Wheeler Dealers Apple II Demonstration

Wheeler Dealers was the first game developed and released by Dan Bunten, (later known as Danielle Bunten Berry) who went on to develop such other innovative and groundbreaking games like M.U.L.E., The Seven Cities of Gold and Modem Wars. Wheeler Dealers was originally released on cassette tape in 1978 for the Apple II and an original cassette tape has been recently dumped and that is what I am running in this video on my Apple IIe. This game could be considered previously lost and is now recovered as it never seemed to make its way to (pirate) compilation disks.

Wheeler Dealers was one of the first if not the very first games that was sold in a box and with a special controller. It was also one of the first more than two player multiplayer computer games, with four player support thanks to the special controller. The controller consisted of four push buttons, each of which was used by a player to make decisions in the game. The game was not a success, selling either 50 or 150 copies, depending on the source cited.

As this game was released in 1978, it assumes you have an Apple II with the Integer ROM set. It requires an Apple II with at least 16KiB of RAM. The Apple II+ with the Applesoft ROMs was released in 1979. If you have an Apple II+ or Apple IIe you can use a Language Card and DOS 3.3 to load Integer BASIC into memory, as I do in this video. Alternatively with an Apple II+ you can use a Firmware Card containing the Integer BASIC ROM set. The tape has a short binary loader prior to the main program, which is written in BASIC, so it has to be loaded from the monitor as demonstrated here. When the monitor command is entered, you then play the tape, or in my case, start an audio file played through Audacity.

00:42 - Tape Loading Begins
01:16 - Title Screen Drawn
02:53 - Tape Loading Ends

Fortunately you do not need the special controller to play the game, as joystick will work. Each button on the special controller corresponds to one of the four joystick/paddle inputs, so for two players pressing Up on the stick will signal Player 1's input and pressing Left on the stick will signal Player 2's input. Support for three or four players requires a second controller or pair of paddles and some way to connect them to the internal Game I/O socket in the Apple II/II+/IIe. Each button is wired to a low-value resistor in the special controller. The regular pushbutton inputs of the Apple II are not used because there are only three of them. After you input your player names the game is controlled solely by the special button controller. When a Yes/No decision is called for, a short press of the button indicates No, but holding the button down turns the decision into a Yes.

If you are familiar with M.U.L.E., you will see some early hints of that game in this short demonstration of Wheeler Dealer's gameplay. Auctions take place in real time. Each player should probably be taking notes of their financial position so they have an idea of what they can afford. The value of each player's investments fluctuate with each turn. Like with M.U.L.E. each player may be affected by a random element at the end of each turn.

I am recording the Apple Speaker with a microphone, the game's simple beeps are recorded with along with keystrokes.