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Comment by michaelpinto | Hacker News Reader

The child who wrote that article is clearly too young to realize that the Apple II was a HUGE gaming platform back in the day: http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/

"In the 1980's (and into the mid 1990's) the Apple II computer series was one of the premier game systems in the computer industry. Despite it's graphical and sound shortcomings (especially with the 8 bit series machines), programmers always found ways to make the best games possible for the II series. In it's heyday, Apple II supporters claimed the Apple II had some 10,000 programs for it and many of those were games."

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Indeed, and where would gaming be without the late night pizzas?!

I therefore nominate Mark Angela, the CEO of Pizza Express, as the gaming giant of the century.

No Radim, you had the whole thing wrong, is not Mark Angela going into the gaming industry list, is Steve Jobs being among the most important people for the Pizza Industry.

The fact that Apple built general purpose computers does not make the head of the company the most important figure of gaming.

Yup the Apple II and clones where kind of a half decent gaming platform then. Except only for rich kids, because nobody else could afford one. At least here in good old europe i would go with commodore or atari.

Apple ][ was Woz's machine, though.

No more than the C64 or (arguably) the Amiga, though. There have always been games for every platform but I think the author's point is that if you want to look at what's been transformative in gaming (at least in the US), it's the rise of NES, the ubiquity of good computer based games (which for the past 20 years has been dominated by Windows PCs, not Apple), and more recently casual gaming. And for my money, if you want to talk about casual gaming (which the iPhone is now catalyzing much more rapidly than the predecessors), I'm sorry but it's Adobe flash and web based games that started to create that market. iPhone is probably taking it further, but for anyone who still thinks Steve Jobs belongs on this list - what is your favorite Apple created iPhone game for that platform? Or even the Apple 2? Personally, I liked Mystery House, Canonball Blitz, and all the Infocom games.

Back in day PC's were a bigger platform and Mr. Gates name is not in the list.

He's also too stupid and biased to get around his idea that Macs can "barely run" most PC games out there.

Still buried in the Windows gamer mentality about Macs being slow. Random gamers chosen from the street would be more qualified to write a Forbes column than this punk.

If Apple was such a HUGE gaming platform, why was the company completely ignored when it came to major titles? It's only recently that studios have started investing in Apple ports, and so far the ports are late compared to the premium platforms (consoles or PC).

In conclusion, Apple II's popularity is an interest factoid, but not relevant to the article. It is barely a blip on the radar of gaming history.

The Apple II was released in 1977, and it was popular until it was killed in the eighties. Same with Amiga, Commodore, Atari, etc.

And why was the company ignored by major titles later? Well, the company was a mess, and I could argue that Apple was virtually ignored by everyone except graphic designers and musicians after Jobs left...

You realize that the Apple 2 was CLI and predates Windows right?

How is that relevant to the discussion? Let's recap: X says Apple II was a huge success in the gaming community, I say that the success was all but forgotten today and it couldn't have had an impact in the poll.

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