Comment by stevecalifornia
11 years ago
I just had an incredible moment reading this and I have to share:
I started flipping through the pages looking at the ads. I came across "Hi-Res Soccer" and "Hi-Res Football" by On-line Systems on page 59. Looks like you can order by sending a check to the address in Coarsegold, CA! I laugh because I know where that is...it's a super tiny, backwater town in the Sierra Nevada where some of my family live. I'm amazed someone was using a computer there in 1981.
I decide I am going to send payment in an envelope to that address for one of these games from 1981-- a gag. Maybe if I'm lucky the old guy still lives there and they'll get a kick out of it.
Out of curiosity I decide to see if I can Google street view the address to make sure it's still there and see what it looks like. Google Street view isn't available for that address.
Instead, I Google 'On-line Systems' and the street address just to see what ended up happening to the company before I send my gag letter.
Turns out 'On-line Systems' in Coarsegold, CA was started by Ken and Roberta Williams. They later turned it into Sierra On-Line and moved.
Holy shit. The goofy ad on page 59 eventually grew into Sierra Entertainment.
For those curious about what "Hi-Res" meant at the time, there are some screenshots:
http://www.apple2games.com/wiki/Hi-Res_Soccer
http://www.apple2games.com/wiki/Hi-Res_Football
There's also a scan of one of the manuals, without screenshots: https://archive.org/stream/Hi-Res_Football#page/n0/mode/1up
Sierra was F-in amazing! They did King's quest and a lot of others. But of course, they were mot known (back in that day) for Leisure Suit Larry...
Man, I grew up with all their games. Such good memories..
I have real print magazines from 81-89 and you can always get all this stuff from archive.org (support!!).
The Microsoft ad on the page facing the Alien article is awesome too. Way cooler logo and funny to see them selling an accessory for the Apple 2!
Microsoft's roots are as a company full of hackers. Gates was coding up traffic software in high school and dropped out of Harvard to found a startup. Even through the wild 25 year ride of building a company on a well timed pivot around the lucky success of Windows, in fine Seattle tradition it built the skunkworks that is Microsoft Research.
The increasingly apparent changes in direction relative to open source, end user OS pricing, and nondenominational hardware specification indicate a possible return to those core valued of the company's early days.
Microsoft's hardware has always been excellent. I wonder why they insist on making software :-P
Applesoft Basic, the principal "firmware" of the Apple II, was a derivative of Microsoft Basic.
"Apple reportedly obtained an eight-year license for Applesoft BASIC from Microsoft for a flat fee of $21,000, renewing it in 1985 through an arrangement that gave Microsoft the rights and source code for Apple's Macintosh version of BASIC." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applesoft_BASIC]
Accessories for the Apple II is just an afterthought, really; kind of like Microsoft keyboards and mice for a Windows PC. :)
I had the Z80 card in my Apple ][ and ran CP/M more often than the Apple's own OS.
I still own that card. Used it to run cp/m in order to run Wordstar. FYI, Microsoft also wrote Applesoft Basic.
I also owned one and used Wordstar on CP/M. Also, Borland's Turbo Pascal!
There's a chapter about Sierra On-Line in "Hackers" by Steven Levy -- a fascinating book.
It's a great book, and does a better job of explaining the origins of personal computing (and time shared systems) than pretty much anything else out there.
Indeed. I'd also add Code (by Charles Petzold) and D is for Digital (which I desperately want to read but haven't yet).
For me it was the comic on page 132, which contains a line I actually used during a conversation last week ..
Just imagine what would have happened had they not renamed to "Sierra On-Line". That name could have been worth a fortune today.
It would be funny to send a cheque to Sierra Entertainement for HiRes Soccer, just to see what they do with it :D