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Pretty much any 3D accelerated Classic Mac OS game.

As far as I'm aware there are no emulators for Classic Mac OS that provide emulation of the hardware accelerated APIs used by Macs of the era.

Also the many games that had ports to thus unemulated hardware accelerated renderers like vQuake for Rendition Verite and Tomb Raider for ATI Rage Cards using the ATI CIF API. Some games like Mechwarrior 2 and NASCAR Racing seemingly got ports to every API every made. S3 MeTaL is also unemulated as far as I'm aware which is a shame because it can do some unique things in UT99 in regards to texturing that the other APIs that game could use wouldn't.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-06-05, 19:51:

Pretty much any 3D accelerated Classic Mac OS game.

As far as I'm aware there are no emulators for Classic Mac OS that provide emulation of the hardware accelerated APIs used by Macs of the era.

Also the many games that had ports to thus unemulated hardware accelerated renderers like vQuake for Rendition Verite and Tomb Raider for ATI Rage Cards using the ATI CIF API. Some games like Mechwarrior 2 and NASCAR Racing seemingly got ports to every API every made. S3 MeTaL is also unemulated as far as I'm aware which is a shame because it can do some unique things in UT99 in regards to texturing that the other APIs that game could use wouldn't.

It was my intention to only cover x86/ibm compatibles, but it I think it would be interesting to include other platforms. Are there any exclusive titles that were hardware accelerated for classic Mac? I haven't looked into mac emulation, what is the effective cut off point where mac software remains unemulated?

I want to keep the discussion closer to the games rather than the specific way that games was rendered or presented. The reason being that wrappers and emulation are imperfect, so by a very narrow definition any game that can't run on modern windows without them is also "lost". Also, unique graphics APIs have already been discussed in depth in other threads like this one 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D).

If the version of the game on mac or another platform is substantially different in more than presentation though, I think that is worth documenting.

You mentioned the S3 API. The S3 virge had a game pack that included several games. Has the S3 virge API been emulated? Did these games support software rendering or other APIs (or see a release on another platform)?

The NV1 is another interesting topic... I don't believe it was ever emulated. Although the card only saw rereleases of saturn games, which can be emulated with a saturn emulator.

I found one. Icehawk released with the Matrox Impression.

Youtube video of gameplay : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUvohZp6wT0&t=3s

You can find a copy of the game include in the MGA 3D SuperPack : http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1158&menustate=0

When I attempt to run the game in dosbox it just errors out saying "No MGA device found 1". Attached screenshot.

I couldn't find a reference to this game in the Dosbox compatibility list. No reason to believe it would run any better on another emulator. This one is currently unemulatable.

The other games on the disk won't run either, but there are versions of the game that run just fine on any DOS PC

Creep Clash - Dosbox - https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=1384&letter=C
Sento - Dosbox - https://youtu.be/KLrd9WPgPm4
spectre MGA (aka spectre vr) - Dosbox - https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=1445&letter=S

As it turns out, none of the NV1 games are actually exclusive to NV1. The graphics comparison thread has videos for some of the supported games, I tried out a couple more in PCem and I was able to get all of them installed and running on a voodoo 3/ slot 1 configuration.

(When I say not exclusive, I mean you can play the game without the card, not that it supports other 3d apis)

I did run into some graphical corruption in daytona USA, but I believe it's possible to fix it with patches.

I want to nominate another game: Caribbean Disaster
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=764&letter=C

It would appear it had a much wider distribution on Amiga but it also saw a DOS release. I suspect it might have only been sold in Europe (all the copies I have seen appear to be German).
https://www.mobygames.com/game/7996/caribbean-disaster/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/225239-carib … -disaster/media
http://www.totaldoscollection.org/nugnugnug/allCDs.txt

Looking in all the usual places, I haven't been able to track down a copy to try. Not clear if this games is just really rare, or legitimately broken.

It could work in PCem or a fork of Dosbox even if mainline dosbox has never supported it. Does anyone have a copy? Can anybody confirm its status?

in some ways it is surprising how few games cannot be run on a modern system - in some form or other
the question in part seems also to be about willingness to compromise - whether by accepting glitches, low fps or the need to do various patchy things before running

gerry wrote on 2023-06-06, 14:39:

in some ways it is surprising how few games cannot be run on a modern system - in some form or other
the question in part seems also to be about willingness to compromise - whether by accepting glitches, low fps or the need to do various patchy things before running

It's gotten a lot better in recent years. Combined with dosbox, dgvoodoo2 and PCem have extended compatibility pretty much up to the modern day. Community patches and documentation (ala pcgamingwiki) are also so much better than they used to be. It didn't happen by accident. If we left it to Microsoft this list would include half the games released before 2006 😁.

If AMD doesn't fix things, more modern OpenGL 2 games could fall under this for future Radeon users. 🙁

Caribbean Disaster is playable in PCem, though only in Windows mode.
Pure DOS mode makes insane memory demands that I couldn't satisfy.
Dosbox: complains about MSCDEX.
Dosbox-X: a different error, but it runs with a fix that I found, but the graphics bug out ingame and it crashes.

So, difficult to run but possible.
I dunno about the Amiga version, but there are good Amiga emus, so it probably works there too.

Curious sidenote: the disc has a 29-minute high-quality CD audio track that contains all of the speech.

feda wrote on 2023-06-06, 23:12:

Caribbean Disaster is playable in PCem, though only in Windows mode. Pure DOS mode makes insane memory demands that I couldn't s […]
Show full quote

Caribbean Disaster is playable in PCem, though only in Windows mode.
Pure DOS mode makes insane memory demands that I couldn't satisfy.
Dosbox: complains about MSCDEX.
Dosbox-X: a different error, but it runs with a fix that I found, but the graphics bug out ingame and it crashes.

So, difficult to run but possible.
I dunno about the Amiga version, but there are good Amiga emus, so it probably works there too.

Curious sidenote: the disc has a 29-minute high-quality CD audio track that contains all of the speech.

Nice! I literally just put in an order on ebay to buy a loose disc from Germany. Might as well try it when it gets here.

Off the list it goes!

I have been digging into the dosbox compatability list

https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?letter=a

Since its all user submitted and without approval most of the "running" and "broken" games are actually working just fine, but I did find a couple of interesting things.

I found this Korean freeware game call Connaone
https://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=2689
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=4034&letter=C

It was marked as "runnable" because the sound is screechy and it crashes frequently. I found that by disabling sound you could get the game to run in dosbox. It runs with sounds in PCem, although at least on the configuration I tried I still had mostly screechy audio. No crashes to destkop though.

I found a polish game by Operacja Glemp that is broken in Dosbox:
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=4336&letter=O
https://www.mobygames.com/game/59167/operacja-glemp/

When I try it in dosbox it locks up on the title screen, but in PCem I could at least start a new game. No idea how to play but it seems to work.

Found another lost game "Sokoban's Revenge":
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=4096&letter=S
https://cn-dos-games.fandom.com/zh/wiki ... variant=zh

Dosbox compatibility claims it is broken.

Information about this game is hard to come by but it definitely existed. In addition to the references above the TDC includes it in their master list of games.

I managed to find the publisher's website in the wayback machine. It's a Chinese game company based in Taiwan by the name of Softstar (also seen them referred to as Daewoo). Looks like they have been making and/or porting and/or bootlegging(?) games since the late 80s. This page describes the game as "warehouse ban" (translation of soko ban). It lists the requirement as 386 with 640k of RAM or above.
https://web.archive.org/web/19970520183105/ht … abase/a012.html

This is a chinese website that appears to list level solutions:
https://blog.xuite.net/laurated/game/52811889

The game saw its first release on the PC-98 in 1991
https://www.mobygames.com/game/119633/soko-ban-revenge/

I found this video of gameplay from the x6800. It looks to be very similar to the DOS version
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%80%89%E5% … vid:cCu2ThWXfCo

This thread on another web forum includes it in the list of incompatible games - but the OP was written ten years ago:
https://wolf3d.darkbb.com/t3019-post-technica … s-and-handhelds

Looking in all the usual places I haven't found a copy to try. I spent a lot of time searching chinese websites but no luck on a for sale or a download link.

Anybody own this one?

EDIT: It looks like Dosbox SVN has been patched to fix this game
https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0/4473/

So it very likely works.

I thought for pretty much any game from early 2ks you will never have a perfect experience, even with patching/emuing. Try and make a list of games from 1998-2003~ that don't have any issues at all. It will be short.

kolderman wrote on 2023-06-07, 04:09:

I thought for pretty much any game from early 2ks you will never have a perfect experience, even with patching/emuing. Try and make a list of games from 1998-2003~ that don't have any issues at all. It will be short.

Which games are you thinking of? Feel free to nominate a title!

Everything pre 2000 I have tried with PCem has worked really well. If anything it's more stable than real hardware... maybe because PCem it doesn't emulate all the hardware bugs 😁. Post 2000 my emulated PII 233mhz is not enough to cut the mustard, but that doesn't mean those games can't be made playable in another way (like wrappers or virtualization).

A little aside, I don't want to get into the "best" way to play any particular game. It's too subjective and gets into topics that are interesting but not that helpful (ie debates like EAX vsA3D, and proprietary APIs, and which video card and driver cheats the least or renders one particular effect in splinter cell correctly, ect. Again interesting but better off discussed as a separate topic).

If the modern PC experience is so thoroughly compromised that you effectively can't play then it would make the list, however, shitty yet playable is still playable 😁.

Im not aware of pcem being a perfect or performant emu for that tricky period of dx8 games between 2000-2003.

kolderman wrote on 2023-06-07, 06:50:

Im not aware of pcem being a perfect or performant emu for that tricky period of dx8 games between 2000-2003.

It's not, but also nobody said it was.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-06-07, 05:21:

kolderman wrote on 2023-06-07, 04:09:

I thought for pretty much any game from early 2ks you will never have a perfect experience, even with patching/emuing. Try and make a list of games from 1998-2003~ that don't have any issues at all. It will be short.

Everything pre 2000 I have tried with PCem has worked really well. If anything it's more stable than real hardware... maybe because PCem it doesn't emulate all the hardware bugs 😁. Post 2000 my emulated PII 233mhz is not enough to cut the mustard, but that doesn't mean those games can't be made playable in another way (like wrappers or virtualization).

dgvoodoo2 is pretty great for direct draw and early directx games.

https://rjkole.com/gamestuff/engines/index.ph … ngine=DGVoodoo2

kolderman wrote on 2023-06-07, 04:09:

I thought for pretty much any game from early 2ks you will never have a perfect experience, even with patching/emuing. Try and make a list of games from 1998-2003~ that don't have any issues at all. It will be short.

that don't have any issues at all? well sure, but if playable with very few issues then i'd say they don't qualify as "can't be played on modern windows"

of course there are 2 versions of "modern windows" - there's is plain modern windows, a) load it onto windows 10 or 11 and hope for the best, and b) use every tool available to make it work including emulation & patches

for a) i'd agree, all kinds of issues

once adopting b) i would think most games 98-2003 are playable on "modern windows"

kolderman wrote on 2023-06-07, 04:09:

I thought for pretty much any game from early 2ks you will never have a perfect experience, even with patching/emuing. Try and make a list of games from 1998-2003~ that don't have any issues at all. It will be short.

A lot of the times I thought I had compatibility issues with games, random issues, they often turned out to be issues the games themselves had and not really compatibility issues. I've personally had very few actual compatibility issues with games from that time period.

As for the actual topic, as for games that aren't playable at all, I don't think I've run into a single one. I've run into a few (very few) games that I can't run under newer versions of Windows with wrappers or compatibility solutions, but when you allow for emulators and virtualization that number drops to 0.

I'm guessing this will mostly be games with hardware tie-ins.