Using the Lawless Legends engine, 8 Bit Weapon posts a fun tribute to the upcoming Fallout 4.

Prize Winners for Apple II Photo Contest

At last, the 14 photo entries for last month’s Retro Apple II Photo Contest have been judged, leaving us with a first prize winner for an Uthernet II, a second prize winner for free shipping on the same, and three honorable mentions.

To keep everything fair, the judge was someone who is not a part of the Apple II community, but who has a BFA degree and has a basic familiarity with the Apple II. Entries were judged based on composition, elements from the chosen time period, and overall retro feel.

Speaking personally, there were a lot of really good photos. I love looking at Apple II setups, as I’m sure a lot of other people in the community do. The idea for this contest came to me around January or so, and I’m glad that I brought it to execution and that the community made so many good photos for it.

And now, here are the winners.

In his latest Gamasutra blog entry, David H. Schroeder discusses his days developing Crisis Mountain, the classic Apple II game eventually published by Synergistic Software.

Fast Company has posted an article The Lost Apple Logo You’ve Never Seen which clearly doesn’t apply to most long-term Apple II users (but maybe to most Macintosh users).

I’ve spent the last few months remaking Raster Blaster from the Apple II which was a game I loved playing back at school in the day. It’s currently available for Windows, MacOSX and Android and I need to get back to finishing the Linux build which will hopefully be next week sometime.

The free download is at: http://sausage.itch.io/raster-blaster-reloaded.

The official site is: http://hippocket.waynejohnson.net

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Rebecca “Burger Becky” Heineman. Becky is a legendary Apple II developer (not to mention many other platforms), and was the keynote speaker at KansasFest 2015. We discuss Becky’s KansasFest experiences then and now, how the community has changed, and what she’s up to now. She has a lot of Apple II gold archived away, and we’re starting to see more and more of it as a result of the continued warmth and friendliness of the Apple II community.

Tune in after that interview, when Quinn and Mike go on to talk about amazing Bulgarian hardware products, new ways to acquire Byteworks software, the mysteries of Double Hires graphics, and of course Halt & Catch Fire. KansasFest stories abound, Mike plugs the Apple III, and Quinn acts oblivious to Mike on the subject of Prince of Persia. Listen in awe as she tells the exact same story about Mechner’s source code, immediately after Mike says the same thing. We swear your co-hosts do listen to each other most of the time, folks.

Place your orders now for the hottest new fragrance, R3TR0: By Gagne.

Mike Maginnis posted this delicious link to Facebook… http://saveyourforkcakes.com/2014/12/02/apple-ii-computer-cake/

Andres Lozano Gallego posted this on Facebook.

Rebecca Heineman has announced via Facebook that she has been given permission to the release the source code to 1981’s “TAXMAN” from H.A.L. Labs by the games programmer Brian Fitzgerald. TAXMAN is notable for being one of the first (and best) clones of the famous Pac-Man arcade game. It was so good, AtariSoft sued and then as part of the subsequent settlement, used TAXMAN’s source code to produce their own Pac-Man port for the Apple II.

Over the years, there have been variants, one of which was created by Heineman herself, when she added additional escape tunnels to the game.

As soon as the source hits GitHub, we’ll post a link here. Examining the code should be beneficial to programmers who want to learn techniques for smooth animation, sound FX generation, obstacle and collision detection as well as general game theory principles.

In the meantime, please enjoy Brian Picchi’s review of TAXMAN courtesy of YouTube.