Stacking Balls in a Box

Drop7

This game from Zynga (yeah, the FarmVille guys) is a unique spin on the Tetris idea. Instead of making full rows to pop the balls, you stack them into groups of the right number going across or vertically. What now? OK, let me explain. See the "4" ball in that image? In order for that ball to pop, you need it to be in a row or column of 4 balls. It's currently in a column of 2 and a row of 7. See? Simple to play, hard to master.

It's not all so easy for long though. Every so often, a row of gray balls will appear on the bottom row, shoving everything upward. If a ball gets to the top of the box, you lose!

Going for the Gold

Lode Runner This is one of the original "platform" games. You are a dude running, quite literally, across platforms (and ladders and ropes) to collect all the gold and escape to the next level. Finish all 250 levels (yes, 250!) and you win the game.

Gameplay is fairly simple. Get the gold, avoid the bad guys, escape. The coolest part of Lode Runner is how you deal with bad guys. Your only weapon in the game is the ability to DIG left or right. If a bad guy falls into a pit... POP! He's toast. Digging is also required to solve many of the screens, giving Lode Runner a small puzzle aspect. You can often dig yourself into a trap, requiring a re-do of the entire level.

Choplifter

Apple 2 Month continues...

The special effects really look better in motion.

The Bad Guys have taken your dudes hostage and put them in four neatly identical buildings. You, conveniently enough, work at the local post office just across the border from the Bad Guys. What's a hero to do?

You immediately begin mailing yourself helicopter parts and secretly build the thing during your lunch breaks. I mean, who wouldn't? Then it's across the border you go to get those dudes back! I'll cry when I'm done killin'.

Best instruction screen.  Ever.  Designers, take note!

Trying to draw tank fire away from my dudes.

Aha! Dudes located. Unfortunately, the Bad Guys have tanks, planes, mines, and other fun stuff. Shooting at you is bad enough. But they also like to kill your dudes. Really? Hey, they're Bad Guys... remember?

We're gonna need a bigger chopper. Only some of your dudes will fit in this thing, so it's going to take several trips to get 'em all. Here's the catch... every time you go across the border, the game gets harder. Planes fly faster, tanks tank harder, you get the idea. So make those trips count!

Miller Time.

If you did your job right (wait isn't my job at the Post Office?) then you successfully rescued all 64 of your dudes. Or if you're like me, you only got 43. Hey 2 out of 3 gets you into the Hall of Fame, right?

Some Random Apple Games

At one point I had over 200 floppy disks full of these things. Here are a few of them. You like saying that don't you... Floppy. Floppy.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy One of those "text games" from Infocom. You, know the thing... GET BALL, USE BALL, KILL ME. Ugg! This is fun? I don't even like the books. The image shows about how far I got before feeling a sudden urge to go outside and... well, do anything.

Archon It's like chess (no no, stay with me it gets better) except the pieces all have abilities that affect how they move, attack, and whatnot. Think of a great-great-great grandfather to StarCraft, played on a chess board. Since I, uh... lost the manual *cough* I couldn't really tell what any of the pieces did. So the AI beat me soundly every time I played.

Miner 2049er Clearly playing on the Donkey Kong craze, this game has you "painting" the girders level by level in order to make it out of your gold mine alive. Little round... space invaders? try to kill you. Honestly, go play Donkey Kong instead!

Autoduel

Bust out your daddy's Apple 2 (or bust yours out if you're a nerd like me) because this month we're playing some of the best 80's home classics!

The artist must have just seen Close Encounters.

In between Ultima 2 and Ultima 3, Lord British took the pen and paper RPG Car Wars and turned it into Autoduel. In the year 2030, drivers run around the East Coast delivering stuff in heavily armed cars. Yes, it does sound rather boring. But wait, there's more! You can also play blackjack in Atlantic City, or compete in mortal combat with other drivers in the (sunday Sunday SUNDAYYY) Autoduel Arena!

You start out in Future New York City, circa 2030AD. The Earth has blown up, or something. Your first task is to get a car. Car acquired, you then armor up, slap on a couple machine guns, flame throwers, rocket launchers, etc. Then you head out onto the open road.

NYC is a lot smaller in 2030. Joe's is still there.

A surprisingly accurate depiction of driving in Jersey!

Once you're feeling good about your chances at survival, you can now drive around and deliver packages to the few cities that remain in the area. Yep. That's the game. Hey, the 80's were a simpler time for video games.

Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. 4X. Big ships with lasers. Orbital bombardment. Space dragons! If Earth is never visited by aliens, it's because they've seen us playing this game. It's planet versus planet in a 1996 knock-down, drag-out fight for galactic supremacy. You are your race's supreme President / Emperor / Minister / Comrade at the dawn of the interplanetary age. How or why all thirteen civilizations in the galaxy came to this point on the same day isn't important. They just did. And there can be only one! Will it be you?

This just in... OMG aliens!

Space nerds in the year 3000.

Master of Orion II: Battle of Antares (called MoO2 by fans) starts out with you picking your race, either from one of 13 predefined types or by completely customizing your own. Will you be the super-nerdy Psilons with their giant bonuses to science research, the barbaric Bulrathi who live for hand-to-hand combat, the master ship builders of the Alkari, the rock-eating Silicoids, or the dark and devious Darlocks? Would you rather pick and choose the traits of your own future rulers of the galaxy? Go for it!

You are then on your own with one measly home planet, a colony ship, two scout ships, and a dream. Your first priority is to start a new colony, fast. One thing's for sure: the other guys are doing that same thing. We need to start making babies, right now!

The ultimate goal of the game is simple: get big, get powerful, bomb the other guys into oblivion. Getting that done is not so simple. It's the complete opposite of simple, really. Should you research new technologies and better ships and weapons? Should you terraform your planets? Grow more food or people? Should you be friendly to everyone and trade goods and secrets or be mean and horde them in secrecy? Should you trade with that planet, invade it, or (my favorite) simply Death Star it with your Stellar Converter?

Be the most afraid when it's quiet.

Bomber Bays. To, you know, preserve the peace and stuff...

There is so much to do in MoO2 that you can easily get lost. The computer players absolutely smoked me the first few times I played, and that was on easy mode! But soon you'll be strutting around space in your brand new Titan warships with the latest in particle beam lasers and positron computer navigation systems. Not that we're going to use them, mind you. Only for deterrence, you see. Oh wait, what's that bright light in the sky?

The Klackons clearly did not appreciate my initials being carved into their moon.

Building the perfect ship with Humanity's latest fancy gadgets.

If MoO2 sounds really mean and evil up to this point, well, it mostly is. There are some peaceful ways to win the game but they're certainly not the most fun. You can research your way to "enlightenment"... yawn! Or you can be elected ruler of the Galactic UN if you make enough friends through donations or trading of money and technology... triple yawn! Real galactic leaders get it done with spying, stealing, and invading with big frickin' ships with lasers on 'em. Because, trust me, that's what's coming your way in about two more turns. From eight different directions. These computer players are ruthless!

A peaceful space city...

... as I prepare to land 4 million troops on it.

In MoO2 you are in charge of every single--and I mean every SINGLE--detail of your empire. How much food should Denab 3 grow? Should we move some people from the capital to the new colony? How much money should Altair VI spend on research? Should we terraform Altair III to make it less arid? At the end of a game, one turn can easily take you 20 minutes if you choose to micro-manage enough. Palpatine was a sissy.

One of the most fun parts of MoO2 is sending your fleet of ships against another fleet or a planet. The ships themselves are infinitely customizable. Do you want a fast fighter that's so cheap it can be built by the thousands? Do you want a planet-sized devastator that takes decades to build but can battle entire fleets by itself? The choice is completely yours. As is every aspect of fitting systems into said ship.

Enemy ships too big? Create a black hole on top of them.

Sometimes five-on-one isn't enough.

You start the game knowing only how to build a basic ship with a pathetic laser beam weapon. You'll be lucky if you can even fly it. But eventually you'll be zipping around in ships that can cross the galaxy in just a couple turns or blast an entire planet into sand. You may even be... MASTER OF ORION!

The Stellar Converter: clearing the way for our new Space Bypass.

Ultima 4

For most of the 80's and 90's we all lived in Lord British's world. Or played in it, whatever. In 1985, Lord British (a.k.a. Richard Garriott) took us to Britannia in the most popular game in the series.

ULTIMA IV: Quest of the Avatar

On one hand, Ultima 4 is simply a rung on the technology ladder that started at 1 and ended at 5. Each new game brought better graphics, deeper gameplay, new powers, and more dangerous monsters. But the biggest part of 4 was the rich story. I almost felt like I was playing D&D with real humans.

Instead of just powering up to blast the Bad Guy, this game had you following the Path of the Avatar. Valor, Honor, Justice, Humility, Honesty, Compassion, Sacrifice, Spirituality. These are the way of the Jedi^H^H^H Avatar. And yes I listed those from memory, thank you very much.

Only once you raised your scores in these eight virtues were you allowed to cleanse the evil from the land. Or something. Don't get me wrong, there was still plenty of killing. Ultimately (ha!) that's what RPG's are all about. Point me at the orcs and get out of my way!

Outside Lord B's Castle.

Puttin' the smack down on some orcs.

You start out the game all by your lonesome with nothing but a sword, a couple gold pieces, and only a vague idea of what in the Hell you're supposed to be doing. Eventually though, you're running around the planet gathering allies (you can have a party of up to eight), killing mobs, taking their loots, blasting more mobs with magic, and eventually becoming the Avatar. Or maybe you already are the Avatar... I've never been quite sure on that.

The craziest thing about Ultima 4 was, at the time, the sheer size of the game world. In 1980's terms, it was huge! Towns and cities all over the place, giant oceans that took ages to cross, dungeons hidden in mountains, deadly swamps, endless forests... wow. Thank your lucky stars for the Moon Gates; magical doors that can transport you instantly from one part of the world to another. The only trick being, of course, the phases of the two moons. Just missed the gate? Get ready for a wait!

The magic system in the game was perhaps one of the more aggravating aspects.  Every spell (every single cast of every single spell) required the mixing of several regents.  For instance, I remember that the CURE POISON spell required one unit of B and one unit of C. I can't remember what B and C were, other than they were the two keys to hit. That speaks the most about the system. Who really cares that I need Mandrake and Black Pearl... just give me some B and C!

I'm on a boat!

Dungeon crawling, 80's style.

If I got bad grades in 9th grade, Ultima 4 is surely to blame. I played this game day after day for probably ten months in order to finish it. I'd play it all the way through again right now if I didn't have things to do!

Interesting Trivia Note: Did you know? The world that we first see in Ultima 4 is the setting for every game in the series to follow, including the MMO Ultima Online. Now that's staying power!