If you need scans of the instructions, I have them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loguidice/sets/72157601392199542/

I'll have to check out the atari site. I was actually looking for SSI Computer Baseball because a coworker has been harping on me about finding a playable version of it.. figured I'd look for the game you covered while I was there..

Small world. :-)

I talk about that site specifically in the podcast. We've long promoted them at Armchair Arcade. They're friends of ours (but no, they don't have anywhere near the whole library of Apple II games, but certainly a large portion of the stuff worth playing). They also do a quality Atari 2600 site along the same lines.

Hey Bill,

Thought you might like to check this out. You will need to let it download and install the java emulator and then restart your browser. Worked quite well for me... full speed, great color, sound, joystick support, etc.

He claims to have almost every Apple 2/2gs release online.

-Chip

I don't know if it's the fact that graphical fidelity has improved that we see the loss of fancy packaging and beautiful hand-drawn artwork. I think it has to do with cost effectiveness. It's much cheaper to use existing 3D models or what have you then it is to commission beautiful hand-drawn art like in the old days. My old game packaging history article for Armchair Arcade lamented this fact. Technology has indeed gotten too good and everything from a packaging standpoint is very sterile and uniform, which is a loss compared to the variety we had in the old days.

It almost seems to me, and sorry if this is obvious or has been covered already that classic gaming labels and manuals and even boxes and packaging had such beautiful and imaginative artwork back in the day to make up for the lack of graphic capability in the actual game. I mean I was looking through some of my Atari 2600 games and upon playing some of them with those stick men and colored blocks it is sometimes hard to make out anything but one look through the manual with it's descriptive back story and detailed artwork and suddenly those low res simple onscreen pixels take on a whole new life, my imagination springs to life and suddenly I AM that Star Fighter or Shuttle pilot or Great Amazon Explorer. These days even if we are supplied with extensive back story normally beyond the packaging (if we have not bought online or downloaded it) we get little in the way of manual art or anything like that. Of course why do we need it? The 3D in game graphics these days clearly represent what we are looking at and while I LOVE the detail and atmosphere we see in something like Fallout 3 or Bioshock I am not so sure it is any better than the look and atmosphere we created for ourselves using our own imagination back in the day when the graphics could not do all this for us. I miss the days of using my imagination while playing games.

Good job, Bill. That artwork is amazing.