I never owned an Apple II, but my family did have a Commodore 64 when I was a kid, and I do have a soft spot for the history and evolution of computing (and computers) in general, and I was glad to read this book, for it reminded me of a lot of things. The Apple II, after all, was part of that series of personal computers on which a lot of developers cut their teeth, at a time when one still needed to dive into programming, at least a little, if one wanted to fully exploit their machine. (I’ve forgotten most of it now, and was never really good at it anyway since I was 7 and couldn’t understand English at the time… but I also tried my hand at BASIC to code a few simple games, thanks to a library book that may or may not have been David Ahl’s “101 BASIC Computer Games”, I can’t remember anymore now.)

In other words, due to a lot of these developers coding not only for the Apple II, and/or to their games being ported to other machines, C64 included, I was familiar with a lot of the games and software mentioned in Craddock’s book. Even though, 1980s and personal computer culture of the time oblige, most of what we owned was most likely pirated, as we happily copied games from each others to cassettes and 5 ¼ floppy disks on which we punched a second hole (instant double capacity! Just add water!).

A-hem. I guess the geek in me is just happy and excited at this trip down memory lane. And at discovering the genesis behind those early games which I also played, sometimes without even knowing what they were about. (So yes, I did save POWs with “Choplifter!”, and I haunted the supermarket’s PC aisle in 1992 or so in the hopes of playing “Prince of Persia”. And I had tons of fun with Brøderbund’s “The Print Shop”, which I was still using in the mid-90s to make some silly fanzine of mine. And even though that game wasn’t mentioned in the book, I was remembered of “Shadowfax”, which I played on C64, and some 30 years later, I’m finally aware that I was actually playing Gandalf dodging & shooting Nazgûls. One is never too old to learn!)

This book may be worth more to people who owned and Apple II and/or played the games it describes, but even for those who never owned that computer and games, I think it holds value anyway as a work retracing a period of history that is still close enough, and shaped the world of personal computing as we know it today. It’s also worth it, I believe, for anyone who’s interested in discovering how games (but not only) were developed at the time, using methods and planning that probably wouldn’t work anymore. All things considered, without those developers learning the ropes by copying existing games before ‘graduating’ to their own, so to speak, something that wouldn’t be possible anymore either now owing to said software’s complexity, maybe the software industry of today would be very different. And, last but not least, quite a few of our most popular post-2000 games owe a lot, in terms of gaming design, to the ones originally developed for the Apple II.

My main criticism about “Break Out” would be the quality of the pictures included on its pages. However, I got a PDF ARC to review, not a printed version, and I assumed from the beginning that compression was at fault here, and that the printed book won’t exhibit this fault. So it’s not real criticism.

Conclusion: If you’re interested in the history of computers and/or games; in reliving a period you knew as a gamer child or teenager; and/or in seeing, through examples and interviews, how developing went at that time: get this book.

Video games today are big business and may even be ‘unrecognisable’ to us old-timers who remember the blocky, text-inspired graphics of the earlier days of computing. Yet it is undeniable that today’s modern-day works of ‘gaming art’ owe their heritage to the pioneering work of hackers who cut their programming teeth on early computers such as the Apple II.

This book looks at those who created some of the Apple II’s most iconic and loved games, telling insider stories about what they did, how they did it and other interesting knowledge. It is a very engaging book, yet you don’t need to have had an Apple II to love it. Of course, if you’ve played these classic games it may be literary nirvana! The legacy of these game hackers continues to be seen today – in fact over the intervening years many of these programmers have continued to develop on other platforms too. The legacy lives on in many ways.

It is a well-researched work of love. The author’s enthusiasm shines through. The author made a wise decision in not trying to cover the entire world of Apple II gaming, instead focussing on what he considers to be games that explicitly defined the genre and time, where influence would be long-living. Of course, limitations will exist, notwithstanding the availability of willing interview subject, but still this is not a game-changer, err, so to say. Some purists may be offended that their favourite classic is missing, but you can’t please all the people all the time and this is still a good testament for a time that many would have missed.

Personally, I found the design was a bit annoying, as I read it on a tablet and it just did not feel to be ‘built for reading’ but opinions will vary and, in any case, it was worth a minor inconvenience for the book’s content. The author must be credited for producing such an engaging work and managing to leave ‘fan enthusiasm’ away from the text, so it resulted in a credible, worthy text that may appeal to a broad readership.

If you are interested in old-time computing or gaming in general, this may be worth considering, but if the price is a little too rich for you, check it out at a bookstore and see if you form a connection to it first.

Break Out, written by David L. Craddock and published by Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 9780764353222. YYYY