games that are better on a Macintosh

[ruthan]

I think that know is not important when what came out, or is in on PC / Mac / Amiga.. but would be nice to have list of such games in 1 post or sheet and have links to video comparisions, how big difference it is.

[awgamer]

Simply, the mac version of wolf3d lacks the charm of it, it's its own animal, a lesser one.

[dr_st]

I think this list should be changed to
What games were better on B&W Mac versus PC.

You want to see an empty list?

[SmokyWhisky]

Not mentioned in the list or discussion so far, the Mac version of Descent 1 features highres menu, HUD and status bar/cockpit graphics, similar to those in Descent 2. The PC version of D1 got highres video modes in a patch but they never updated the UI assets. It also has a CD-DA soundtrack which is quite nice, but the number of songs included is of course a bit limited. Some of the songs are the same as in the XA ADPCM soundtrack included in the PlayStation port of D1, though not all.

The highres graphics pack for D1X (Descent source port) includes the assets ripped from the Mac version, and you can also use the CD soundtrack with D1X so I'm not sure if there's a reason to run the original Mac version nowadays...

(maybe if you're a purist, but even then DXX has never felt as off to me as eg. GZDoom is compared to PrBoom, Chocolate or the original, but perhaps that is just because I never was as much into Descent as Doom)

[rmay635703]

I think this list should be changed to
What games were better on B&W Mac versus PC.

You want to see an empty list?

Ah come on the first Macintosh game was that diver game that taught you how to use the new fangled mouse and a few other concepts. My school had it on floppy for the typing lab.
It had decent sounding digitized speech and sound and the graphics were well animated
It was superior to most IBM games at the time with their beautiful CGA and loud beeper noises, let alone ibm mice were rare at that point.

I’m sure that any period specific Mac games from the mostly cga beeper era of dos gaming look and sound better despite being in black and white instead of magenta

[infiniteclouds]

Almost anything that came out in 1987. I don't know why but 1987 is "The Year of the Shitty DOS Port." I don't expect full VGA implementation when it had just came out, but EGA and more-over TANDY graphics and sound was already mature... having been used in a ton of DOS games. Despite this, many of cross Commodore/Atari/Apple/DOS games that came out in 1987 featured DOS versions with 4 color CGA -- NOT EVEN COMPOSITE support -- and PC Speaker. Disgraceful!

[dr_st]

Ah come on the first Macintosh game was that diver game that taught you how to use the new fangled mouse and a few other concepts. My school had it on floppy for the typing lab.
It had decent sounding digitized speech and sound and the graphics were well animated
It was superior to most IBM games at the time with their beautiful CGA and loud beeper noises, let alone ibm mice were rare at that point.

I’m sure that any period specific Mac games from the mostly cga beeper era of dos gaming look and sound better despite being in black and white instead of magenta

OK, someone please add "that diver game that taught you how to use the new fangled mouse and a few other concepts" to the first post.

Alternatively, you could start a new thread - "period specific Mac games from the mostly cga beeper era of dos gaming that look and sound better despite being in black and white instead of magenta".

A couple of points:

1. This thread was not about games unique to the Mac, but games that have both a Mac and a PC version with the Mac one being better.
2. None of the games mentioned so far seem to be from the CGA beeper era.

So I think we are talking about slightly different topics.

[infiniteclouds]

Macs were amazingly reliable back in the day. The 1990s-era clones weren't (sub-standard hardware), and the software could be really messed up if you installed a bunch of random shareware extensions.

My Performa 6300CD was discontinued mere months after being released. That machine was such an utter piece of crap in terms of reliability that to this day I still won't touch anything Apple.

As for OP's question, SimCity 2000 tended to run better. The Windows version was miles ahead of the DOS version but the Mac had superior music on board, and it was easy to create your own scenarios. The Windows version did have the Debug menu cheat, though, and a fourth zoom level.

porntipsguzzardo

[filipetolhuizen]

StarWars JediKnight had Hires as MacVersion.

You mean Darkforces 1? Then, yes, it could run in Hires.

wolf3d without fm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhjQcA1TehI

How do people find this better? Even the voice acting and sound effects are different. Just, no.

No Macintosh ever had built-in FM hardware. One negative thing about Wolf3d for Mac is that you can't do surprise/melee attacks as the enemies are always facing you. IMHO, I also find the PC version voices and music more fun, but in terms of quality I'd choose Mac SFX/Music.

[dr.zeissler]

sorry, yes

[awgamer]

No Macintosh ever had built-in FM hardware.

Which is a big detraction from the mac version for lacking it, FM music is more fun as you say.

One negative thing about Wolf3d for Mac is that you can't do surprise/melee attacks as the enemies are always facing you. IMHO, I also find the PC version voices and music more fun, but in terms of quality I'd choose Mac SFX/Music.

It's crap, but quality crap!

There are indeed games that are better on the mac, as for mac wolf3d, even though it's run at higher rez and sample rate, it's worse.

[rmay635703]

A couple of points:

1. This thread was not about games unique to the Mac, but games that have both a Mac and a PC version with the Mac one being better.
2. None of the games mentioned so far seem to be from the CGA beeper era.

So I think we are talking about slightly different topics.

Not really
Many B&W Mac games below had PC CGA release

1984 Through the Looking Glass (aka Alice) (Apple)
1985 Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!! (ICOM)
1984 Airborne (Silicon Beach Software)
1986 Dark Castle (Silicon Beach Software)
1987 Apache Strike (Silicon Beach Software)
1987 Cairo Shootout (HomeTown Software)
1987 Tetris (Sphere)
1987 StuntCopter (HomeTown Software)
1987 Beyond Dark Castle (Silicon Beach Software)
1987 The Fool's Errand (Miles Computing)
1987 Crystal Quest (Casady & Greene)
1987 Oids (FTL)
1988 Star Wars (Broderbund/Domark)
1988 Shufflepuck Cafe (Broderbund)
1989 Grand Prix Circuit (Accolade)
1990 ParArena (Casady & Greene)
1990 Cosmic Osmo & the World Beyond the Mackerel (Cyan)
1991 Glider 4.0 (Casady & Greene)
1993 Lemmings (Psygnosis)

[awgamer]

I actually prefer the b&w mac versions of deja vu & dark castle. Didn't know there was non mac stuntcopter but calling it a game seems a bit much, it's a very very simple and short one.

[swaaye]

Super Wing Commander is certainly an interesting "remaster" as the kids would say today.

[red_avatar]

I was interested to see this topic - I always like to find superior versions of classics (that's why I love the Amiga as well) but when I google these games, they're not all that better. Most of the games look like they got one of those crappy filters applied the kind you can get in DOSBOX, where the graphics have been upscaled to look higher rez. I find that it kills the charm of these oldies. And the few games that actually have new graphics ... look pretty crap. Take Wolfenstein 3D ... it looks like a 5 year old drew the "improved" graphics.

Prince of Persia is probably one of the few examples of a game "properly" better on a Mac - it looks similar yet very different and more colourful.

[MrFlibble]

removed doom and hexen cause I think windows versions are the same

Hexen has high-resolution HUD, at least in the demo files. Also both games can be rendered in higher resolution AFAIK, which was not supported by their DOS counterparts.

I have heard about a Macintosh version of F-117A which both runs in high-res and has remade high-resolution menus, cockpit etc. Here are screenshots shared by another user:
https://imgur.com/a/YabMPtN

LairWare's Ultima III Mac port has everything nicely redrawn in high-res:


Also no one mentioned Warcraft: Orcs & Humans?

Some people don't like how the graphics were redrawn (apparently this was in part automated due to the tight development schedule) but generally I'd say it's quite neat. Also no more Ctrl+click to drag-select multiple units.

[dr.zeissler]

wolfpack is beautiful on 68k mac in hires

[dr.zeissler]

StarWars JediKnight had Hires as MacVersion.

You mean Darkforces 1? Then, yes, it could run in Hires.

wolf3d without fm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhjQcA1TehI

How do people find this better? Even the voice acting and sound effects are different. Just, no.

No Macintosh ever had built-in FM hardware. One negative thing about Wolf3d for Mac is that you can't do surprise/melee attacks as the enemies are always facing you. IMHO, I also find the PC version voices and music more fun, but in terms of quality I'd choose Mac SFX/Music.

the lack of fm is a big problem, when playing the classic adventures...the music sounds bad in my opinion and mt32 is not supported in the later games. e.g monkey island, indy etc,

[filipetolhuizen]

IMHO I always preferred GM over FM and the Macintosh Quicktime wavetable sounds closer to GM. Monkey Island for Mac had buggy music, which got stuck on loops sometimes, but I find it sounds way more powerful than the PC version. I also find lack of MT32 support on Mac titles a problem since it was probably one of the highest quality audio hardware available at the time.

[awgamer]

Prefer FM for most things.