The 3 best Apple II games

Ranked by the scores that magazines gave these games when they came out. The list draws on 547 review scores of 414 Apple II games; 25 of them have enough reviews to be ranked.

#	Game	Platform	Year	Score
1	Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar	Apple II	1985	96.7
2	Wizardry III: The Legacy of Llylgamyn	Apple II	1983	95.8
3	La Bête du Gévaudan	Apple II	1985	93.3

Highly rated, with fewer than 3 reviews

48 Apple II games have a score of 90 or more, but from only one or two reviews, and no Metacritic score.

Game	Platform	Year	Score
Planetfall	Apple II	1983	100
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord	Apple II	1981	100
Alter Ego	Apple II	1986	100
Archon II: Adept	Apple II	1984	100
Archon: The Light and the Dark	Apple II	1984	100
Aztec	Apple II	1982	100
Cartels & Cutthroats	Apple II	1981	100
ChipWits	Apple II	1985	100
Congo	Apple II	1982	100
Germany 1985	Apple II	1982	100
Infidel	Apple II	1983	100
Microwave	Apple II	1982	100
Monty Plays Scrabble	Apple II	1981	100
Napoleon's Campaigns 1813 and 1815	Apple II	1981	100
Operation Apocalypse	Apple II	1981	100
Pursuit of the Graf Spee	Apple II	1982	100
RCFS II	Apple II	1984	100
RDF 1985	Apple II	1983	100
Reversal	Apple II	1981	100
Robot Odyssey I: Escape from Robotropolis	Apple II	1984	100
Sargon III	Apple II	1983	100
Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative	Apple II	1985	100
Stationfall	Apple II	1987	100
Tass Times in Tonetown	Apple II	1986	100
The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown	Apple II	1985	100
The Chessmaster 2000	Apple II	1986	100
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy	Apple II	1984	100
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress	Apple II	1982	100
Winter Games	Apple II	1985	100
Wishbringer	Apple II	1985	100
Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds	Apple II	1982	100
Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom	Apple II	1988	95
Flight Simulator II	Apple II	1983	91.5
Night Mission Pinball	Apple II	1982	91.5
Odin	Apple II	1982	91.5
Skyfox	Apple II	1984	91.5
Summer Games II	Apple II	1985	91.5
SunDog: Frozen Legacy	Apple II	1984	91.5
The American Challenge: A Sailing Simulation	Apple II	1986	91.5
Zaxxon	Apple II	1983	91.5
Fahrenheit 451	Apple II	1984	90
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny	Apple II	1987	90
Ballyhoo	Apple II	1986	90
Blue Powder Grey Smoke	Apple II	1987	90
Bureaucracy	Apple II	1987	90
Champions of Krynn	Apple II	1990	90
Dragonworld	Apple II	1984	90
The Magic Candle	Apple II	1989	90

How the ranking works

The scores are the ones magazines gave when the games came out, all converted to a 0–100 scale. Only one review per magazine counts for a game: the most recent.
A game's score is half the average, half the median of its magazine reviews. A title opens the game's page on uvlist.net; a score opens the report with every review behind it.
A game needs at least 3 magazine reviews to be ranked. With equal scores, the game with more reviews comes first.
Metacritic already sums up many reviews, so it is never mixed with the magazines: it is used only for games with fewer than 3 magazine reviews, as their only score.
Each list shows every game with a score of 90 or more. Games with fewer than 3 reviews and no Metacritic score are shown apart: their score is promising, but rests on one or two opinions.

The lists are rebuilt each time reviews are added. To filter by genre, year, magazine or publisher, explore all the scores in the report.

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