Such great memories of playing PoP in my teens! I wish I could get as excited about some new game/software as I did back then. In those days there really were some titles that would come along and just knock your socks off. Doesn't happen much anymore...a sign of the times I guess.
I can't reply to the parent anymore, but I just went back to HN after a week of busy work: thanks a lot for the details, jmechner, that's quite interesting :)
I don't have enough time on my hands to dig into the old source code (nor I am particularly interested in the Apple II), but I'm glad to know it's available, should I or some others be suddenly curious to dig in. I much prefer such code to be opened than to be lost to history!
So, it's a bit like register banks [1] or an MMU, where you have to page in and out part of the address space, I guess?
I've seen some people [1] argue that we needed less powerful machines and to break backwards compatibility, for people to get creative again. Maybe there is some truth to that?
Thanks for taking time to share!