- Why some Sierra On Line games never released for Mac? For instance Police Quest 2, Police Quest 3, Larry 2, Larry 3 etc. These games were released for the Amiga and even the Atari ST (except Police Quest 3). It seems weird to me because Mac computers seem to have great capabilities and they have strong titles like Gabriel Knight for example. Also titles like Eco Quest 1 & 2, Laura Bow etc.

Strangely, these are all AGI-lookalikes SCI based games. Maybe early SCI wasn't Mac friendly.

I am pretty sure that's the issue of the same compatibility problems with 32bit quickdraw.

It tore me up that Chuck Yeager's Air Combat had 'hires' and DOS didn't. I only learned that in the 2000s, but envied those who had 640x400.

AND IT HAD FREAKIN' MULTIPLAYER! (allegedly.)

Hires was a common feature on Mac ports while rare on DOS before the mid 90's. I still can't accept the fact that Dark Forces for DOS ran stuck in 320x200 while the Mac counterpart could run in 640x480 without any struggle on machines from the same year.

Yes, Dark Forces Mac version is great. Have you seen also Flashback and Blackthorne? Great graphics for Macs. I started playing Flashback on my dos and Mac where my computers are the one next to the other but i abandoned the dos version (i finished only the first level) because the graphics were so poor next to Mac. For me the power of dos games is the big variety of them and the support for Roland sound. These days i started playing Day of the Tentacle on both Mac and PC. The Mac version has better graphics, very beautiful and attractive picture but the music with the Roland Sound Canvas SC55 on dos version is amazing. Blackthorne dos version supports also Roland Sound Canvas and the music is superb. Mac version has hires graphics, same design like Sega 32x and music directly from cd where also is superb.

Yes, Blackthorne and Flashback for Mac look amazing too. Another World for Mac also has hires, but the 2000's remake for PC has it too. General MIDI and MT32 for PC sound superb, but the Quicktime MIDI for Mac is not bad at all IMHO.

I was excited for a second but then searched for Blackthorne Mac screenshots - and it was Sega 32X variant with fugly 3d-rendered sprites instead of pixel-art (now in hi-res), yuck.

I agree about Mac quicktime midi sound. The quality is very nice. Some examples are Doom 2, Heretic, Rags to Riches. Personally i have changed the quicktime's music settings in order to use the Roland Sound Canvas SC88 and the mentioned games run with success using the canvas for music.

Alone in the Dark is higher Resolution on Mac but is missing blood..

AGI and SCI Games are horrible on Mac. You have to deal with several bugs. Timing Bug, only window-mode, no black background, not all have mt-32 soundsupport (like some pc-pendants).
The very old AGI suffer from 32Bit-Quickdraw bug that impacts 16color and monochrome-versions. So you have to use an early Macintosh II from 1990 or earlier.
What a pity that an LC from 1990 does suffer from this problem too... I am not a programmer, but it seems that this is a big thing, because it was never fixed.
There are no ealry scummvm versions that work with OS9/ppc that support these old games, so the only way is a newer osx/ppc/x86 mac with an actuall scummvm to play these verey old mac-versions.

I am thinking about getting an very old Macintosh-II in order to play these.

Many pre-Quicktime Mac OS games used an audio engine called SoundMusicSys. The engine eventually became the Beatnik Audio Engine, and is available as open source at Twang! | miniBAE

To extract the music, you could use ResEdit in Classic Mac OS to access the music data in the resource fork.

Or you can try resource_dasm from fuzziqersoftware - Classic Mac OS resource fork disassembler in Mac OS X/Linux.

To play the music, you can try smssynth from fuzziqersoftware - Video game file translation tools in Mac OS X/Linux, or program a player to play the music using miniBAE like a user did here Music from the Mac version of Prince of Persia 1 - PofPMusicPlayer

I failed to compile resource_dasm in a Fedora Linux VM though, so I haven't had success yet. I want to listen to the Descent Mac Shareware audio tracks.

As mentioned in the first page by dr zeissler, the first powerpc Macs are slow. I believe that in order to play the majority of 90s games well, you need probably at least 3 computers. I have a Macintosh Performa 6116CD (aka Powermac 6100) with ppc at 60mhz. Due to 68k emulation some programs and games that are made for Motorola cpu, run very slow on ppc. Or even newer games. Some examples:

Monkey Island 1 and 2
Fate of Atlantis floppy version
Gabriel Knight
Doom 2 with high quality graphics
Dark forces with full graphics and high resolution

I couldn't believe then that i cannot play well the monkey Island series. I didn't know regarding the emulation when i bought the Macintosh Performa in 2009. For me it is better to have a fast Motorola Mac than a slow PPC. My Macintosh LC475 which is not the fastest Motorola Mac runs great the above Lucasarts games. Even the Sierra online adventure games where on my PPC a system error occurs very often. So i choose the LC, it is better for me. But what saved me? The sonnet g3 accelerator. I found and installed one (500 mhz). The Performa is literally another machine. Lot faster and so responsive. It runs greatly later and more demanding games like Riven, Myst Masterpiece Edition, Doom, Dark forces and Heretic with full detailed graphics, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and even Unreal and Carmageddon run in nice speed. It's a pizza box with no space but you may install the accelerator, more ram, bigger hard drive and fast cd rom drive (24x scsi). From a slow ppc it becomes a great fast retro Mac.

For 80s games i believe it is better to have something like a Macintosh classic or SE.

For games at the end of 90s a Power Macintosh G3 is needed especially for 3d games or an Imac G3.

Regarding the PCs i have only one Cyrix at 120mhz) which is enough for me until now. I have it next to my Macintosh Performa and i can say that on most games the Mac graphics are really better. Actually, some of them are lot better like Flashback and Civilization. The PCs have lot of games that support Roland and general midi. On the other hand Macs use music directly from cd like Colonization, The Incredible Machine 3 and Descent.

A game that disappointed me is Rex Nebular Mac version. The intro is cut, there is no speech, no spinning inventory and so less music which is great as quality where it exists. But It has smaller and prettier fonts than PC version and you may choose small or big screen. The pc version is great especially with the Roland MT32.

I think some microprose games have less features on macs. Like civilization for instance which is better on Mac but it has also less music and no animation on intro.

The 6100/66 is faster then the later ones up to 100mhz, because the 6100/66 had 512k-cache! There is a 3rd-party 1024MB cache too that speeds up the machine MUCH more, because the framebuffer fits completely in that cache. You can use a trick though if you don't have the 1024MB stick (I don't have one) if you use only 640x400 or less on some "3d-games" like wolfenstein3d or spear3d. If the the cache is enough then the game is fast. https://www.micromac.com/products/l2ca256k-6100.html

You mentioned that 68k is slow on PPC? yes it is, BUT if you have 2nd level cache it's OK. What is really great is changing the emulation layer for 68k on ppc. The 68k emulator from speeddoubler ich MUCH faster. You have to get the correct version for your OS 7/8 and then you are good to go. Noticably faster is yeager for example.
Try it out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix

"Speed Doubler:
Software that combines an enhanced disk cache, better Finder copy utility, and a dynamically recompiling 68K-to-PowerPC emulator, which is faster than both the interpretive emulator that shipped in the original PowerPCs and the dynamically recompiling emulator that Apple shipped in later machines. It was made obsolete as 68K applications became less common and OS code improved."

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2020-07-11, 06:01:

on most games the Mac graphics are really better. Actually, some of them are lot better like Civilization

what about civnet

dr.zeissler your information regarding the cache and the speed doubler is very interesting. I confess that i haven't looked about it probably because i found a sonnet card in a short time back to 2009. I would like to try it sometime. I can disable the sonnet extension from the Macintosh in order to have real computer speed. I have Mac OS 7.6, 8.1 and 9.04 installed and i use especially 7.6.

Robertmo,

I am checking the civnet now and it seems good. Maybe i have it somewhere for PC. It looks like Mac version.

My 6100/66 is hybrid. It has 66Mhz PPC and 486/66 Dos in one machine. So no chance of getting a g3 update in that machine.
it's simply not compatible with the 486/66 in the PDS slot. More 6100/DOS on LGR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UclHrIIaYA

btw. the 486 card has a real SB with a real OPL3 ! https://www.flickr.com/photos/94839221@N05/26 … 57665671196304/
to get an impression I made a (sorry for the bad image-quality) video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39yxfxbqda8
(I also added linux/ppc on that machine lately)

I love this combination and I wanted it also a dos compatibility card but due to sonnet NuBus i stopped looking and bought a pc. 😀

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-07-11, 08:05:

My 6100/66 is hybrid. It has 66Mhz PPC and 486/66 Dos in one machine. So no chance of getting a g3 update in that machine. it's […]
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My 6100/66 is hybrid. It has 66Mhz PPC and 486/66 Dos in one machine. So no chance of getting a g3 update in that machine.
it's simply not compatible with the 486/66 in the PDS slot. More 6100/DOS on LGR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UclHrIIaYA

btw. the 486 card has a real SB with a real OPL3 ! https://www.flickr.com/photos/94839221@N05/26 … 57665671196304/
to get an impression I made a (sorry for the bad image-quality) video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39yxfxbqda8
(I also added linux/ppc on that machine lately)

You could always remove the DOS compatibility card and put a G3 or G4 accelerator card in there.

I have cards for several machines, starting from NUBUS 386 in my Quadra700 (which is a tripple boot (68K-68040/25+PPC-601/50(PDS)+386(NUBUS)), I also have the PCI-Cards for the later 7x00 machines and the 486 in the 6100. To be clear, the 486 is the best! if you want real old dos/win3x. the pentium-cards with ati are not so compatible as the 486 with chips&techn. gfx-chip, which does support vesa! but only up to 256colors with max 640x480 but thats enough for me.