Subject: Re: earliest commercial game?
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From: "Mike Westerfield" <MikeW50@aol.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 09:53:47 -0700
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In article <38216005.9E120472@steria.fr>, Eric Le Bras 
<eric.lebras@steria.fr> wrote:


> The keyboard
> itself had very little transparent plastic keys, and a cassete recorder was
> built in.

I remember the keys well. I looked them over carefully and decided it would
be possible to disassemble the keyboard and put different key labels inside
the clear plastic keys. I had in mind writing a programmable calculator.
(What else would you want a computer for?)

I went with a friend to see an Apple ][ shortly after that. Patty liked the
colored apple Logo a lot better. :) I sold my car to raise cash, and the
rest is history.

> Other machines of the time were the TRS-80 by Tandy, and also the Sharp MZ80K,
> the later having the same monolythic aspect as the PET.

I'm pretty sure the Pet predated the TRS-80. I have to admit that I don't
remember the Sharp MZ80K.

Computer shows were a lot more fun back in those days. Instead of seeing a
dozen new manufacturers of PC clones and a couple of new printer
technologies, you'd see a dozen new manufacturers of completely unique CPU
designs, each with a custom O/S. The Exody Sourcerer impressed me the
most--it actually had real color. The Ohio Scientific line was impressive
too, since it could take 6502, 6800 and Z80 processors (all at the same
time!) and run a variety of operating systems.

As for Pong being in the Red Book, I'd forgotten that. It seems to me that
Star Trek came with my machine, too, though, and the listing was in the Red
Book. Does anyone have an Apple ][ machine released _before_ the Red Book?
What games came with the computer then?

Mike Westerfield