Open Apple #77 (March 2018) – Kay Savetz & Carrington Vanston, Eaten By A Grue

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Kay Savetz and Carrington Vanston of the Eaten By A Grue podcast. Eaten By A Grue is a game-by-game style of podcast where the intrepid hosts are playing every Infocom game. They both play the game, then discuss it in detail, with and without spoilers. They discuss the amount of cheating required, how mapping was done, the quality of writing and puzzles, and so on. The show has a very nice structure wherein they discuss the show with no spoilers to the halfway point, so that you can stop and go play it yourself if you are so inclined. If not, you can keep listening and hear gory details of all the puzzles.

Kevin talks about getting beasts into bed, and other reasons not to play these games on real hardware. Meanwhile Carrington gets his feelies on and brags about how he has so many original copies of Infocom games that he sits on them for fun.

Meanwhile Mike and Quinn debate dubious silicon valley histories, wedge computers, and competing with other 8-bits in BASIC. Tune in to hear us malign our guests, misremember important names, and get super pedantic about connector nomenclature for no conceivable reason. You won’t want to miss a moment of the drama.

More information on everything discussed in this episode, after the jump.

• The Eaten By A Grue podcast – Listen for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.
• Zoom – A great way to play Infocom games on modern systems.
• The CPRG Book Project – A great free book that is a work-in-progress.
• Roger Wagner to keynote KansasFest – Accidentally timely information!
• WozFest DB9 -Announced, and, well… happened a while ago.
• Full BBS Documentary interviews – All the B-roll now online for listening.
• MOS Technology – The old building is entering a new chapter.
• Home-brew Apple /// – Chris Zuhar’s project marches on.
• Apple //e Intro – Harry McKracken talks about it, and shares old photos.
• Adventure Game Rockstars Live – Transcript of this historical event.
• Eamon Remastered – Another text adventure engine modernized for the web.
• FApple II Fest 2018 – Japanese Apple II gathering.
• Scart HDMI for GS – A handy solution to the IIgs’ challenging video problems.
• Apple 1 in Verilog – Get your own enhanced Apple I running on an FPGA.
• CFFA3000 Run #5 -The last(?) run is done. I hope you got one!
• Plasma 1.0 – Support for more chips, and ready to use.
• AppleWin updated – Bug fixes, administrative stuff.