Apple IIGS - Apple II Developers

Apple II Developers

John Carmack, founder of id Software, started his career by writing commercial software for the Apple IIGS. The same is true of John Romero and Tom Hall. Wolfenstein 3D, based on the Apple II originated game Castle Wolfenstein, came full circle back to the Apple II series when it was released for the Apple IIGS in 1994.

Bob Yannes, creator of the SID synthesizer chip used in the Commodore 64, went on to design the Ensoniq 5503 DOC synthesizer used in the Apple IIGS.

Two mainstream video games, Zany Golf and The Immortal, originated as Apple IIGS-specific games that were later ported to several platforms due to their immense popularity.

Naughty Dog, the well known PlayStation game developer, started as an Apple IIGS game software company. Pangea Software, one of the best-known and popular Macintosh game developers, also started as an Apple IIGS game software company.

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Apple IIGS developed its own demoscene very similar in vein to that of the Amiga and Atari ST, albeit much smaller and lesser known. The most popular demo group was called FTA (Free Tools Association) and was from France. Two of their demos (Nucleus and Modulae) were very popular and were used by Apple itself and by retailers to show off the computer.

Nintendo adopted the 65C816 as the basis for the custom CPU in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Many early SNES programmers used the Apple IIGS as a SNES game development platform to write code on.

Prototype of the MEGA II chip was a large board containing mostly discrete logic parts called "El Grande".