Apple II Grab Bag #1

I can't do just one. There are so many Apple II weirdities out there, you'd be better served if I handed them to you several at a time. Thus we begin APPLE II GRAB BAG #1. And no, that's not a promise for a #2....

Before we begin, there's one thing you must remember about Apple II software. Whenever you bought it, you were pretty much gambling your money. There was no quality control (this crashed Atari), and every game was made by one or two people, not two hundred people and twenty debuggers. Was a programmer competent enough to deliver what you were hoping for in that floppy? There was only one way to find out...flush away forty dollars. UNLESS....you turned to piracy.

And boy, was there ever piracy in the early computer days. The scurviest scalawags to sail the seven seas of cyberspace devoted countless hours to cracking the anti-copy bugs in all kinds of software...and when they were finished, they'd send it to a distribution club, but not before leaving their Mark of Zorro on the program's title screen. They were all known by aliases:

So, with that understood, I'm going to open with "Alien Munchies"; I don't know who wrote it or in what year it came out, but it's definately from the heyday of alien shooters. And it has one of the best title screens I have ever seen.

As for the game itself, "Alien Munchies" may sound like a cutesy name, but there's a reason behind it. This is not a game where you're an astronaut on the surface of Earth shooting erratic-flying aliens with a laser. This is a game where you're a redneck catching erratic-flying aliens with a propane grill so you can fry 'em up and eat 'em. The only way this setup could be more perfect is if there were Smurfs.

This is your screen and that is you....aliens are constantly falling down and you're positioning your grill underneath each one. If an alien lands on the ground, it'll stay there for about seven seconds before popping from some weird atmospheric reaction. You generally don't want them to do this, because as with all enemies, one touch kills you...and you want as much room to move around as possible. If it gets too overwhelming(and it will as it goes faster), your propane grill also has a laser so you can shoot one, then catch another near it. They thought of everything!

You also want to have room to maneuver because every so often, a can of propane will majestically fly across the screen; the only way to get it and extend your meat-gathering session is to shoot it, then be right under it when it falls. Remember that this gas doesn't grow on trees, that orange meter is how much you have left, and when it runs out....you EXPLODE!!! Really, you explode.

Of course, maybe Alien Munchies just isn't your style. If that's the case, you could try....

You like intensity in your games, right? This is Pong, only played for HIGHER stakes.

If you miss even ONCE, that helpless white chick will be skewered. Yes, the sprite really does die a bloody impaled death, only the blood is pink due to the Apple's four-choice color pallette and instead of a horrifying sound, you hear the "Bronx Cheer": PPPPHHHHPPPPPPP!!!!

Now you probably want to know what that bird is doing there. You're controlling two people at once: the paddle operator, and the girl, who will fire her gun (she's got a gun too - is this extreme or what?) if you press the Space Bar. Shoot each bird as you pass by it for points; you can shoot a bird and then shoot it again while its dust cloud is still there for DOUBLE points.

As if THAT wasn't enough, the two walls on the side are slowly closing in on you. The only way to get to the next level is to catch the end of a string of balloons that float by every so often. You might as well forget doing that; catching one of those things is totally by chance. You can get her near the string, sure, but if she doesn't vault next to it JUST right, she doesn't grab it. If you weren't granted 5 lives, this would be a short game.

This next one may not be as "edgy" as People Pong, but it's one of the best ideas I've seen yet for an alien shooter. I have no idea why it was only done by a second-rate programmer for a pirate distribution company, and NO ONE in the arcade ever thought of it. Yes, it's that good.

Yeah, those are the title screens, and the "music" is a bunch of off-key beeps that resemble nothing anyone would call a song. With Apple, running into a mess like this wasn't THAT uncommon, so I wasn't too put off. But then I noticed the squiggles on the second screen seemed to follow a pattern, like they were supposed to say something I could decode if I had the instruction manual this disk (might have) come with. Like it was some kind of invented language. Then I booted the game, and it all made sense....

A fat alien and a space shuttle appeared. I moved my mouse and clicked "fire," but the shuttle didn't move...the alien did! I was playing as the alien! I WAS PLAYING AS THE ALIEN!!

This next game is almost not worth mentioning, but it wins an award for just having yet another one of the most interesting title screens of any game in existence.

And no...that censor bar wasn't originally there. The game, by the way, is about a "Human Fly" climbing up a skyscraper while skeletons look out of windows and throw pots at his head.

See for yourself. What does a naked lady have to do with that--well, nothing. Unless her name is Princess Pervertdrawing and you're rescuing her. I don't know.

And with that, time is just about up, so whenever #2 in this series rolls around, I'll see you then--no, WAIT! We have one more title: POLAS -- THE GAME!!

"Polas: The Game"? You heard right....and this time, YOU'LL be the one playing it!

You've read about the challenges faced here, but are you brave enough to meet them HEAD-ON?? Click the floppy to download POLAS: THE GAME!! For your Apple II system! Every game shown here is in it! (except for Crazy Climber; there was no room and the naked lady was all you'd get out of it).

Don't have an Apple II? GET ONE! Get Applewin (and Mac users, get something inferior). Then, use this diagram if you get stuck: