Filed under Mainstream coverage; Comments Off on Stranger Things teaser on the Apple II
The next Star Wars movie is a bit more than a month out, but fans aren’t waiting for its release to create art inspired by the film. In July, Wahyu "Pinot" Ichwandardi remade the trailer for The Last Jedi on an Apple II. The monochromatic, cinematic result was a sight to see.
Cita-cita waktu masih kecil di th 80an: bikin trailer Star Wars pakai komputer Apple bermonitor monochrome, baru kesampaian sekarang. pic.twitter.com/kUV28VB5pq
Stranger Things is a horror series set in the 1980s, with generous allusions and actors from that era. Reviews have often described it as a lost show that looks like it was created in the 1980s and is being discovered just now. As such, it’s fitting that the Apple II would be the medium of choice to create its teaser.
To do so, Pinot once again returned to his Apple IIc and Dazzle Draw, as detailed on Twitter.
Like most people reading this blog, I’m a Star Wars fan. Not obsessively so — I reserve that level of dedication for Star Trek. But I’m definitely one of the first people to see any new Star Wars movie, which includes Episode VIII, releasing this December 15, 2017. My enthusiasm’s been especially high after the first official trailer released this past February.
Another fan who resides at the intersection of Apple II and Star Wars fandoms is Wahyu "Pinot" Ichwandardi, and his dedication to that combination outshines us all. Using an Apple IIc, KoalaPad graphics tablet, the Dazzle Draw paint program, 44 floppy disks, and Steve Chamberlin’s Floppy Emu, Ichwandardi recreated the above trailer as 288 monochromatic 8-bit frames.
Cita-cita waktu masih kecil di th 80an: bikin trailer Star Wars pakai komputer Apple bermonitor monochrome, baru kesampaian sekarang. pic.twitter.com/kUV28VB5pq
By pressing "Play" on the above two videos simultaneously, you can see how closely Ichwandardi’s work follows the original. A follow-up tweet detailed the process and equipment Ichwandardi used in this three-week endeavor.
This masterpiece isn’t simply the result of a modern artist deciding to be bohemian by incorporating retro technology into his craft. Rather, it’s a return to form for Ichwandardi: 33 years ago, as an elementary school student, he worked the same magic on Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. While that original work no longer exists, the skills he honed on his Apple II have aged well, it seems.
My hope is that Ichwandardi will find other impressive ways to use his Apple IIc, and that we’ll see even more art coming from him soon — lest The Last Jedi be the last!
Yet I am inexplicably excited to see this film. Perhaps because it’s a mass-media manifestation of the inventor whose most famous creation my fellow Apple II users and I have celebrated for decades. Too often I’ve been disappointed by people not knowing Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with "the other Steve". Even if our hero is poorly represented, won’t it behoove us to educate the masses as to his existence?
Or maybe it’s not just Woz but more broadly the history of Apple I’m interested in. I’m finally reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, the biography released shortly after Jobs’ death in October 2011 and which I received as a Christmas gift that year. I’ll never complete the massive tome in time for the film’s release, but it’s already refreshing my memory with details that I hope to see evidenced on the silver screen.
Or maybe I relish seeing the film because I know it’ll be terrible. On the subject of ancient computers, surely nothing could be worse than my experience wanting to walk out of last month’s Computer Chess. It’s all about having proper expectation — though Apple Insider user Enigmamatic warns even that may not be enough:
I got to see this movie at a pre-screening this week and I don’t know why they are letting people see it early. It’s worse than one thinks and I went in with very low expectations. It’s poorly written with ridiculous dialogue and no exposition. Virtually the entire movie takes place with no explanation as to why anything in the movie happens. It’s just a parade of scenes that the viewer has to accept. Truly a horrible movie that was obviously pushed through production to get it out first and take advantage of Jobs’ death.
There was an occasion last year where I wrote a blog post for Apple II Bits but, prior to clicking "publish", realized the subject had a broader appeal. The same thing happened today when I started writing about the new trailer for the Steve Jobs film. Previously we saw only a clip of the movie, resulting in mixed receptions. Now that a two-minute trailer garnered two million views over the weekend, has public reception to the movie changed?
Find out by reading my Computerworld blog — but you can watch the trailer here, or see the film in theaters on August 16.
Like Gizmodo reporter Jesus Diaz, I had an initially positive reaction to this clip. I liked his disparate the personalities were, with Woz taking the time to greet a co-worker while Jobs is more interested in furthering an agenda. I liked that only one of them had an inkling of the revolution they were about to launch. And I liked that Jobs appeared to be taking advantage of Woz, which struck me as consistent with what I know of Jobs.
With that in mind, I shared the post on Facebook. It wasn’t long before other Apple II enthusiasts shared observations I’d overlooked. "Kutcher isn’t trying to pick up any vocal mannerisms… I’m sure the script is great, I liked the dialogue I heard in the clip above. I just think the actors they got are sub par in their delivery," wrote Marty Goldberg of the Electronic Entertainment Museum. Added Atari historian Curt Vendel, "If they are going to do something based on real characters, then they should actually try to nail it down better… I think iJobs is going to crash and burn because of the lacking of strong character portrayal." Even Apple II veterans Mark Simonsen and Don Worth were unimpressed.
One of my favorite comments came from Apple II game reviewer and programmer Brian Picchi, who suggested the best person to play the role of Woz is Woz. Gizmodo must’ve agreed that Woz would have some insight into Gad’s character, as they published a follow-up with Woz’s thoughts on this one clip. He was quick to point out that the scene featured in this clip never happened, though he points out such factual accuracy is unnecessary — the film is a dramatization, after all. More important is how untruthful the personalities are:
Personalities and where the ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs… A more accurate portrayal would be myself in the Homebrew Computer Club (with Steve Jobs up in another state and not aware of it) being inspired by liberal humanist academics from Berkeley and Stanford and other places speaking of these high social goals. I decided then and there to help them reach those goals by designing a computer that was affordable. I gave it away to members of this club to help them. My goal was not money or power. In fact, when Steve came down and came to the club and saw the interest, he did not propose making a computer.
Will the film fail as fully as Vendel suggests? Probably not, I think. As Jason Scott added in the Facebook thread, "Spoiler Alert: This movie is not for vintage computing nerds."
jOBS — which has official presences online, on Facebook, and on Twitter — comes out April 19 from Open Road Films. It is not to be confused with Sony Pictures’ bigger-budget adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.
As primarily an Xbox gamer, I was happy to hear this news and immediately downloaded the game, accepting of the fact that I’d be unable to load it upside-down. Up until then, I’d wondered as to the game’s genre and nature: was it best described as a sequel? A reboot? A reimagining? Having played only the ten-minute free trial, I would describe the game as a remake — and one that doesn’t capture modern gamers with its demo.
How much has Karateka changed in the last 30 years?
With an art style and musical underpinning that harken back to the classic Apple II fighting game, Karateka is a visual and aural delight. The Japanese gardens and goofy goons that our hero encounters are evocative of another time and place. There is little freedom to explore these environments, though, as the protagonist (one of three) proceeds through it on two-dimensional rails, unable to move any direction but forward.
Once he engages with a foe, the opportunity for input becomes limited to three buttons: punch, kick, and block. It is impossible to strike an enemy without first blocking his own attack, at which point his guard is lowered and he is open to a chain of attacks. In an interview with Polygon’s Samit Sarkar, Mechner describes the combat system as rhythm-based in which players "have to time your attacks to the score from Grammy-winning composer Christopher Tin". This was not my experience; my blocks were based solely on cues from the castle’s keepers — tells that they were about to strike. A successful block then let me pound the punch and kick buttons, but there seemed to be neither functional difference between the two nor incentive to experiment with a variety of combos.
In an interview with Steve Peterson, Mechner indicates that the simplistic gameplay is intentional, allowing other aspects of Karateka to take center stage:
Mechner believes Karateka is an unusual design, one that will attract a broader audience. "It’s not a fighting game in the sense of trying to rack up points, or fighting for fighting’s sake. It’s fighting in order to get to the happy ending in the story, and it’s a love story. I think we’re appealing to a slightly different audience than most fighting games," he says.
I can appreciate Jordan Mechner, as someone whose ambition has always been to write Hollywood scripts, wanting to focus on that aspect of Karateka. Storytelling has become an increasingly important part of both big-budget and indie games, with hits such as Braid, Portal, and even the BIT.TRIP series having set new milestones for their innovative and memorable plots.
But plot is also the hardest quality for a game to convey in a short demo. It is more effective to draw players in with engaging gameplay, then present them with an increasingly intricate and meaningful narrative. In that respect, the free demo I played falls flat. The only challenges I encountered in my time with Karateka was identifying a foe’s pattern and timing my blocks accordingly. With digital distribution and mobile apps, there are much more involving experiences I could get for my $10, and demos that give me more confidence in that investment than Karateka has.