RetroGaming Filter: Microsoft on the IIe?!

September 16, 2006 1:07 PM

Remembering Junior High School Computer lab and trying to remember (and possibly find) games Microsoft may have put out for the Apple IIe.

I can't be sure if Microsoft was the one to put them out, but I faintly remember this logo or a similar one on the cases.

The games were put out in a series, though weren't related by anything other than the branding. I remember that my Junior High School had two bookshelves full of them near their Apple IIe's (all two of them). The games were released on 5 1/2 floppies and were boxed in white clamshell cases, similar to what kid's VHS tapes came in. The games were vaguely educational in nature and there were at least 4 or 5 games included on each release. (I don't remember if there were multiple discs, only that there was a menu for picking which game you wanted to play)

One game I remember involved you being turned into an ant & running into a superstrong female ant named Arnolda.

Does anyone else remember these, or did my time as a Junior High library geek expose me to WAY too much glue?

posted by aristan to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I believe you're thinking of MECC. My elementary school had a collection of their edugames on Apple IIgs machines in the early 90s. Wikipedia found this. It sounds like they were eventually bought by The Learning Company, which AFAIK is still around and making edutainment games today. Hope this helps. :)
posted by Alterscape at 1:19 PM on September 16, 2006

Response by poster: I remember the MECC games, but I don't think these were published by them.

We started playing the MECC games in the fourth grade... ah, my first introduction to computers and pirated software all at once. The school never bought enough games for the whole class and the teachers would make copies.
posted by aristan at 1:29 PM on September 16, 2006

Micropose had a very similiar logo but they made mostly simulation games.
posted by Mitheral at 2:54 PM on September 16, 2006

Certainly they did.



I tried to preserve the color artifacts from the Apple ][ 3-bit hires color scheme - you can see from the blue and orange jaggies that MICROSOFT is in White2, and Olympic Decathlon with its purple and green jaggies is White1.

Hope this was useful.
posted by ikkyu2 at 3:22 PM on September 16, 2006

Best answer: I am fairly certain you are referring to Scholastic's Microzine, and "Escape from Antcatraz" in particular. Somewhat surprisingly, there is very little info about Microzine on the web.
posted by trevyn at 7:50 PM on September 16, 2006

Here's a list of games I remember for the Apple IIe. I'm not sure which ones might have been released by MS, if any.

Odell Lake, Spellevator, Number Cruncher (muncher?), Oregon Trail, All The Right Type
posted by graytona at 3:50 PM on September 17, 2006

Response by poster: trevyn, Thank you! That appears to be it.

I think that either I'm combining the logo from something else with that one, or Microzine had more than one logo.
posted by aristan at 9:47 PM on September 17, 2006

Were your clamshell cases thick, i.e. not the official Microzine ones shown on that page? My gut instinct is that somebody repackaged them somewhat so they didn't get beat up by all you kids, and maybe those cases had Microsoft logos or something on them. Or maybe you had both Microsoft stuff and Microzine in your lab, and you remember the Microzine content and the Microsoft logo?
posted by trevyn at 11:02 AM on September 18, 2006