Dolls, these games were staples of many Gen X childhoods.

Gen X is the last generation to have experienced life without computers as a part of the fabric of everyday activities. History enthusiasts who are of the Millennial, Gen Z, or Gen Alpha generations may find it illuminating to explore these antiquated games as part of a history immersion experience. The graphics may leave much to be desired, compared to games today (and from my limited number of glimpses, they are impressive, and video game soundtracks are often wonderful), but playing them is a fun way to understand a section of the development of the computer age, and what it was like to live through its earlier stages.

If you’d like to try out Sneakers, Chivalry, and other Apple II games, you can find them on the Internet Archive.

Happy gaming, and watch out for the Scrambles!