CFFA3000

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One of the more popular pages on this site is my guide to coverting Apple ][gs disk images into real, working ][gs floppies. In order to ease this process and bring some life back to my old computer, this year I splurged and bought a CFFA3000 for my birthday.

CFFA3000 is an expansion card for the Apple 2 series of computers that allows you to use a standard USB flash stick or compact flash card as a storage media for all your Apple ][ disk images. Now you can take a standard Apple disk image, such as a .2MG, .DSK or .PO file, and save it to a USB stick. The USB stick can then be plugged into the CFFA3000, and, with a few settings tweaks, you can boot that disk image on your original Apple ][ hardware. Really cool!

CFFA3000 Installed

Installing the card is just a matter of opening the Apple ][, and inserting the card into an empty slot (I used slot 7). I hooked up a short USB extension cable to the card which allows me to swap out a USB stick without having to open up the computer case. The CFFA3000 even allows you to swap out the flash memory while the computer is up and running. I also have a compact flash card directly plugged in to the card. I have put a few essentials like system software and utilities on that card, but the set up program allows me to pull disk images from both the USB and compact flash at the same time.

CFFA screen

Disk images are mounted from a simple and intuitive menu system that is access via the IIgs control panel access screen. For the first time ever I have been able to run System 6 without having constantly to swap disks (I never owned a hard drive for my IIgs) and it only takes seconds to boot up. Booting system software from a floppy literally used to take minutes for me. 32MB disk images are easily created and can be use to then store all my documents like this kick ass Paintworks drawing I did of Adam Ant:

Adam Ant - Prince Charming - Paintworks Gold

The CFFA3000 is not only about IIgs software. It can also can be used to mount and run disk images of 5.25″ floppies. Now I can Lode Runner and Alpha Plot without worrying about the fragile disk media getting eaten alive by my ancient disk drives. This isn’t perfect. I have noticed that one of my favorite Apple games of all time, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, does not work when running off of the card (same disk image runs fine from booted from a floppy in the real drive).

One additional benefit is that the CFFA3000 makes it dead simple to rip physical disks, 3.5″ or 5.25″, into disk images for use on a PC emulator or the CFFA itself. I’m still getting the hang of that process. It won’t work for copy protected disks.

So far my only problem with it is that there is a limit to the amount of images you can pack on the flash media. This is somewhere around 250 disk images. But all-in-all, this is a great product and an essential add-on if you want to get serious about turning that old Apple ][ back on.

The Gorgon (6/10)

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My Halloween movie this year was The Gorgon from the Icons of Horror: Hammer Films DVD. I think I am coming to the realization that Hammer horror films just don’t click with me the way Bava and the Italian horror films do. The Gorgon, like The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, is just lacking in tension or suspense. They save the monster until far too late in the story and rely too much on boring interpersonal relationships to drive the narrative. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed watching the film and it has a handful of neat visual moments, but it just felt like overly-safe fluff. Even my nine-year-old daughter was unimpressed.

The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (5/10)

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The second film on the Icons of Horror: Hammer Films is a disappointment. It’s completely devoid of any suspense or tension build up. Somewhere in here is a good story, but it takes way too long to get to the killing and spends too much time showcasing the Egyptian props. There is a rather gruesome hand dismemberment scene near the beginning of the movie though.

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (6/10)

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One of the best DVD sets I own is the six movie Hammer Films Icons of Suspense Collection. Although I not a big fan of Hammer’s horror movies I went ahead and bought the Icons of Horror Collection based on the quality of the suspense collection. This adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was first of the four films I’ve watched from the set, and while the film was entertaining, it didn’t really deliver the goods on the horror. Its redeeming moments consisted of an exotic snake dance, lots of drugged out debauchery with Chistopher Lee and the cheesy make-up and voice modification on the actor who played Dr. Jekyll.

The Cabin in the Woods (8/10)

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This is a slasher movie with a twist. The unique thing here is that the twist is revealed in the first three minutes of the film. Sure all the clichés are there, but they are self-aware and ironic. What keeps this film interesting is the desire to find out why these kids are being put through these motions by external forces. The film isn’t scary at all and there’s a bit too much CGI gore but the witty dialogue and horror movie references made it fun to watch all the way to the end.

King’s Quest V – Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder on MS-DOS (5/10)

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Despite their flaws, I have enjoyed playing all the games in the King’s Quest series up until now (I ,II, III & IV). Unfortunately, I can’t say that I liked King’s Quest V.

King's Quest V - Warning

This is a game that I have apparently owned for Macintosh for years, but never knew it.  When I tried to install it on my ancient Mac Power PC it would not run and then promptly sold the game off on eBay (I think I got thirty bucks for it). I still wanted to the play the game, especially after finally completing King’s Quest IV. So, when it went on sale at GOG.com I promptly purchased it as part of a KQ 4-7 bundle for $3.99 (I’m still up $26.01!). As an aside, I love GOG.com, but this shopping experience was pretty bad. Firstly, their shopping cart froze when I entered my credit card info and tried to click the checkout button. I was forced to use PayPal for this purchase. Secondly, the game ran like crap within their DosBox shell. I tried tweaking everything but nothing helped the choppy sound and video. Fortunately, it also runs on ScummVM without any problems.

This is an SCI based Sierra adventure game which means improved graphical resolution and sound. The copy I bought was the CD-ROM version featuring recorded voice acting rather than text dialogs. I can’t say that it was an improvement. The voice acting is terrible. The voice of the narrator is okay, I guess, but the sound quality is on par with the garbled “Valkyre is about to die!” voice from the Guantlet arcade machine. The rest of the cast is just awkward and amateurish.

King's Quest V - Witch House

The one area where this game does shine is in its art and graphics. The images are all hand-drawn and have that lovely, blocky DOS-era look. There are no crappy 3D models or full-motion videos, just lush pixely environments and animations.

Unfortunately, the actual game play is frustrating and bad. The puzzles make no sense at all. Why is a cauldron powered by moldy cheese? Why does a tamborine make a snake slither away? I know, I know: spoiler alert! But believe me, by the time you decide eventually to play this, you will have filed these spoilers deep in your subconscious. When, forgetting you ever read this, you magically solve these puzzles, that will make two out of 260 points you didn’t need a walkthrough to achieve. Thank me later.

Also, I know dying is part of the fun of Sierra games, but the ways in which this game will kill your character are just plain unfair. There’s a desert maze which can only be passed by trial and error and dozens of deaths. There’s a boat that will sink if you don’t fix it, but nowhere in the description of the boat is there even a slight hint that it may not be seaworthy. Click the wrong spot on the screen and your character will walk off of a cliff and give you a “watch out” warning as you fall. Worst of all, it is possible to put the game in an unwinnable state very early on. These types of design decisions are what killed adventure gaming in the nineties.

Now, on to King’s Quest VI! I hear it fixes everything I just complained about above. We shall see.

Savvy Show Stoppers by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - CD (10/10)

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While technically I could say that my love of surfy, guitar-based instrumental music started when I would listen to my parents’ old Duane Eddy 45s on a cheap turntable in our basement back home, this record is the real starting point in my love of the genre. Shadowy Men had a way of taking fairly simple but catchy songs and infusing them with tons of energy and fun. While the playing is top-notch, this is a band that really excels at arrangement. Every guitar tone, found sound or “woo!” comes together perfectly. The resulting music transcends the “surf” label that they were often given and in my opinion remains unmatched (with the possible exception of Laika and the Cosmonauts who come pretty darn close to Shadowy Men quality instrumental rock).

The Longest Journey on PC (8/10)

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Fresh off of completing Broken Sword, I decided to continue my point-and-click adventure gaming with The Longest Journey. Like Nico from Broken Sword, April Ryan of TLJ has one of those early nineties reverse mullet hairdos, short in back and long in front, but that’s about where the similarities between these two games ends. TLJ is far more epic in scope with your standard video game “you must save the world from certain doom” plot. The game is massive, but it is broken up into smaller digestible chapters that could generally be completed in one sitting. Early on in the game I got stuck a few times and had to turn to the ‘net for hints, but once I got a feel for the type of puzzles to expect I was able to get through most of the puzzles on my own. The biggest help came when I realized that by hitting the ‘A’ and ‘S’ keys, I could cycle through my inventory without having to navigate through menus and icons. There were still a few times when trial and error were all I had to go on. In hindsight, I’ve really come to appreciate the subtle built in hinting system in Telltale Games’ titles like Sam & Max.

During game play, April and the other on-screen characters are low-polygon 3-D models set against pre-rendered backdrops. They must have only slightly upped the poly-count for the cut scene animation because April still looks and moves like a textured balloon animal. Grim Fandango predates this game by a year or two, but, because of its character stylization, looks leaps and bounds better.

Graphical shortcomings aside, The Longest Journey managed to engage me the whole time with its fantastical story telling and likable characters. I didn’t quite understand the need to insert F-bombs and other adult language into what should have been a safe PG-rated game. I thought it didn’t quite fit in with the dragons and whimsical tree people, but I guess that supposedly makes the game more serious and mature?