Brian's Theme


If you were using a Java-enabled browser, you would see a running animation of Brian's Theme here.


What the hell is Brian's Theme? In 1980, it was one of the example Applesoft Basic programs, written by Brian Howard, on the DOS 3.3 diskette that accompanied the Apple ][ computer. I can well remember staring at it in awe for quite some time.

So when I decided to practice some Java programming, I chose to program Brian's Theme in Java. Everything is as close to the original as possible: the size of the display is 280 x 160 pixels for the graphics part of the screen, and 280 x 32 pixels for the text part at the bottom (the format of the hi-resolution graphics screen on the Apple ][), the color is green on black of course, and the timing is more or less the same as the original as well. Even the text is every pixel the Apple II "font".