Talk:List of Apple IIGS games

Work

'Full Metal Planete' game is not a unfinished work. The game is complete and was available on the market with box & manual. I bought one at the time. The distribution was limited to France because of copyright issues. The team (Brainstorm) who had programmed the Apple IIgs version had also programmed the Macintosh port. They asked the right to make sell the Apple IIgs version. The editor agrees but with the restriction that it wil only apply to France.

'Full Metal Planete' is a classic game (like Monopoly) you play on a table with friends. The computer version came later (Atari ST, Amiga, PC), done by Infogrames (French company). They asked Brainstorm (french Apple IIgs / Macintosh programmers : Transprog III, Kangaroo, The Manager...) to port he game on Macintosh. So they have programmed the Macintosh version, and in the same way, they have done the Apple IIgs port. Infogamme didn't asked (or paid) for the IIgs version, but they agree Brainstorm to sell the Apple IIgs version in France.

Olivier

List too inclusive

I propose this list is too inclusive by including all Apple II games. The GS was backwards compatible with the earlier II's, so those games would run on the GS, but we already have a list dedicated to all Apple II games. I vote we trim to this list to games that just run on the GS. For regular Apple II games, readers can refer to the other list. Otherwise we'll have duplicated information to maintain. Any objections? — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 01:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you have it backwards. This list strictly excludes any 8-bit Apple II games, therefore you will NOT see any software listed in this article that runs on the Apple II, II+, IIe, IIc or IIc+ (when such a title is added to the list inadvertently by a user, I make it a point to remove it).

What might have you confused is certain game titles available for the 8-bit Apple II had been re-written, from the ground up, and published as Apple IIGS-specific versions in later years. They were completely incompatible with the older Apple II line, they utilized 16-bit programming code (65C816 vs 65C02), Super-High-Res graphics, Ensoniq sound support, required more memory (up to 1.25 MB), and shipped on incompatible media even (800K 3.5" floppies; most Apple II's used 5.25" drives). Even if you had more memory and a 3.5 drive, you couldn't run these GS-specific tiles on older Apple II's, anymore than you could run Amiga or Atari software.

Some examples of GS-specific rewrites I can think of...Silent Service, Bard's Tale, Marble Madness, Arkanoid, Hardball, etc. Those are listed because a GS-specific version exists, it does not refer to the 8-bit Apple II titles. Hopefully that clears that up. :) --Apple2gs (talk) 20:07, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, it seems I was incorrect. Than this list is fine, and just the way I think it should be. Thanks for setting me straight, Apple2gs! — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 23:07, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

List of Apple IIGS Games now tabled

This is a major change, so I'm discussing it here. I was so inspired by Frεcklεfσσt's tabling the list of Apple II games that I felt the same should be done for the Apple IIGS list. And so, as you can see, I have! It took several days of work (and I'm still not quite yet finished) but felt it's complete enough to replace the existing bullet list.

The table contains the following categories:

• Title -- official name of game
• Year -- year it was released
• Developer -- programmer or group who created/ported it (and if available, artists and musicians too)
• Publisher -- company responsible for its distribution
• Genre -- what type of game category it falls under

I've toyed with the idea of adding a "GS" column for games produced only for or originated on the Apple IIGS (currently that is denoted by a bold [GS] next to the title; I'm thinking of removing that entirely actually) and a column for its licensing status at the time it was published (i.e. commercial, public domain, shareware, freeware) but that may make it look too cluttered and confusing. Also the more added, the smaller the text becomes and harder to read, so sometimes less is better. I scratched the idea of a "notes" or "description" column like the Apple II list, as you can simply click on the game name for the main article, making it a bit redundant. I put the 'year' column in front of 'title', as that's something I find a more interesting and important fact when looking at Apple IIGS games, seeing as so few were published compared to other platforms.

A great deal of the information came from the 'What is the Apple IIGS?' website (thanks Alex!) but not everything contained there is accurate, so I'm trying to clean that up a bit with my own research. If you see any author/publisher or year published inaccuracies, please feel free to correct them!

Also deciding whether to table-ize the Unreleased games list. Did not want to merge it with the main list but perhaps a separate table for that would be in order.

I'm still filling in some of the boxes and tweaking others, plus there's more games missing (mostly shareware titles) so this is still a work in progress. Hope no one minds my jumping ahead with this conversion but feel free to comment or if you think any changes need to be done.--Apple2gs (talk) 04:13, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Removal of "[GS]" marker label

I went ahead and removed the "[GS]" label that denoted a particular game originated on, or was produced only for, the Apple IIGS. In terms of game produced only for the Apple IIGS, I found that really frivolous information, and something every platform has. That just left games originally produced for the GS that were eventually ported to other platforms--an interesting category, but there were so few, it made questionable sense having it stated. There were a total of 6 games that fall under this category: Zany Golf, The Immortal, Xenocide, Keef the Thief, Dream Zone and GATE. And of those, most were little known and forgettable Mac and PC titles (the Naughty Dog titles also made it to the Amiga and Atari ST, but I can't recall them being that popular). Only Sandcastle's Zany Golf and Immortal were significant, so popular in fact they were even ported to game consoles. At least that fact is mentioned in their main articles.

I hope no one objects, though figured I go ahead as I was the one who added those designations there in the first place. I just felt it added clutter and wasn't important enough (also its something that would have eventually required a need to create a new table column for)--Apple2gs (talk) 22:38, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Educational games or not?

Just want to clarify how you classify games in the list. @Apple2gs you're giving me mixed messages. You say that educational games should not be in the list if they aimed at preschooler. At the same time you say Carmen Sandiego fits the game genre. That doesn't make any sense. How can Carmen Sandiego be more of a game than Reader Rabbit? Only differentiated by age group?

The way I see it, Reader Rabbit fits the genre Game more than a Utility or a Tool or some other miscellaneous genre of Apple II software. All games have objectives and gameplay, something Learning Company software products have. Where exactly would you list the Reader Rabbit games if not the list of games? There are other Educational games too such as Rocky's Boots.Deltasim (talk) 09:59, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

That's honestly a good question, how do we define what a "game" is, and whether it belongs in this list or the various other platform games lists on Wikipedia. I'm not aware of an official guideline, but objectively speaking, a computer game is a form of entertainment or a pleasurable diversion. It is just meant to be enjoyment with no other underlining purpose. An educational title is a teaching tool--pure and simple. That's all it usually is, though sometimes it can be wrapped in a very simplistic or loose form of game in order to sugar coat it, a thin shell so to speak. Think of the analogy of a parent feeding their infant child which needs food and nutrition, but the infant being stubborn about eating it. The parent may make a game out of feeding to get them to open their mouth (like "here's comes the airplane, open your mouth to let it land!"). Eating itself is not a game, but a little game has been made around it to encourage them to eat. Would you classify that little feeding game/trick in a Wikipedia list of real-life games, along side say... Tag, cards, baseball or hide and seek? I see Reader Rabbit in the same light, it's a pure teaching tool that children would otherwise have little or no interest in, but it's sugar coated in the most simplistic style of "game" to encourage children to use it. It's first and foremost a teaching aid tool, but only a "game" in the loosest possible sense.

At any rate, say we did include Reader Rabbit (Rocky's Boots incidentally can't go on this list under any circumstance, as it's not a IIGS-specific title) then what about Sticky Bears, Land of the Unicorn, Math Blaster Plus, Designasaurus, Geographic Jigsaw, Kids Times II, Mario Teaches Typing, and so on? It opens the door to a large number of educational titles that offered little mini-games to encourage learning that would never get sold in the gaming section of a store.

Carmen Sandiego is a tricky title to fit. It is definitely educational and meant to teach school children, but the way it's presented (animations, music, etc) and the way it plays out make it more of a puzzle adventure game than something that dully drills you on math, reading or social study skills. I'm not sure it even does belong, but for comparison, it IS included on the list of MS-DOS games, list of Commodore 64 games, List of Apple II games (8-bit, non-GS), and List of Macintosh games. If we remove it from here, shouldn't it be removed from the other lists too? Personally I am on the fence about Carmen, but definitely disagree with Reader Rabbit making the list. I'd be interested what other people think.--Apple2gs (talk) 02:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)