As some of you may remember, awhile back I had some questions about
which Apple II games might not work on an Apple IIgs. I was amazed to
find out that other people weren't having the same issues I was having,
so I figured the problem was either with my disks or my IIgs. However
the other day I was looking up something for the IIgs when I stumbled
across this guys Apple II price list.
http://members.aol.com/rrbp/a2game.html
Notice how Ms. Pac-Man and Moon Patrol both say NOT IIgs? He must have
had the same issues I did getting these two games to work. Now that I
know this is a real problem, I'm going to try and make a IIgs game
incompatibility list. I think the reason no one else has discovered
these problems is because most Apple II users these days use cracked
disk images they got off the web. It is only with the original disks
that the problems seem to happen (perhaps it's the disk protection code
that is causing the problem?).
So far I know of three games that won't work unless cracked:
Moon Patrol
Ms. Pac-Man
Gremlins
I've also been told that Elite has some kind of graphics issues on a
IIgs, but since I don't have that on disk I cannot verify this. I also
have a few hacker multi-game disks where the menu screen doesn't show
up. I have no idea why, but I know they use a cute star field
background (like Galaxian) so that may use some incompatible
programming trick (You can still select and load games, but the menu is
invisible). Another game, Lode Runner, supposedly doesn't work with
ROM 01, but since I have a ROM 03 I cannot test this.
I'm not exactly sure who will be interested in this information, but I
hope someday it might make it into the Apple II FAQ. If anyone has an
Apple IIgs set up and some original game disks (or non-cracked copies)
laying around who can help me test, please post your results. I think
this is going to be very enlightening...
Tempest