How to play Apple II games

The Apple II (sometimes written Apple ][) was a very popular machine in the 80s and the early 90s. Thus, many emulators have been created and maintained over the years.

Apple II emulators

The best emulator for Windows users is AppleWin, and OpenSource software which emulates the original Apple II, Apple II+, Apple IIe and some Russian clones. No ROM is required to run the emulator. One alternative for Windows is Agat Emulator, an emulator dedicated to the Agat (a Russian clone of the Apple II), which runs also the Apple II, II+ and IIe.

Mac users can choose between Virtual ][ (not free) and OpenEmulator (OpenSource). Linux users can use the wonderful LinApple.

You may also use an Apple IIGS emulator to run Apple II games - the Apple IIGS had a 95% compatibility with its 8-bits predecessor.

Running Apple II games with AppleWin

AppleWin is very easy to use, the following video shows how to run the Oregon Trail, which comes with 2 disks. General procedure should be:

• unzip the game archive, the archive may contain several versions of the game, each of them can contain several disk archives ;
• launch AppleWin, then click the disk 1 icon on the right, and select the first disk archive ;
• if the game has other disks, click on the disk 2 icon, and select the second disk archive ;
• click on the Apple icon on the right to reboot the emulator ;
• play!