Look here - Which games are better on a Macintosh?

Babasha wrote on 2024-11-05, 04:16:

Look here - Which games are better on a Macintosh?

Thanks, I've seen that thread, but it goes on for 15 pages and I have no idea which games will work decently on this particular model of Mac since the ones listed there span over a decade.

If I knew nothing about PCs and asked for some Windows\DOS games to run on it, I would need to find games that were suitable for the specs of the PC. Same situation here.

I appreciate the input though.

I'm not sure of exclusives but quite often the the mac port would get SVGA graphics which dos didn't get.

This video seems about the right timeframe, and nicely split up so you can jump to any game that sounds interesting
https://youtu.be/7kXsfYje9BE?si=QpxqC1C7E6NQQZtx

For me I've always wanted to play Wolf3d as it adds a flamethrower and rocket launcher.
and a 80's game called Stunt Copter which I used to play on a friend's PC at the time.

No idea on how to copy files, I got a G5 6-7 years ago to try out mac games, I installed OS9 and X....and then never did anything with it

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-11-05, 04:24:

Thanks, I've seen that thread, but it goes on for 15 pages and I have no idea which games will work decently on this particular […]
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Babasha wrote on 2024-11-05, 04:16:

Look here - Which games are better on a Macintosh?

Thanks, I've seen that thread, but it goes on for 15 pages and I have no idea which games will work decently on this particular model of Mac since the ones listed there span over a decade.

If I knew nothing about PCs and asked for some Windows\DOS games to run on it, I would need to find games that were suitable for the specs of the PC. Same situation here.

I appreciate the input though.

Just look for the year of productions for the games and your Mac. Be aware usually Mac games works in higher resolutions compared with their PC versions so if you want get nice performance from Doom dont expect that Mac version in 640x480 will be faster on 75MHz CPU compared with 320x200 on PC.
If you want exclusive game for THAT time just look for Marathon.

True exclusive or exclusively better on Mac?
Color dark castle, Glider, Marathon, there are more that were first released on Mac, like Myst.
For the latter, look again at the thread linked to above or try Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3d, Dark Forces in 640*480, Lemmings.
Older games also usually have black&white versions and they look good still, like Lemmings, PoP, ShufflePuck Cafe...

Your machine has a cdrom I suppose, it might read cd-r, the floppy drive should read FAT floppies if the correct extension (driver) is installed.
Also you have a scsi port, get a db25 bluescsi v2, it will be easier to transfer files.
Do you have the modem or ethernet port in the back?

You'll soon need StuffIt if it's not installed, and get acquainted with ResEdit...

Browse by year (your model was sold between mid 1995 to mid 1996) , check the specs page if you find a game that sounds fun:
https://www.mobygames.com/platform/macintosh/year:1995/

Also, it has MacOs 7.6.1, I'm pretty sure the original system install cd had some game demos on it...atleast Eric Ultimate Solitaire.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-11-05, 03:59:

So, anyway... are there any decent games that were Mac exclusive that would run on a system like this?

Ambrosia Software is to classic Macintosh as Apogee Software was to MS-DOS.

Start with Escape Velocity and Escape Velocity: Override. They're iconic top-down space games that I envied my friend with an iMac G3 for as a DOS/Windows kid. There was a third in the series, EV: Nova, but it wasn't mac-exclusive.

Other memorable Ambrosia ones include Harry the Handsome Executive and Cythera.

Ambrosia games were the "full game with locks that release when you enter your name and serial" kind of shareware so, if you've got an OSX-era mac to run it on (it works under Mac OS 10.13 on the hand-me-down Intel iMac that found its way into my collection), the most "letter of the law" way to unlock them is the Ambrosia Software DecoderRing license generator that Andrew Welch (company president) released after the company wound down.

(Given the form letter it generates and who released it, I think it's fair to assume it's a "polished up for public release" version of the code that used to be hooked into their order system.)

Also, pop over to https://tandtsoftware.com/ and grab their now-freeware Lode Runner-esque platformer, Spacestation Pheta.

...and I can't recommend specific ones, having yet to play any, but, thanks to a tool named World Builder, there's a huge catalogue of mac-exclusive indie point-and-click adventure games floating around, like Twisted! and Pirate Attack!.

EDIT: Oh, and Tetris Max! wasn't exactly exclusive (it got a Windows 3.1 port named BrickLayer), but it was originally for Mac, I think the Mac version had more features, and it was hugely popular back in the day. Since it got Cease & Desisted but people widely considered it to be "the best Tetris game", the developer, who now makes things like the Floppy Emu, released it for free, including the source code. If you want the full version of the custom BGM track that Peter Wagner was inspired to donate, there's an MP3 on the Wayback Machine archive of his site.

lolo799 wrote on 2024-11-05, 11:07:

and get acquainted with ResEdit...

Seconded. Grab a bundle of "ResEdit Extensions" to teach it to display as many resource types as possible as editor dialogs instead of hex dumps and Read "Zen and the Art of Resource Editing" for tips.

With ResEdit being akin to a Unity/Godot/etc. IDE that works on applications you don't have the source code for and having existed as far back as I can find evidence for, the mac game modding scene in the 90s was vibrant and the OS itself can be a game when you've got a good ResEdit setup. People who grew up on 80s/90s macs often fondly remember things like ResEditing their OS error messages to be crass.

(As a test, I opened up Finder in ResEdit, double-clicked the icon for text resources, poked through the list until I found the right resource, replaced the Balloon Help text for hard drive icons with "It's hard and it's a drive. Duh.", and then rebooted to apply my changes... just make sure you keep a bootable backup when ResEditing system files.)

Apparently the color versions of MacRisk that are floating around were made from the black-and-white versions without access to the source code using ResEdit because Apple-approved development practices put so much reliance on high-level use of the resource fork.

(eg. You can completely redesign the menu bars and dialogs of closed-source applications using graphical editors in ResEdit. All the compiled code cares about is the menu/widget IDs that the Macintosh Toolbox APIs report when the user interacts with them. We've really gone backwards on that aspect of user empowerment since Mac OS became a NeXTSTEP skin.)

You'll also notice that it's commonplace for games and applications to have custom folder icons. That's because you could edit icons for free using ResEdit back in the day (and Iconographer, a fancy paid third-party editor, has now been freeware'd by its makers) and you can copy-paste icons onto folders by going into Get Info (the mac equivalent of the file/folder Properties dialog on Windows), clicking the icon to select it, and then using Command+C/Command+V to duplicate them from whatever you edited them on.)

See also a piece of software named Deluxe Folder Icon Creator for quickly generating the most common kind of folder icons.

Couple things:
1) Replace the lithium PRAM battery before it explodes. Those batteries are the leading cause of death of vintage Mac logic boards.
2) Adding extra RAM will not improve performance the way it does on Windows. The weaknesses of classic Mac OS memory management are a whole subject on its own, but unless you enable virtual memory, it doesn't 'swap' to disk, therefore the only benefit of more RAM is to let you run more apps.
3) Re the floppy question, you should be able to put a MacBinary or what-was-the-other-type-of-encoding file on a FAT floppy. If it's not encoded, oops, FAT doesn't have resource/data forks and you will lose data. System 7.5 and newer should have PC Exchange which reads FAT floppies.

In terms of the original question of Mac-only games, hmm... that's an interesting question. Might want to ask on a vintage Mac forum.

Also, I would disagree with the idea that these were "not sold as gaming computers." There were no "gaming computers" in 1995. In 1995, home computers were sold to families for word processing and CD-ROM encyclopedias and whatnot, and then you just ran games on them. In the era before 3D-accelerated graphics, well, the faster your CPU, the faster your games, done. Especially on Macs which had built-in sound circuitry and no add-on sound chips. And Performas were generally family computers so they would have been used for gaming way more than, say, Power Macs (sold through the dealer channel). The idea of a gaming computer started with the rise of 3d-accelerated graphics in 1997ish, then really went mainstream in Windowsland when non-gaming computers started converging on useless video like Intel onboard graphics. Worst Buy needed something to sell that would be half-usable for modern games, therefore gaming computer.

VivienM wrote on 2024-11-07, 02:18:

3) Re the floppy question, you should be able to put a MacBinary or what-was-the-other-type-of-encoding file on a FAT floppy. If it's not encoded, oops, FAT doesn't have resource/data forks and you will lose data.

You're probably thinking of BinHex.

StuffIt archives and ShrinkWrap or DiskDup floppy disk images are also fine, since they don't have resource forks, as are MacZip's special brand of using Zip extended attributes to store resource forks. However, do not take an Apple DiskCopy .img out of its wrapper on a non-HFS filesystem because they do store critical data in their resource forks.

On a related note, if you want to burn CD-Rs or you get something like the BlueSCSI v2, note that .toast files are just .iso files with a different extension to acknowledge that mac-only CD images contain no ISO9660 filesystem. Same "Raw contents of the disc's data track" format either way. They can be mounted on Mac OS 7.5.1 and above using Roxio Toast 4, but make sure you open "Get Info" and check "Locked" (read-only) first because, unlike ISO9660, the mac side of CD images is not read-only and the OS will start meddling with them.

(Macs literally just store hard disk images on CDs and rely on the medium to be read-only. In fact, Retail Mac OS install CDs check for whether the volume is read-only as a primitive form of copy protection. As you might suspect this means that opening a hybrid ISO/HFS CD image on a mac without first locking it will corrupt the ISO9660 side because it'll change data blocks shared between the two sides without updating the ISO9660 table of contents.)

Try posting in the correct forum for the first thing. This is a software/game question.

http://obsolete.macfixer.com/vintage-software/

Download software on your PC and burn to CD

Put a network card into your Mac.
All you need is Netscape 3x and 8mb RAM
And TCP/IP package.
Put in a Static IP Address and your Good to Surf the internet for HTML 2.0 friendly websites.

Maybe upgrade the hard drive in your Mac to a 500mb or larger

Also you want to increase the cache size in system virtual memory settings

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-11-07, 05:56:

Put a network card into your Mac. All you need is Netscape 3x and 8mb RAM And TCP/IP package. Put in a Static IP Address and you […]
Show full quote

Put a network card into your Mac.
All you need is Netscape 3x and 8mb RAM
And TCP/IP package.
Put in a Static IP Address and your Good to Surf the internet for HTML 2.0 friendly websites.

...or, if you have a non-Windows machine handy, you could install Netatalk and run an AFP/AppleShare server.

That, combined with Samba (with authentication and protocol limits loosened for my old Windows machines) is how I quite comfortably get files on and off my retro machines. (Bear in mind that you may need to upgrade the AppleShare client if you're not running it on Linux or NetBSD. Netatalk only supports AppleTalk on those two OSes and I can't remember if the AppleShare client preinstalled with Mac OS 7.6.1 is new enough to do TCP-based file sharing.)

I don't have a screenshot of my File Drop share handy, but here's what the read-only Retro share for easily installing updates and utilities looks like from Mac OS 9.2.2 and "Windows XP pretending to be Windows 98 SE". (I have yet to figure out if actual 98SE can be coaxed into displaying custom folder icons outside the address bar when viewing network shares.)

Can't really add much to what other people have said, re-games.

But I used to own a Performa 5200CD, which aside from a different case/form factor, is essentially the same computer as the 6214CD. I only ever had 1 game for it at the time - "Damage Incorporated" an FPS based on the Marathon II engine. Not exactly Mac exclusive though, since it was also later ported from Mac to Windows.

To be fair, you got that Mac for a great price - free! It's not a fast computer even for it's time and that range of computers ie. Performa 5200/6200/6214 etc are generally considered some of the worst models Apple released.

The only reason I no longer have my Performa 5200CD, is that the case disintegrated. It literally started breaking apart in chunks and 1 day I went to lift it from the ground and it shattered into pieces. Those old plastics on Apple computers of the time get extremely brittle!

PTherapist wrote on 2024-11-07, 13:11:

The only reason I no longer have my Performa 5200CD, is that the case disintegrated. It literally started breaking apart in chunks and 1 day I went to lift it from the ground and it shattered into pieces. Those old plastics on Apple computers of the time get extremely brittle!

And to think that, in this day and age, vintage macs are desirable enough that the response for many would either be "Spare parts!" or "If nobody designed a replacement case, maybe it's time to break out the woodworking tools or experiment with tapping new standoffs into an ATX case".

ssokolow wrote on 2024-11-07, 13:23:

PTherapist wrote on 2024-11-07, 13:11:

The only reason I no longer have my Performa 5200CD, is that the case disintegrated. It literally started breaking apart in chunks and 1 day I went to lift it from the ground and it shattered into pieces. Those old plastics on Apple computers of the time get extremely brittle!

And to think that, in this day and age, vintage macs are desirable enough that the response for many would either be "Spare parts!" or "If nobody designed a replacement case, maybe it's time to break out the woodworking tools or experiment with tapping new standoffs into an ATX case".

If that happened to me nowadays, I'd probably do exactly as you just said. 🤣

PTherapist wrote on 2024-11-07, 13:11:

Performa 5200/6200/6214 etc are generally considered some of the worst models Apple released.

All of the 52xx, 62xx, 6300 and 6320 were based on the same terrible design.

Apple wanted to make a line of cheap PowerPC machines, so they recycled parts from Quadra machines to make a dreadful motherboard with a cornucopia of parts that should have never been married together. You had a 64 bit PowerPC 603/603e (depending on the machine) hobbled on a 32 bit bus with 32 bit RAM and peripherals. This made memory access four times slower, and the painfully slow IDE and SCSI didn't make it any better. The older 6100 series at 66 MHz was *faster* than the early 75 MHz variants of this design.

I had probably the pinnacle of this dumpster fire design, the 6320CD. It had a 120 MHz 603e, but machines half its speed were faster because of how hobbled it was. When I got a 6360/160, which was based on the 6400 design, the performance uplift was night and day difference, even though it was just 40 MHz faster. I wasn't too upset when the 6320CD one day blew up. Something in the PSU went wrong and sent a voltage spike to the board and it was toast.

I think the only good thing to say about the 6320CD at least, is that I think it is the fastest PowerPC Mac with an LC style 32 bit PDS slot. It allows you to run some interesting expansion cards. I had a MPEG decoder card in mine with a world encyclopedia that had hours of historic video on it.

ssokolow wrote on 2024-11-07, 13:23:

PTherapist wrote on 2024-11-07, 13:11:

The only reason I no longer have my Performa 5200CD, is that the case disintegrated. It literally started breaking apart in chunks and 1 day I went to lift it from the ground and it shattered into pieces. Those old plastics on Apple computers of the time get extremely brittle!

And to think that, in this day and age, vintage macs are desirable enough that the response for many would either be "Spare parts!" or "If nobody designed a replacement case, maybe it's time to break out the woodworking tools or experiment with tapping new standoffs into an ATX case".

Some vintage Macs. I will be shocked if the 52xx/62xx series ever reaches that level of desirability...

The other observation I would make about vintage Macs, which is not at all true about vintage PCs, is that the most desirable vintage machines are also those that were most desirable back in the day. Like the SE/30, IIci, Quadra 700, etc. Everybody knew the Classic II was junk compared to the SE/30 way back when the Classic II launched, and I think that's continued to be reflected in vintage circles three decades later.

VivienM wrote on 2024-11-09, 13:59:

Some vintage Macs. I will be shocked if the 52xx/62xx series ever reaches that level of desirability...

The other observation I would make about vintage Macs, which is not at all true about vintage PCs, is that the most desirable vintage machines are also those that were most desirable back in the day. Like the SE/30, IIci, Quadra 700, etc. Everybody knew the Classic II was junk compared to the SE/30 way back when the Classic II launched, and I think that's continued to be reflected in vintage circles three decades later.

That depends on how you define "that level of desirability".

I've already got a 933MHz Power Mac G4 Quicksilver running Mac OS 9.2.2 and a 1.42GHz Mac Mini G4 running a MacOS9Lives-hacked Mac OS 9.2.2 for when I want things to go fast, but nothing to run that most nostalgic System 7.5, or picky 24-bit-only System 6-only games.

"You'll probably have to wait another 5 or 10 years to see another listing this good" stuff like that DOS copy of Treasure Galaxy I'd had an eBay watch on for a decade keeps eating up my budget before I can go looking for something to run System 6 or 7 at a better price than what eBay wants, plus a 30-50% markup for shipping to Canada.

ssokolow wrote on 2024-11-09, 14:29:

That depends on how you define "that level of desirability".

I've already got a 933MHz Power Mac G4 Quicksilver running Mac OS 9.2.2 and a 1.42GHz Mac Mini G4 running a MacOS9Lives-hacked Mac OS 9.2.2 for when I want things to go fast, but nothing to run that most nostalgic System 7.5, or picky 24-bit-only System 6-only games.

"You'll probably have to wait another 5 or 10 years to see another listing this good" stuff like that DOS copy of Treasure Galaxy I'd had an eBay watch on for a decade keeps eating up my budget before I can go looking for something to run System 6 or 7 at a better price than what eBay wants, plus a 30-50% markup for shipping to Canada.

My suggestion to that might be to get a IIsi - I actually had one for a few years, bought it from a neighbour's garage sale in 2001, but it... got left behind... when my parents moved. Which I guess is fineish because if it had kept it, its battery would have exploded by now and destroyed the motherboard anyways. But otherwise I certainly wish I had kept it. Funny thing is, I had it at least a decade 'too soon' for any kind of vintage computing - you just didn't have all the stuff like Macintosh Garden, the FloppyEmus and the BlueSCSIs and whatnot back then.

But frankly, I hope you have soldering skills and a big budget if you're looking for a System 6-capable machine today. Between capacitor issues and exploding PRAM batteries, there aren't a ton of survivors out there and keeping them running is likely to require a skill set I certainly do not have. And it's only going to get worse... especially with those exploding PRAM batteries basically guaranteeing that the IIci tucked in grandma's basement 25 years ago is going to be irreparably dead if someone digs it up next year.

(As an observation, though, I would add that a 62xx is not helpful to what you're looking for. What you want is a IIci, which has always been one of those desirable Macs since it first came out, or a IIsi. Or heck maybe even a 68020 original LC?)

VivienM wrote on 2024-11-09, 17:11:

But frankly, I hope you have soldering skills and a big budget if you're looking for a System 6-capable machine today. Between capacitor issues and exploding PRAM batteries, there aren't a ton of survivors out there and keeping them running is likely to require a skill set I certainly do not have. And it's only going to get worse... especially with those exploding PRAM batteries basically guaranteeing that the IIci tucked in grandma's basement 25 years ago is going to be irreparably dead if someone digs it up next year.

That's part of the reason I don't have them yet.

In between grabbing stuff that shows up on saved searches, I've been accumulating supplies for as idiot-proof a soldering/desoldering workbench as I can afford... and a Hakko FR-301 through-hole desoldering tool and a pair of FX-8804 hot tweezers to go with my existing Hakko FX-888D temperature-controlled iron aren't cheap... I do have a bunch of old LCDs and P4-era motherboards to do intermediate practice on, though, once I feel confident enough in my ability to disassemble old set top box PCBs without damaging anything.

VivienM wrote on 2024-11-09, 17:11:

(As an observation, though, I would add that a 62xx is not helpful to what you're looking for. What you want is a IIci, which has always been one of those desirable Macs since it first came out, or a IIsi. Or heck maybe even a 68020 original LC?)

Naturally... if I'm actively going out to pay market price for something. According to the sources I checked, it'll boot anything from 7.5.1 to 9.1, excluding 7.5.2, so rescuing one with a disintegrating case and sticking my 7.5.3 retail CD into it would be better than not having one.

To be honest, I'm expecting that, if I wanted to shell out for the ideal loadout, it'd take at least three machines, same as what I do with my PC-side stuff: One 24-bit-capable 68k machine that can triple/quadruple-boot System 6, 7.0 and/or 7.1, and 7.5, one PPC machine capable of 7.5.3 or maybe 7.6.1 that's speedier than the 68k machine and supports a higher display resolution, and one blazing fast 9.2.2 machine that can do the 1280x1024 native resolution on the non-widescreen options in my KVM array.

That's why I jumped on an opportunity to grab some NOS Mac-to-VGA adapters cheap. Buy an ADB-USB Wombat or two and they can go on the same USB-VGA KVM switches as my G4 Quicksilver (the darn thing has a VGA/ADP video card I haven't sought a replacement for yet), AST Adventure! 210, and Lenovo 3000 J Series.