One of the tapes I recently got was this one. On the front it says “Road Race Game”, copyright “WOW”. Ok. I’m appropriately awed. Flipping it over, I saw that the other side contains “Space War” and that “WOW” is short for “Wise Owl Workshop”. I’d never heard of Wise […]

Back when the Apple II was new, there wasn’t a lot of software available for it. On the earliest price list I’ve seen, April 1977, Apple listed the Apple I™ and several cassette tapes for it, and the then new Apple II™, but with no software available. The next iteration […]

Here is Programma’s Phasor Zap cassette, another game of the “shoot alien spacecraft in space” variety. Here are the audio files. I have not tested the WAV files but the AIFF file loads fine in Virtual II. I have also put it on a disk. Programma – Phasor Zap AIFF […]

I got two copies of Programma’s Kaleidoscope, which seem to straddle the point in time when their tape packaging changed, and for the better I’d say. I took audio images of both tapes, but there do not appear to be any differences. I didn’t do a byte-level analysis, but they […]

Old cassettes continue to show up at my door, today we’ll look briefly at Ancient Tarot from Programma International. In the Spring 1980 Programma catalog on the Brutal Deluxe Programma site, this is listed as “Tarot Cards” (AP122), which matches the splash screen, but on the tape itself and in […]

Next up is Softape’s Star Wars and Space Maze, written by Bob Bishop. Again we find that the tape’s cover doesn’t quite match. In nearly everything I’ve seen, the relevant game is referred to as Star Wars, but on the cover it’s called Star Warriors, and on the tape case, […]

Here are the contents of the Softape Othello tape, now that I have opened it up. There was no instruction card or anything, just the tape and the cover insert. The two sides of the tape contain different versions of the game, one side has a version for the standard […]

I made some attempts at capturing the audio from the cassettes, and the first one, Invader Game Apple Invader Super Invader Superinvader, was successfully transferred. The audio files are below, in WAV and AIFF formats. I have tested the AIFF file in Virtual II, but I have not tested the […]

Back in the days before the disk drive, one of the primary methods of distributing software for the Apple II was on cassette tapes, and there were actually quite a large number of tapes produced for the platform. However, they also were relatively short-lived, since the floppy disk provided a […]