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What is the Apple IIGS? Launcher (Alex Lee)
| Year | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Alex Lee / whatisthe2gs |
| Developers | Alex Lee; mass-storage patches by Antoine Vignau, qkumba and Enrico |
| RAM Requirement | 1.25 MB |
| Control | Keyboard menu |
| Other Requirements | A storage device that presents seven SmartPort units at once (CFFA3000, MicroDrive Turbo, CFFA 1/2, BOOTi, SCSI). Not for a single-slot floppy emulator. |
| System 6 Compatible | Boots its own ProDOS 8 front end |
| Hard Drive Installable | It is a set of hard drive images |
| Release Status | Freeware, v0.8.1 |
About
Alex Lee announced the Launcher at Virtual KansasFest in July 2023 (the news went out through ninjaforce.com) as "Total Replay for GS games": a ProDOS 8 front end (LAUNCH.SYSTEM) on a boot volume, A_Boot.po, and six 32 MB data volumes (B_Action Games through G_Games with Path Mods) that together hold a curated library of IIGS games and demos, each one installed with the right version of the OS for it. Pick a title, and the Launcher boots a tailored system (Taifun-style SYSTEM, SYSTEM.1/2/3 folders) and starts it. Version 0.8.0 in July 2025 added twelve games and seventeen demos, among them Sword of Sodan, Polygonia, FillMaze, Happy Friday, GS Underground, the GS<>IRC demo, SHKalid, Beam, Synchro Cyclo, Plasma and XAOH, the Lower Planes and Spy Network demos; 0.8.1 added Time Pilot and colour menus.
How it relates to this site: the Launcher is the same curator's library in a form that boots on real hardware with a seven-unit storage device. This archive overlaps it heavily (the demos on the F_Demos volume are the seeds of several pages here) but is organised the other way round, one page per title with history, downloads, Boot in browser and the CoGS stream. CoGS presents fewer SmartPort units than the Launcher needs, so the seven-image set cannot be mounted as a whole on the card; the individual titles stream from the catalog instead. If you own a CFFA3000, MicroDrive or BOOTi, the Launcher is the nicest way to run this library on the real thing.
Downloads
Screenshots
