{"id":2351,"date":"2013-06-15T21:23:17","date_gmt":"2013-06-16T03:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=2351"},"modified":"2014-09-07T21:41:58","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T03:41:58","slug":"golfyssey-04-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=2351","title":{"rendered":"Golfyssey 04 \u2014 Apple ]["},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, the Apple II<\/a>.\u00a0 That good old beast of a computer built by Steve Wozniak<\/a> when Apple was just a wee company.\u00a0 I never owned one of these, but my elementary school had about a dozen of them back in the early 80s.\u00a0 From them, I learned the joys of waiting your turn, “no, we aren’t going to be playing games”, “yes magenta is a real colour” and “Bank Street Writer<\/a> is going to replace all of the world’s typewriters one day”.\u00a0 I also learned how to draw shitty pictures of Garfield (the cartoon cat, not the US president) on the screen using Applesoft BASIC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Someone did manage to sneak a game called “Gorgon” through.\u00a0 It’s a knockoff of Defender with a bit of the Star-Trek-Enterprise-Shoots-Satellites thrown in.<\/p>\n

But I’ve never cared for the Apple II’s admittedly vast collection of games because, lets face it, this computer sucks for games.\u00a0 The sound is about as bad as the Atari 2600 and the graphics are not much better.\u00a0 The fact that Apple was able to extend the life of the Apple II product line as long as they did is more a tribute to Steve Jobs’ salesmanship than anything else.\u00a0 So how do you think golf games on this box will turn out?<\/p>\n

The first one I tried is called “Pro Golf”, and it came out in 1983.\u00a0 Put away that joystick, you!\u00a0 Silly gamer, wanting to control a quasi-realistic simulation of a golfer swinging at a golf ball on a golf course.<\/p>\n

\"Pro<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pro<\/a><\/p>\n

Sadly, these are the most colourful and visually stunning parts of the game.\u00a0 They’re over in about five seconds.<\/p>\n

\"Pro<\/a><\/p>\n

A lot of Apple II games have menus like this.\u00a0 It was far easier to code the text to appear like this…<\/p>\n

\"Pro<\/a><\/p>\n

And here we are in the middle of the actual game.\u00a0 This is basically a golf RPG.\u00a0 All of the factors that might influence your shot get entered as answers to questions you are asked before you make that shot.\u00a0 Which club?\u00a0 What strength?\u00a0 Choose your aim.<\/p>\n

That last part is what made me stop playing.\u00a0 As fleetingly interesting as it was to play this golf RPG, the aiming system is way too slow.\u00a0 For aiming a shot, an arrow appears on the screen.\u00a0 You press and hold L to rotate the arrow one way, and R the other way.\u00a0 This becomes tedious really fast, especially if you overshoot the hole and have to swing the arrow all the way around.<\/p>\n

So I didn’t have a lot of fun with this game.\u00a0 I know that the Apple II can’t handle fast action games that are heavy on sprites and graphics, but there has to at lease be a decent golf game made for it.\u00a0 Let’s keep looking.<\/p>\n

“Fore!”, 1985<\/p>\n

\"Fore!<\/a><\/p>\n

This is looking about the same so far.\u00a0 And after reading the instructions, I confirm that yes, this too is a keyboard-input golf RPG.<\/p>\n

\"Fore!<\/a><\/p>\n

But “Fore!” has much better controls and much better graphics than “Pro Golf”.\u00a0 That grey rectangle is the ball.\u00a0 Those brown rectangles are (I suppose) bushes and trees.\u00a0 The yellow rectangles are sant traps and the big dark green rectangle is the putting green.\u00a0 There’s no stupid aiming arrow that takes a half-an-eternity to move with this one, rather aiming is accomplished by entering a degree numeral.\u00a0 0 degrees will fire the ball up (as in North), 90 will fire it right, 180 down, 270 left.\u00a0 You can enter any integer in between too.<\/p>\n

You can also choose any iron or wood club, and they will make the ball travel different distances accordingly.\u00a0 The last thing you enter is the strength of your swing, from 1 to 100%.\u00a0 But anything over 90% may result in your ball suddenly taking an odd unexpected turn at the last moment.<\/p>\n

This is a surprisingly fun game, but I was never able to actually get the ball in the hole.\u00a0 Maybe I’ll give it a try some other time.\u00a0 Maybe if I had to fight a dragon or some other monster first so it was more like a real RPG… but I’m getting ahead of myself now!<\/p>\n

\"Miniature<\/a><\/p>\n

And here is the first miniature golf game that I’ll review, cleverly titled “Miniature Golf”.\u00a0 I don’t know what year this game was released, but it’s a safe guess it’s from the mid 80s.\u00a0 It’s pretty standard for a minigolf game.<\/p>\n

\"Miniature<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet again, there is no joystick control.\u00a0 I know the Apple II could handle joystick input, I’m not making this up.\u00a0 I swear.\u00a0 But this one’s pretty simple to control.\u00a0 The arrow keys rotate the aiming arrow, and the number keys control the swing.\u00a0 Number 1 will provide a weak swing that moves the ball slightly, while number 9 provides the most powerful shot.\u00a0 The object, of course, is to get the ball past and or through the obstacles and into the hole.\u00a0 Here’s another screen:<\/p>\n

\"Miniature<\/a><\/p>\n

Not a bad little time waster, and decent enough graphics all things considered.<\/p>\n

I’m done looking for Apple II golf games though.\u00a0 I really was hoping there’d be some on the same level with, say, “Computer Golf!” for the Odyssey\u00b2.\u00a0 I can’t really say I’m disappointed though.\u00a0 I think that when I have some time to relax and really get into some of these games I will give “Fore!” and “Miniature Golf” a closer look.\u00a0 And I can appreciate why so many Apple II games eschew sprite graphics and joystick control in favour of good old keyboard input and text.<\/p>\n

You see, part of the appeal of a home computer like the Apple II or the VIC-20<\/a> compared with the video game consoles was the computer’s ability to be programmed.\u00a0 A lot of these computers came with BASIC<\/a>, and as a programming language, it was about the easiest for anyone to quickly understand and learn.\u00a0 So if you bought an Atari, then you go and buy Pac-Man, and you buy Defender, and Space Invaders, and some other games.<\/p>\n

If you bought an Apple II, you could buy some games, but you could also make your own.\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 Most games and programs back then were written entirely by individuals or small teams.\u00a0 The entrepreneurial spirit was all around the early days of home computers.\u00a0 Hell, home computers would never have existed if it weren’t for hackers, phreakers<\/a> and outcasts who wanted to take computing power out of the halls of the corporations and away from their mainframes.<\/p>\n

If it weren’t for these kind of people, we might never have had personal computers at all.\u00a0 So I don’t think I can get too upset by being confronted by a golf game that expects me to use a keyboard, and asks me to enter variables, sort of like I’m programming it.\u00a0 That’s what the Apple II was all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, the Apple II.\u00a0 That good old beast of a computer built by Steve Wozniak when Apple was just a wee company.\u00a0 I never owned one of these, but my elementary school had about a dozen of them back in the early 80s.\u00a0 From them, I learned the joys of waiting your turn, “no, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,510,1,38],"tags":[480,476,481,482],"class_list":["post-2351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-reviews","category-uncategorized","category-video-games","tag-apple-ii","tag-golf","tag-microcomputers","tag-personal-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2351"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7489,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions\/7489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}