Remembering Duane Blehm

The work of these two (Duane Blehm and John Calhoun) formed my initial opinion of the Macintosh. A fast monochrome environment where you could blit entire images as quickly as sprites. World class audio - Glider 4 had a twangy bass soundtrack and recognizable sounds for every little thing around the game environment. In 1991, coming from the TRS-80 and Apple II it was a revelation.

I believe Duane's About box in Stunt Copter even had an "OffScreen BitMap" button which laid out all the "sprites" in front of you.

That they are both Kansans and have a touch of the surreal in their respective titles also was not lost on me. Ended up reading the book, "PrairyErth," to understand Kansas better.

Something about the early Mac seemed to draw these folks. It attracted a different type of artist than the Amiga; slower paced, more surreal. If not for the Mac, I wonder if the world would have had Cyan/Myst.

The density of "nonetheless" is fairly high in that essay.

Three times in about five paragraphs.

Nonetheless, it was good.