7 Best Apple II Games That You Should Know Update 04/2024

When the Apple II came out, it was one of the first mass-produced computers that worked well and was sold to people. Apple’s second computer was made to be small, easy to use, and cheap. This was a big technological improvement over Apple’s first computer. The Apple II was aggressively marketed to teachers in order to get them to buy a lot of computers. As a result, the Apple II was used in many American schools. While that was going on, a lot of attention was put on business software, which made the computer popular with both businesses and families. It has had a big impact on the tech world, but this list is only about its games. The Apple II line was home to many arcade ports, but its more fondly remembered for genres that had no footing in arcades or on home consoles. Sierra On-Line and Lucasfilm Games made some of the best-looking adventure games. The Apple II was the first video game I ever played, so I want to remember it with a list of its best games.

The Oregon Trail

1985

This game may be getting more attention than any other on this list because of nostalgia. People like me remember playing the game in the computer lab at school when we were little. The game lets players play the role of a waggon leader in the 1840s. They have the job of taking their family from Missouri to Oregon by waggon. Players will have to deal with disease and food shortages as they make their way through the game. There is also a lot of randomness and uncertainty that makes the game interesting. All of a sudden, your oxen get stuck in the mud and your daughter gets typhoid fever. This can happen at any time. Because of measles, snake bites, cholera, exhaustion, drowning, gunshot wounds, your family members may also die at a young age because of these things, too. Dysentery wasn’t something I knew about until I played the game. Many players will have to make hard decisions in The Oregon Trail. There are two options when you come to a river: pay for a ferry or risk losing supplies and family members by crossing the river. It’s up to you whether or not to buy food. It might be better to buy ammunition and hunt squirrels, rabbits, and buffalo with it instead. The Oregon Trail was made on a mainframe computer in 1971 as a way to teach kids about how people lived in the 19th century. With money from Minnesota, the game was rebuilt in 1974 and released on the Apple II in 1978. This is how it works: This list is mostly recognising the 1985 remake because of the better hunting mechanics in the game. If you have a waggon, there are limits to how much meat you can carry. But that doesn’t stop anyone from killing everything they see.

Beyond Castle Wolfenstein

1984

For more than a decade before Wolfenstein 3D, Castle Wolfenstein set the standard for stealth-based games. During the Second World War, Castle Wolfenstein is an action-adventure game that takes place in a castle. An overhead view is used to play the game. You have to move through a castle in search of secret war plans. In games, players can kill enemy soldiers, but it’s usually better to sneak past them or even act like other guards. The game was unique because it used digitised voices for the first time, and it is thought to be the first stealth-based game. Beyond Castle Wolfenstein used the same basic strategy as the original, but it also had a lot of new features. Players could try to bribe guards, and the introduction of a dagger made it possible for them to kill guards in secret. The bodies of dead guards could be moved to hide them or block passageways. The sound effects were also better, and the vocabulary of the enemy soldiers had grown a lot. The goal of the game also looked more important. It has more weight than the “steal secret plans” thing from the first game.

Space Quest

1986

It’s likely that you knew about Sierra On-Line in the 1980s if you were into computer games at the time and played them. The company made a lot of the most important games in the history of graphics adventure games. King’s Quest was very important because it was the first game to use animation in graphic adventure games. This meant that players could move their characters freely instead of having to only use text commands. In the game, the “take anything that isn’t nailed down” rule was first used, and it was used in many other Sierra adventure games after that. Space Quest used the same gameplay rules as King’s Quest, but instead of a fantasy setting, it had a sci-fi theme. This is what happened in the game: A bad janitor on a spaceship didn’t get killed because he was taking a nap in the closet. The rest of the crew got killed. If you play this game, you don’t have to take it too seriously. The story is a series of mishaps. A better parser made Space Quest II even better. But the first Space Quest was more fun.

Prince of Persia

1989

Superhuman jumping abilities are common in platform games, but Prince of Persia was known for its realistic proportions, physics, and animation. As a result of a process known as rotoscoping, Prince of Persia was a lot easier to play than other games. It was also a big step forward for animation in video games in general. The goal of the game is to get out of a dungeon in one hour. Players will have to find switches to open doors, jump over pitfalls to avoid traps, and fight off enemy soldiers in sword fights to get to the other side of the game. Players even have to deal with their own doppelganger. Price of Persia helped popularise the “cinematic platformer” genre. It took ideas from movies like Arabian Nights, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Adventures of Robin Hood to make a memorable setting and a good story. If you play Prince of Persia on an Apple II, you should give it credit because it was the first computer game to be made.

Archon: The Light and the Dark

1984

Is chess more fun when the pieces have to fight each other? Then Archon is the game for you if you think so. The game is played on a 9×9 board with 18 pieces on each side. Unlike chess, when one player’s piece lands on another player’s piece, there is a fight to see who gets the square. These fights are like arcade-style fights, and during the fights, the players have direct control over their pieces. Each piece has its own abilities when it comes to moving, speed, life, and weapons. There are some weapons that are more powerful than others, and some pieces have unique abilities. The shape-shifter is one of the most interesting characters. He can change into the shape of his enemy. With chess, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the game. Even though stronger pieces will usually win, there is a lot of that uncertainty in the game. There are even times when two people get killed and no one claims the square. On the Apple II, there were many chess games that worked like real chess games. Archon is more fun than any of them and lets you do things that you can’t do on a real chess board.

Lode Runner

1983

Lode Runner is an early platform game that asks players to get through mazes and find gold. It takes a lot of work to get to the gold. You will climb ladders, hang from ropes in the air, dig holes, and set traps for robots that keep coming back. Lode Runner has a simple premise that hides a lot of complexity. It has been called a “thinking man’s” platformer. At this time, most games were simple and looped over and over. Lode Runner, on the other hand, had a whopping 150 stages to play through! Naturally, these stages become more difficult as you go through them, and most of them will require you to be very good at solving problems. Remarkably, Lode Runner also lets people make their own stages with an easy-to-use level editor. Adds to the replay value of the game and made Lode Runner stand out in 1983. Strategy is important, but the game is fast-paced and like what you’d expect from an arcade game. Fittingly, the game was made for arcades and many other platforms in the years that came after.

Swashbuckler (1982)

Often, action games on the Apple II had low frame rates and choppy animation because there wasn’t enough hardware to handle sprite graphics. It didn’t make them any less fun if you didn’t have other things. Swashbuckler is one of these games that stands out. It’s a sword-fighting, atmospheric game from the past that only had a few weird ports to other platforms. If you’re a fan of pirates, you’ll be very happy.

Sources: https://www.lunchbox-productions.com
Categori: Games