If you grew up playing Apple II games and you happen to have one packed away in the garage, you can relieve your 8-bit glory days with the Apple Game Server.
This website is exactly what it says on the label. It’s a collection of great Apple II games like “Choplifter.” All you need to do is plug an audio cable into the headphone jack on your device, and plug the other end into the cassette interface on the Apple. For this to work, you’ll need to boot it into the BASIC that comes up when you don’t have any disks in the drives. Pick your game, then select either the “Hi-Fi” or “Lo-Fi” versions. The “Hi-Fi” versions appear to be faster and work most of the time, but the “Lo-Fi” versions are recommended in case of errors.
When you have your game picked out, type “LOAD” on the Apple, and then start playing the audio file. Soon enough, the game will load. The collection seems to focus on more arcade-style games from the ’80s, possibly because the games are pretty small. Loading games by cassette was pretty slow back in the old days, and if you want proof just ask anybody who had a Commodore 64.
Blake Patterson, the guy behind the Byte Cellar blog, gives a demo in a YouTube video using an iPad:
Since floppy disks and other older physical media for these vintage computers are well beyond their original intended lifespan, it looks like these kinds of projects are necessary in order to preserve the history of the early digital age.
If you like this, you’ll want to check out our list of classic video game emulators, and for an update of that other major 8-bit platform of the ’80s, here’s a new version of the Commodore 64.
