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Mac-only or Mac-best Games

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First post, by RJDog

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So now that I have a Mac G4 in my collection, I need some ideas for games to get for it other than the three that I have. So, I'm looking for suggestions of some good Mac games selection and, more specifically, games that are either exclusive to Mac or best experienced on Mac... and moreso looking at 1990-2000. The poster child for this critera, at least to me, is Myst. Yes, I could play this on my Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 machine as it was also released for Windows as well as Mac, but it was developed on and for Mac, so it is (subjectively) best experienced on Mac. I also have Nine: The Last Resort and Critical Path. Both, again, have Windows releases, but developed on/for Mac.

What are your experiences with games on Mac, and/or suggestions for my above critera?

Reply 1 of 24, by notsofossil

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As for my own suggestions, there are of course Windows/DOS ports, but for Mac specifics I always enjoyed the shareware scene back in the day. Pangea soft's Cro-Mag Rally, Bugdom 1 and 2, Otto Matic, then there's the lesser known stuff like Snowball Run and Gridz, Candy Crisis and Jewel of Arabia.

(Edit by Dominus: abandonware link removed)

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Reply 2 of 24, by BinaryDemon

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Which games are better on a Macintosh?

Might want to take a look at this thread.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 3 of 24, by Jo22

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Interesting thread, thanks for it. 😀
I'm fairly new to the Mac, but I've read a lot about it in the Windows 3.1 days.
For me, System 6/7 were its counterpart and I always had been curious about the platform.
I guess it was also because of films like Hackers or The Net that made it really interesting.

The fairly new WWW and the built-in networking/audio capabilities of the Macintosh platform of the time were also interesting, I think.
As far as gaming goes, I always felt that the Macintosh platform had higher quality standards (from a technical point of view).
Be it because it had nice text fonts when playing classic interactive fiction games from the 80s,
or because it had a default resolution that was friendlier to the eyes than the usual 320x200 pixelation
that was a de-facto standard on the PC platform of the time (in DOS).

Anyway, I'm not going to start a PC vs Mac debate. I like both. 😀
In fact, if I had known about SoftPC/SoftWindows in the 90s already, I *might* have had made a move to the Mac platform then.
The chances weren't bad for it. MacOS, or System as it was usually called, was running on several clone systems then,
making them an interesting alternative to the typical Personal Computers of the time.
Unfortunately, things went different and I had the, um, "pleasure" to experience computing of a Windows centric world.
Looking backwards, I partly sad, partly happy about the outcome. Beeing a tinkerer as I am, I guess it wasn't that bad that
I had a reason to fiddle with lots of broken PCs and learning about how to fix electronics. 😀
Sure, I could have had run Win98 in emulators om Macs, too, but it wouldn't have been that of a challenge. 😉

Myst, as you mentioned in your initial post, was one of the first games that made aware of the Macintosh as a game's platform.
Before that, all I had ever heard and seen of a Mac were a few reviews in old magazines like Happy Computer, CHIP and Byte Magazine.
And an old phone book / ZIP code book on a diskette! 😁 (Found it in my dad's drawer when I was little.
It was lying there among other stuff like sharware CD-ROMS from 1992, mostly dedicated torwards the all new Windows 3.0).

To come back to the topic, as a rule of thumb I recommend playing Mac games if..
a) they are adventure games from the early-to-mid 80s
b) if they are ports of interesting Windows 3.1 games

These are just my thoughts, though.
I'm pretty sure there are some great Mac games I don't know of yet. 😉

PS:Also interesting is the game System's Twilight (for System 6) and the thread Macintosh instead of PC for retro gaming?

(Edit: Sorry for my bad English and the long post, too. Also, I hope my post doesn't come over too, uhm, egocentric.
I'm not that of a person; rather, story telling -and staying polite (respecting etiquette) at the same time-
is rather difficult for me some times, especially in English. I hope you don't mind. 😊)

Edit: Some typos fixed. 😅
Edt: Even more typos fixed. 😵

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 24, by Dominus

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Please do not post links to Warez or Abandonware on Vogons. These are sadly not legal so they aren't allowed here!

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 5 of 24, by RJDog

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BinaryDemon wrote:

Which games are better on a Macintosh?

Might want to take a look at this thread.

Wow, cool, this is 99% what I was looking for... I never check out the emulation forum 😊

Reply 6 of 24, by yawetaG

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Just keep in mind that you likely can't run all the games from the period you specified on your G4. Some games require specific Mac OS versions and won't run on later versions. Classic on Mac OS X can't run all software for classic Mac OS (it is basically equivalent to Mac OS 9.2.2 with some I/O and device support related limitations). Games prior to 1994-1995 also were for 68k Macs, not PowerPC.

Reply 8 of 24, by dr.zeissler

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I love my PM7300 because it is simply a fantastic machine.

I upgraded it from 200Mhz PPC to 500Mhz PPC and added:
- PCI(1) Fast IDE-Controller and a 40GB IDE drive (CD-Rom is still SCSI)
- PCI(2) 3dfx Banshee VT-MP750(8MB) for 3dfx and fast 2D (OpenGL is bad on VT/MP 3dfx Cards) but 2D is very fast and Image Quality is extraordinary.
- PCI(3) PC-Card 166Mhz Pentium, ATI Mach64VT, Vibra16c, 64MB

This machine is a killer. I can Play hundreds of Dosgames in native Dos. All early PPC games run very well too and all 68K mac-stuff is working also.

Simply great 😀

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 9 of 24, by cxm717

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If you like FPS games, I would recommend Marathon. The first one was mac only IIRC. Yes, I know about aleph one but what's better than playing the original on a mac? I need to get an old mac to play it one of these days. It's by far my favorite mac game.

Reply 10 of 24, by notsofossil

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yawetaG wrote:

Just keep in mind that you likely can't run all the games from the period you specified on your G4. Some games require specific Mac OS versions and won't run on later versions. Classic on Mac OS X can't run all software for classic Mac OS (it is basically equivalent to Mac OS 9.2.2 with some I/O and device support related limitations). Games prior to 1994-1995 also were for 68k Macs, not PowerPC.

An iMac G4 that can dual boot Mac OS 9 and X (rather than X and Classic Environment) along with Mini vMac for 68k games works pretty well. It's kind of like dual-booting Win9x and XP for Windows and DOS, it'll cover most but not all games. The only problem there is Mini vMac for Mac OS 9 is B&W only. If you want color, you need something like Basilisk II for Mac OS X.

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Reply 11 of 24, by yawetaG

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notsofossil wrote:
yawetaG wrote:

Just keep in mind that you likely can't run all the games from the period you specified on your G4. Some games require specific Mac OS versions and won't run on later versions. Classic on Mac OS X can't run all software for classic Mac OS (it is basically equivalent to Mac OS 9.2.2 with some I/O and device support related limitations). Games prior to 1994-1995 also were for 68k Macs, not PowerPC.

An iMac G4 that can dual boot Mac OS 9 and X (rather than X and Classic Environment) along with Mini vMac for 68k games works pretty well. It's kind of like dual-booting Win9x and XP for Windows and DOS, it'll cover most but not all games. The only problem there is Mini vMac for Mac OS 9 is B&W only. If you want color, you need something like Basilisk II for Mac OS X.

With emphasis on "that can dual boot" 😉 Later G4's cannot boot into Mac OS 9, despite having Classic available (assuming OS =< 10.4.11).
But beyond that any G4-based Mac will do.

Reply 12 of 24, by Jo22

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^I heard the Mac community is working on a modified OS 9 that works on unsupported models (or was it in reverse, editing the firmware ?)
Last time I checked, they apparently got it to work -or rather to boot up to the welcome screen- on the G4-based Mac Minis and some G5 machines.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 13 of 24, by dr.zeissler

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I can confirm that the modified os9 is working native on my g4-mini.
My main problem is that the soundoutput can not be controlled. Only with additional hard that has it's own mixer it is possible to control the volume. Otherweise it's always 100%.
The G4-Mini is nice, but I recommend a lower PPC that can be fittet with a PC-Dos-Card for maximal compatiblity to hundreds of Games, either for MAC and PC/DOS.

I Think we need an additional listung:

1. PC only titles
2. Mac only titles
3. Games that were on both but are better on the mac due to higher-resolution or other thing.

1. PC only
- Turrican2 Dos-Remake

2. Mac only
- Super WingCommander

3. Better on mac:
- Wolf3D/Spear3D
- OutOfThisWorld
- AnotherWorld
- Yeager
- Wolfpack
- Prince1+2
- tbc.

Last edited by dr.zeissler on 2018-06-22, 11:07. Edited 1 time in total.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 14 of 24, by RJDog

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So going through games that are developed on/for Mac, I'm realizing that a lot (almost all) games that I play in Windows 3.1 are actually ports of Mac games. I always questioned people who said "there are no good games for Windows 3.1" ... come to find out my beloved games representing my reason for having Windows 3.1 are actually ports from Mac (the ones I already listed above... Myst, Critical Path, Nine: The Last Resort). I think my usage of Windows 3.1 will probably lessen once I get my G4 going...

Reply 16 of 24, by Intel486dx33

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I have a G4 too. After allot of trial and error I figured out that all I have to do is partitioned my hard-drive with one partition and install Mac OS tiger and then copy into it the Mac OS 9.1 system folder. Then in control panel setup to run 9.1 on startup along with tiger.

Now you can run old games.

http://macintoshgarden.org/

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Reply 17 of 24, by dr.zeissler

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"Booting CLASSIC" under OSX is not a good idea. Especillay games have lot's of issues with that.
It's by far the best to get a mac that can natively boot into OS9 and it is even better to get a
machine that can natively boot os7/8/9.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 18 of 24, by Jo22

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To archive System 7 support is more difficult. It usually requires a beige Mac or older Power Book.
However, it has best support for games from the Windows 3.1 era.
A machine with a Motorla 68030/40+FPU is nice for playing such games nativly.

For OS8 support, an original iMac or PowerMac G3 Blue/White isn't bad either.
The oldest OSes they did support was 8.5 or 8.6, I remember.
Not sure if they required an Old World firmware or not, though.
I did the upgrades I found on the mac OS X Cheetah and Puma CDs quite quickyl after I got them. 😉

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 19 of 24, by skitters

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Three little-known adventure games that were Mac-only:

Derrat Sorcerum
Nightfall
The Castle

Derrat Sorcerum gameplay video on YouTube
Review of Nightfall at Mr Bill's
Review of The Castle at JustAdventure

The only reason I know about these is that I had a friend who used a Mac and was an adventure game fan.