Top 10 Apple ][ games

Sneakers - First game I ever bought with my own money.

Hard Hat Mack - A simple concept, but loads of fun. One I played over and over and over.

Crisis Mountain - Another classic. So many days of struggle to get from one level to the next. I still have no idea how many levels I ever got to see, it seems I always ran out of lives far too soon.

Serpentine - One that my dad really enjoyed too. I remember one night we played and played and played. We had a hacked version with infinite lives and we took turns. Whenever we died then the other one took over. I have no idea how late it was before we finally decided we had seen enough.

Microwave - One of my dad's favorites. He used to keep the disk in a special box on a high shelf because he didn't want me or my sister to accidentally mess up the disk. This one had quite a catchy tune. For a long time it seems like it was burned into my brain, but now I have no idea what it sounds like. A maze game and a fetch quest all rolled into one. What a blast!

Bandits - Ah, classic button mashing. The trick with this one was timing hitting the space bar really fast but keeping your shots from bunching up so you created an impenetrable wall the bad guys couldn't get through. All the animation in this was really neat too. This was one my mom would play too!

Aztec - Lots of exploring and a lot of fun. I never did beat it. Like Crisis Mountain, I have no idea how far I ever got in it either. One of those games I keep thinking I should come back to even now and see what I can do. In fact, somewhere in my email archives I have a cheat sheet I sent myself a couple years ago of all the keyboard commands!

Star Blazer - There was just something about games that didn't just have repetitive levels that was so appealing. I loved seeing all the little things there were and trying to beat a level so I could see what the next one looked like. I struggled to beat each scene so I could see the next and was a little disappointed when it wrapped around to the first one again (only harder).

Pinball Construction Set - This was one great game. It was sooo much fun making my own pinball playfields. I remember this was one that my sister and I would challenge each other with. So many hours spent tweaking the parts to get them in just the right place, applying paint to the playfield to get just the right effect or hide a path the ball can go through so it would be a surprise. When the //gs came out I kept hoping they would rewrite it to take advantage of the new sound and graphics, but it never happened.

Lode Runner - This has to be one of the best games made. Levels were a combination of manual dexterity and puzzle solving. Back then I played on an Apple ][+ with one of those Kraft joysticks that had the stick inside a well. The joystick could switch between springing back to center or just staying where you put it. Seems like most of the time it was in "unsprung" mode. I remember how when climbing across a bar we always had to keep the stick in the upper diagonal corners, otherwise you'd often fall off the bar part way across! When I found out you could design your own levels, I would sit in class and ignore the teacher and spend my time jotting down level ideas on paper. My sister and I each had our own Lode Runner disks and would take turns designing levels to outwit each other.