Today's casual photos (shown below), this time taken with my Canon camera, is of Eric Knopp's Orbitron, published by Sirius software for the Apple II in 1981. The game was written in Assembly Language (versus the less professional BASIC) and required a 48K Apple II or II+, which was somewhat hefty for the time. The game's graphics were drawn using Sirius's E-Z Draw, first published in 1980. As you can see, this came in packaging not only common to Sirius at the time, but also the industry at large, in this case a small cardboard folder in shrinkwrap (the other common variety being a small cardboard folder or insert in a plastic zipper bag). The instructions, which aren't shown, are actually on the interior of the folder. I didn't want to remove what is most likely the original shrinkwrap, even though it's damaged. I'll likely transfer this to a plastic zipper bag for even more protection (and hey, that's still fairly authentic).

Anyway, as for Orbitron itself, you can play it yourself in your browser, here. It's a noisy, challenging and fairly fun game of essentially shooting through a series of rotating shields. Use the 1 and 2 keys to rotate your ship and the spacebar to fire. Enjoy!

I'm sure this is already common knowledge (I haven't researched this yet or have much interest to at the moment), but apparently another new Leisure Suit Larry game is in development. Listening to the Howard Stern show this morning on Sirius Satellite Radio heading in to work, co-host and comedian Artie Lange is apparently doing a recording session today for a character named "Big Al". He didn't disclose what he's getting paid for what is expected to be around 3 hours or so of work, but apparently it's in the range of "what a person in his 20's makes in a year" (go perspective, go!). It was kind of funny to hear how little all on the Howard Stern knew of Leisure Suit Larry (and obviously gaming in general), but at least Howard himself was vaguely familiar with the basic premise of the original classic computer adventure games in trying to "enlighten" Artie and the crew. I'm sure this new one is just like the middling 3D "reimagining" of a few years back for PC and consoles, but it's still interesting to get a mini and unexpected behind-the-scenes-during-the-making-of from an unexpected place...