@10vorne Making a .dsk requires normalizing/cracking the disk (if protected), something that is not in my skill set. Suggest taking a look at the 4am collection from @a2_4am which has thousands of cleanly cracked images and is updated regularly.

@a2_4am This is an awesome achievement. So much digital history being saved and made accessible to all.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@a2_4am/115924184016966918

I've been working with @A2_Canada to image, verify, and provide complete metadata for a number of scenario disks by Strategic Studies Group. SSG was an Australian video game developer+publisher that specialized in hex-based wargames. They had a multi-year print run of a magazine ("Run 5") devoted to these games and the community that centered around them. The magazine included type-in variations that nobody actually wanted to type in. They quickly started selling the variations on floppy disk.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension.woz

https://archive.org/details/wozaday_The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Banzai

Thanks to LoGo for the disk!

#wozaday #AppleII #retrocomputing

@Jage Do you remember anything else? Anything about the title? The description is unfortunately a bit too generic - there were a lot of educational titles for the Apple II.

2025 was a good year in Apple II software archiving. I imaged just under 100 titles, including a number of unique, unpreserved, and in some cases, unknown games and programs. Here's a link to everything from the last year, in A2R format:

https://archive.org/details/A2_Canada_Just_Flux_It_2025

Oh this is fun. The first four (the only four?) issues of the Adventure Construction Set Newsletter, from 1986.

Oh hey I found a couple of SSG scenario disks

@fskornia This is actually multi-player, 2-12 (!) players. I'm doubtful that this specific game would have been an inspiration for anything, given how little known it was, but the space trading game genre has many other titles (e.g. the Trade Wars series) that came well before 1988.

@SeanGugler You bet!

@tristan Doesn't seem to be. I mean, same genre and there are similarities but this looks to be its own game. Also this is multi-player.

This is Master Trader, a commercially-released game published by Argon Games in 1981 for the Apple II and the TRS-80. The game is essentially non-existent, with one mention in a 1982 issue of Ares magazine. It has now been imaged after 44 years.

2024 wasn't nearly as exciting for me as 2023 in terms of Apple II flux imaging. Still, there were a few significant highlights such as On-Line Systems' extremely rare Trapshoot, Dragonfire by Magicware, a whole pile of Simulations Canada originals, and a long list of terrible-but-unpreserved titles by ALA Software. Here's a link to everything I imaged last year:

https://archive.org/details/A2_Canada_Flux_Energy_2024

Up to no good as usual, and I noticed this. So we have a to-the-month timeline for the Rhiannon games - and a list of systems for which they were released, or at least intended to be.

@txgx42 I had a similar disk a couple of years ago. John wrote some custom code to recover it but some data couldn't be reached with a 35/36 track drive. Sadly we never completed the recovery. It was a one-of or nearly one-of disk.

@txgx42 😂

Mail's here. Some quality programs from ALA Software.

@txgx42 Damn...

@a2_4am You're on a roll!

Boy howdy there sure is a lot of software.