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HopeHoops

(47,675 posts)
Fri Dec 9, 2011, 01:22 PM Dec 2011

Historical note: Does anyone remember the original "Castle Wolfenstein" on the Apple II?

As far as I know, it was the first game to use voice simulation. A buddy of mine worked on it. The way they did it was to use the cassette port (remember cassette tapes? This is a song about cassette tapes.) and pipe in speech. They digitized it and just threw it back at the speaker. The sound sucked, but so did cassette storage.

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foo_bar

(4,193 posts)
1. I remember wondering why the nazis had so many chests filled with Liebfraumilch
Fri Dec 9, 2011, 04:48 PM
Dec 2011

I think it prefigured Grand Theft Auto, or at least it's the first video game I remember where the goal was to hold people up at gunpoint and steal all their Lebkuchen or whatever.

Systematic Chaos

(8,601 posts)
2. I played that on our school Apple II's in junior high.
Sun Dec 11, 2011, 03:59 AM
Dec 2011

The speech was even worse than limited amount of speech which had been implemented in arcade games up to that point.

But Wolfenstein was a hell of a game for its day.

uriel1972

(4,261 posts)
4. My teacher parents would borrow their high schools Apple II for a week or two in the holiday's
Sun Dec 11, 2011, 09:14 PM
Dec 2011

I think the most we got to play was Lemonade.

 

HopeHoops

(47,675 posts)
6. C=64 also had the most killer sound chip available.
Wed Dec 21, 2011, 10:01 AM
Dec 2011

The Apple II relied on clicking the speaker to make sounds. The C=64 had a 4-wave sound chip with a shitload of functions. I wrote an assembly language program to map the entire chip onto the keyboard. It took a while to get used to playing it, but it was one hell of a synthesizer!

 

Ter

(4,281 posts)
7. Berzerk was the first game I heard that used digitized speech
Sat Dec 31, 2011, 02:49 AM
Dec 2011

"Chicken! Fight like a robot!"

That was around 1981. Probably slightly before Castle Wolfenstein.

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