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What (And Where) Are The Classic Free Games?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm flying from the US to Europe in a few weeks and am taking my iBook along for the ride. With a seven hour flight looming, I'm wanting to take some games along to play. But I don't want to download a bunch of freeware that may or may not be junk; I just want the classics. What are the classic free games? I've already downloaded Nethack and am looking into Freeciv. What else is there? I need something that's multiplatform (or at least has a Mac port), something that's stable and has stood the test of time, and something that is more complex and engrossing than a Tetris clone. Thanks!"
http://www.angband.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
many variants to play with, all take a good long while to complete. Think of 'em as nethack extended.
Personal favortites are pernband & cthangband, psiband isn't bad either.
MAME
Is that possible? I'm having a hard time taking a break to even write this. I've been playing Tetris for the past 10 years with very few breaks for eating, sleeping, etc. Gotta go! Straight line block coming!
read a book!
Whats wrong with Tetris?
It's still playable... =)
Still can't get enough of it sometimes
then there's always xbill when tetris has gotten the best out of you.
so there. thats what I'd bring.
c0w goes moo.
Doom?
;)
(Although you'd better not let a stewardess see you madly running around with a gun, on a computer, whilst on a plane.. it might make you look conspicuous..
You were expecting a sig?
I haven't used a Mac in a while, but there were some cool shareware games out.
Off the top of my head, some great games were Lode Runner, Beam Wars, Hazardous, Taskmaker, Tetris, and a few more I can't remember the names of. Check for one of those shareware CD-ROMS they used to sell and the ones listed in bold are probably going to be pretty good.
The future isn't what it used to be.
Why not get quake and a couple of bot mods? That should keep you going for a long time, at least until your battery runs out?
Alternatively, mame and some free (but illegal) roms could be pretty fun as well
Why not install MAME and borrow some roms?
The classics are everywhere.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
This place has thousands of mac games. Some are shareware, but most are abandon ware.
.
Mac Gamer
SNOOD!
"Bold as Love"
One place that I find to be quite reliable for finding old games is
http://www.freeoldies.com
(And yes, I know, it does sound like a porn site)
.noitacidem deen uoy siht daer nac uoy fI
IN a word: ROMS
In two words : NES ROMS
In 3 words : Custom NES ROMS
Metroid x, super butt bros, strange mario brothers. There are MANY TCs/updates/ refits of loads of old games begging to be played.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Escape Velocity. The original runs perfectly on a 3400, as does EV: Override. EV:Nova, the lattest version, is supposedly great. Really, no shareware game compares to these three gems from Ambrosia. They have a 30 day trial period with a popup at startup being the only real annoyance.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Although free, in the gray area.. emulators and roms gives you access to thousands of wonderful games. You can find many good NES, GB, Genesis, SNES, and Arcade emus for both MacOS 9 and X. I would personally reccomend RockNES, Snes9x (MacOS X version really shaping up lately with gamepad support), gnuboy (simple but quite powerful and compatible), Generator, and MacMAME (Same as Snes9x).
The Incredible Machine (TIM)
Bridge Builder 1 and 2 (from Pontifex)
Other great games are:
Blockout
Sokoban
UGH!
At least, these are the only games which I am still not bored.
Gamespy site with classic ROMs and emulators.
Some old DOS games.
More recent games at Kev's Classing Gaming.
The last time I loaded up nethack on my Mac, I was stuck in front of the computer for about 30 hours straight.
If you can't get through an eight hour flight with that, you've got bigger problems than finding free games...
Master of Orion II!
Maelstom is classic Mac game, now ported using SDL to many platforms and released under the GPL.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Nearly every platform has an interpreter for the old Infocom text games. Zork I, II, and III are available for free legally from ActiVision,
and once you have a z-machine interpreter for your Mac, you can use any of the other Infocom games you can find. There are also many (legal) free z-machine games available on the net, and I think that Activision recently sold a CD-ROM with most of the old Infocom collection, including Hitchhiker's Guide, Enchanter, and the others.
Any one of these will keep you busy for the whole flight and taxi ride to your hotel, and you'll probably stay up and keep playing once you get there instead of sleeping off the jet lag. Just remember to bring a pad of paper, pencil, and eraser for drawing maps and working out mazes.
Frozen Bubble. Is that game ever addictive. The music is a bit repetitive but very fitting. And the cute little noises it makes when you shoot the little spheres.. delightful. An easy way to kill a few hours. It's Perl/SDL so I'm sure you could compile it on OS X.
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
Most free games were, are and will be written by invididuals or groups of individuals.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The closest thing to Snood under Linux is called Frozen Bubble. It's also got a really fun two-player mode that my wife and I enjoy together.
For a Linux equivalent, try Frozen Bubble.
Of course, Mame is the best answer to this question, as many have pointed out.
On that topic, does anyone know what happened to mame.dk? All the roms get removed with just a mysterious message that a copyright holder complained. One copyright holder and they ditch everything?
Fortunately, I had written a program to download all roms from the site (heh) not long before it closed, but are there any other places that are as complete as mame.dk used to be?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Before I make some suggestions I should say that as a longtime Civ II and Civ I player I am tremendously impressed with the latest (1.13) release. Bravo, it is great! It lacks a little "Microprose polish" but play-wise it is terrific. The previous versions didn't really cut it for me but the current one is just fine. (Now, how about alpha centauri, spaceward ho, and/or masters of orion.)
If you like Nethack you should try Angband, or perhaps just (u)moria. Or from another Cygnus old-timer (umoria was from Jim Wilson), try xconq (Stan Shebs). Although umoria is ancient it has the advantage that it doesn't take incredibly long to play, which unfortunately vanilla angband does.
You can finish a game of nethack in a few hours or a few days (depending on your determination and experience level) but vanilla angband can take, gee, hundreds of hours (during any of which you can suffer an insta-death from hitting a key one too many times). It's still enjoyable but in a more serious and perverse way than nethack.
If you just need a good game to take care of a couple hours of the twitchies on an airplane, I recommend kshisen, which is a thoroughly addictive timed mah-jong-like game.
-joseph
My roommates and I, in the end-of-summer boredom lurch, just set up a computer running MS-DOS 6.22 just to play the old games! Man, back in the day...
Anyway, I'm only 21, so I never did much with dos, so despite what I think I know about "computers" and windows or other microsoft products, etc, I know exactly crap about EMS and XMS and EMM386 and HIMEM and SMARTDRV. We've run into problems with wing commander running at the speed of light because it counts clock cycles, not seconds, and with some games not liking the fact that the machine has 160 megs of ram. One of the games suggested we make $ExtraRam sized cache with smartdrv so the game thought we had less memory, except instead of $ExtraRam being 5,341 KB, it was 157,325,210 KB...
But anyway, here's my list of games I have installed:
Doom 2
Mechwarrior 2
Wing Commander
Wing Commander II
Wing Commander III
Privateer
Jazz Jackrabbit
Rise of the Triad
Duke Nukem I
Duke Nukem II
Duke Nukem 3D
Warcraft I
Command and Conquer
Command and Conquer: Red Alert
I don't know how many of these have mac ports - Doom2 did, I use to own it...
I also didn't know that windows 3.1 wasn't an operating system. That bugged me - when you install windows, it doesn't install any OS files, just the interface to dos... Despite saying "Windows Operating System" on the floppies.
~Will
sig?
i don't know if they're all classics, but they all run under Classic.
http://mac.the-underdogs.org/ has everything you want. I recommend Armor Alley in particular.
Step 2) Search for "mame" or maybe give this a go.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Why not pick up an old copy of Civ II? With III out, I've seen Civ II for 10 bucks in stores. That's one game you can play forever.
As for free/shareware, there are some nice arcade games:
Glypha III homepage.mac.com/quirinus
Cyclone (?)
Asteroid Storm homepage.mac.com/zarkonnen
Glider is fun too, as are MacChess and SigmaChess (if you're into chess, obviously).
have fun!
With all of the Sept 11th "security measures" I would recommend that you have your laptop ready to turn on just in case at the airport terminal. Also, they will ask you take your machine out of its case and then they'll pass it through their x-ray machines. Make sure you don't have it stuffed at the bottom of your carry-ons. I don't know how good your battery life is, or what class you will be flying but if you are going in economy make sure you bring at least two batteries. If you are in first or business class, you can always buy their on-board power cords that hook up into the plane (depending on airline). As for games, I would suggest the old simcity, tetris, pinball, etc. You don't want some massively 3d game sucking up your battery power. Also, I don't know what kind of rechargers come with your laptop but be ready for an inevitable bump in line voltage in europe (220v). And, you can save your on-board modem some trouble by buying a line testing kit/adapter. This saved me from frying my modem on a trip to Saudi many years ago (their teleco line voltage is much more than it is here).
it's now www.the-underdogs.org, actually.. apparently, their previous domain got stolen by one of those domain name preying search engine things.
Back in '92 I remember spending my Jr High lunches in the science room playing the Lunatic Fringe screensaver that came with More After Dark on the school's LC II's.
Those were the days...
Did that ever get released anywhere else, or was strictly a module only?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Or a Game Boy Advance? For use on an airplane, laptops have the following problems:
1.) Size: It's not comfy to use a laptop actively on an airplane. Either you have to rest it on your lap (horrible ergonomics), or the guy in front of you will lay his seat back and make you panic for a mo.
2.) Battery life: I realize Macs are efficient and all, but it IS an issue. With a GBA, just bring an extra set of batteries. You shouldn't need more than 4 AA's total on your trip. (Psst tip: Don't bring more than 4 AA's on an airplane trip. I did that on a trip recently and one of the security personell mentioned that looked supsicious and recommended I carry no more than 4.
3.) Startup/shutdown time: May not seem like much, but there's a big difference between 60 seconds of bootup or shutdown, and 'click' your GBA is off.
4.) Control: Control is horrible on a laptop for most games. If the ergonomics don't get you, the lack of space for a mouse to move will.
5.) Carry on: I find it to be a nuisance to unpack and put away a laptop on a plane. I can imagine most people who've tried this have the same sentiment. Not like a GBA where you just slip it in your pocket.
I know my suggestion doesn't meet all your requirements. I thought I'd mention it though because I had a similar problem myself a couple of months ago. Despite the fact that I have a teeny weeny laptop, I came to the conclusion that a GBA with a couple of games and a couple of Douglas Adams books were far more suitable and comfortable than a laptop. My laptop didn't turn into an interesting game machine until I got to the hotel. The nice thing about a GBA is that it plays nearly all GB games (dirt cheap), it's efficient with batteries, and it's form factor is quite suitable for a plane.
"Derp de derp."
http://www.ifcomp.org
Start grabbing the winners from previous years... they're almost always fantastic. There are links to interpreters for almost every platform... I know for a fact that my personal favorite (Frotz) isn't available for Mac, but ZIP is.
Enjoy!
-jf
If only The Underdogs would at least have the grace to link to games that were also published on other (better) platforms.. it's extremely silly to link to the PC's (CGA!) version of Marble Madness or Arctic Fox when extremely good versions came out for the Amiga, which are perfectly playable on Amiga emulators for the PC these days.
This goes for a great deal of the first half of their historical archives.. any cross platform game that came out before 1988 or so would inevitably have been far better played on the Amiga, Atari ST, Atari 800, Commodore 64, etc.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Try Armagetron. It's a very nice 3d clone of Tron. Probably, it's best is when you play it in a fast network, but it's fun also when played against the AI.
-- Matteo
I don't know whether it's a classic (probably not), but http://egoboo.sourceforge.net has a 3D nethack inspired game that looks pretty good.
This game is hot, fast, and FREE!
If you're going to be sitting around for a while playing, you might like a good text adventure. There are a number of games that tell interesting stories and would be good for a long trip. See www.ifarchive.org and try Photopia, Anchorhead, or (if you want a real challenge) So Far. At 100-300k/game you should be able to bring a lot of games with you. Check out http://www.wurb.com/if/ to see what you might like.
Platform independant since 1981...
Speaking of old mac games...anyone remember Mac Playmate? I remember it was a game where you would get a virtual girl naked by charming the pants off of her. Then she'd open a toy box...filled with sex toys. You'd then just stick random stuff in random places.
It may not be the best game, but its a classic. Anyone know where that could be found today? I've looked, but I can never find it.
Lets not take things too seriously. After all, its just a game...
ADOM(Ancient Domains Of Mystery) FYI it's the same sort of text-based thing as Nethack, but a bit harder
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
...aka "text adventures".
Go to the Interactive Fiction Archive and look around. My personal favorites include Spider and Web (a really excellent game -- starts out beginner-friendly but with a healthy but not impossible challenging bit near the end), Photopia (more of a story than a game), Varicella (beautifully written, and hard to get right within the allowed time -- but short, so replaying is possible, and even intended), and The Meteor, The Stone And A Long Glass of Sherbet.
Most of these are written for Infocom's Z-Machine (remember them?) so they'll run on any platform which has a Z-Code interpreter available (which is darned near anything, down to almost every major palmtop). For that matter, if you're willing to deviate from the "free" thing, many of Infocom's originals (remember the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy computer game?) are also still available.
Have fun!
Damn, this is a time-sink: Angband
Look, it's trying to think - Albert Rosenfield
What ever happened to that free Mac game, NetTrek. The Star Trek like game where you'd go around and shoot people in Star Trek ships. That used to be free.....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
The classic space game, Elite.
There's a portable version at www.newkind.co.uk if your platform can run Allegro (don't worry about Allegro barfing during the build on the x86 assembler bits - they are't actually required for things like X. I've got Allegro working happily on my Sun.) Elite: The New Kind runs happily on Solaris, Linux, Windoze and anything that's supported by Allegro.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
How can he be so poor as to not...but be flying to Europe with a Mac laptop?
:-)
It's because he OWNS a Mac laptop and is flying to Europe that he hasn't got enough left to afford payware games
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
As of EV:Override, Cap'n Hector shoots at you after the 30 days. For those who aren't aware of the game, Cap'n Hector is one fast, deadly ship. Only a few ships (in the unmodded game) can even pace it.
The other nice thing about the EV series is the gobs and gobs of mods ranging from blatant cheats to full game conversions. (The Babylon 5 mod for EV:O is still my favorite with Star Wars a close second.)
So yes, EV is a true fun timewaster, and since it doesn't depend on a mouse you won't get finger-cramp from the pad on the iBook.
One warning is that it's a cross between a trading game and a top-down space combat shooter, but with a great number of branching plots and sidequests. If you don't like elements of either of these, try something else.
Another warning is that EV:Nova uses 3-d effects which can kick the fan into high mode and eat up battery.
As for my opinion, EV:Override is my favorite of the three Escape Velocities to date.
This now concludes our broadcast day.
http://www.happyweed.com/
Mac (classic) OS only... but it rules!
Ambrosia Software makes super games, as others have posted. A small Mac game house that makes really great games is Delta Tao - Spaceward Ho! and Strategic Command are great timewasters. If you have a Mac, you probably already have a sample version of their 'Eric's Ultimate Software' on your drive. Another fun Mac program: Knot .
Because companies that do make free games tend not to stay in business for very long. There was one company that cloned Pacman, Centiped, Donkey Kong, and others and had a free DOS version and an enhanced version with more levels and an editor for like $30USD each. It was called Champgames or something. It sank faster than the Titanic when the makers of the video games they tried to clone came back and sued them. Nicely done DOS based games, no Windows or Mac or Linux ports that I knew of. Plus when MAME came out, nobody was interested in playing them when they could play the real thing for almost nothing anyway.
Abandonware sites have some of the classic games for download, but get shut down real quick as soon as they get popular.
You might be able to find some from Gnutella clients; however, that is being cleaned out as well. Better hurry.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Of particular note is "empire", a multiplayer Civilization-type game originally from the 1970's (!), complete with nuclear war at the end.
Maybe because he's only going to play them for the few weeks he's in Europe with his laptop.
Maybe he doesn't play that many computer games, or maybe he has a PC at home and that's his gaming machine.
Either way, if he doesn't have any games for the Mac, and he wants to play some games on the Mac for some hours but he doesn't want to pay 50 bucks for a 2-week entertainment value that's he's never going to touch again, why not get some free games and delete them later?.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
I need ... something that's stable and has stood the test of time, and something that is more complex and engrossing than a Tetris clone.
How 'bout chess? Or go? That might keep you occupied for a plane ride. And maybe for the rest of your life.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I can imagine plenty of reasons:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/29/145420 9&mode=thread&tid=127
.5 mb to legally download using the service.
If you're using a airline that provides cheap internet access you can use the client mentioned in the story above. The NES roms are generally around
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You went to all that trouble and didn't install Master of Magic?
Enjoy Freenet & Frost while you can.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Here is a download site for Zork for Mac OS X.
Enjoy.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
All the old ID software games are available for download. In particular, Quake 1 offers a good balance of modern-ish graphics with decent speed on a laptop. The mod community has had its fun with Quake, so even though only the ID demo levels are available from ID, there are some good player created levels as well.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Go here: http://supermame.by-a.com/
:)
There are over 3000 ROMs.
Oh, and only download the ROMs that you are legally allowed to play.
Download a at Z-Code interpreter and you'll be able to download neat little interactive fiction games written in Inform. Those things can be absorbing for hours.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
It came out in 1994, was later released by Sierra as freeware, and is still one of the best CRPG experiences I've had.
If you don't remember it, never mind.
/ for the current SDL port.
It's actually a pretty addictive game. My personal best is level four, 8225 points.
http://fraggle.despayre.org:81/stuffage/sopwith
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
You can also go to emulation.net and pick up some emulation software of your choice. You'll have to be willing to break copyright law to get the ROMs, though.
BlackGriffen
For long flights, I depend on my Visor Deluxe. Palm eBooks (such as the ones in the Baen Free Library), plus various Palm games: Rally 1000, Kyle's Quest, Taipan, etc. Kyle's Quest isn't free but there are a ton of levels for it that are free, and there are dozens of good free PalmOS games.
A PDA fits well on the tiny tray table, extra AAA cells are easy to bring, and battery life is excellent.
A Visor Deluxe is about $100 these days.
If you bring an iBook, you might want to look into a cable that will let you power it from the airplane somehow.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Does anyone remember the old Apple II game Snack Attack? I surprised and delighted my dad on his 6oth birthday by making Snack Attack run on the Apple II emulator. Soon we were dueling each other, just like it was 1982 all over again! The grin on his face was unbelievable.. kinda like the grin on mine as I recall it!
;-)
ANYway, is there a port of this one? I thought of writing a GPL port of it, but I can't program to save my life...
-- haaz.
http://www.berighteous.com/euphoria/2a.html
One of the screen shots looks a *lot* like the first level from the Apple II version of it.
-- haaz.
Speaking of bubbly games... does anyone know where I can get a Win32 binary of SameGnome?? Please??!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Free, stable, classic, Mac:- Pick any three.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
Why are you ranting at me about it?
They didn't count all the batteries in my electronics, I had an 8-pak of double AA's and another 8-pak of AAA's. (with 4 of the AAA's gone)
He pulled me aside and suggested I carry no more than 4, presumably he meant spares.
He didnt:
a.) Demand it
b.) Perform an unwarranted search
c.) Treat me negatively in any way. He just said don't carry more than four.
Act stinky about it if ya want, but seriously, what's the hub-bub? If one can buy AA batteries in any country, why carry an 8-pack around like I was? Pretty stupid of me. They were on sale. Heh.
"Derp de derp."
Here's where you go to download those golden oldies, including classic games
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Softwar
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
BotsnScouts is platfrom independent as it runs on Java. And it's a cool game - keeping in mind that it's a computerrized shameless rippoff of the Robo Rally Boardgame from Wizards of the Coast. :-)
It's got hot seat, network multiplayer and a solid AI if you're lonely and/or need an extra opponent. Definetly check it out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The Mac OS X version is still in the works but if you've got Linux on your IMac, it should run fine with Mesa (Software OpenGL). Oh - it's a Tron Game. ;-)
Check it out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I can't say much about FreeCiv, since I have yet to get it to successfully install, but yes, the board game Civilization takes about 12-16 hours to play if you've got decent opponents. I've seen it played and won in about 75 minutes (with 5 players) by a very aggressive opponent. Yes, I was the first to go :(
As for other free games for XWindows, there's also xscorch, based on the old C64 (and other platforms) scorched earth game. I personally liked the original much better than the X version, though.
Sourceforge has a few mac ported games, as well, but most need quite a bit more work before they're as fun as they should be. Most also require a bunch of free libs, and don't yet have binary dists, as well, so if you're not savvy around a compiler, don't bother.
There are also quite a few emulators other than MAME if you like older games. Emulation.net lists many of them (search for platforms at the bottom by clicking on the OS-X like file system). I'm particularly partial to Apple ][, but that's the system I had when I was 10-16 years old. Emulation.net also tells you where to get roms for some systems (like the Apple ][), so it's handy, as well. No arcade sites anymore, though, since they kept getting shut down.
Also, Ambrosia Software's older shareware games are nagware, but entirely playable. I think there newer games are demo, then they'll send you a CD, but you can play quite a bit before paying. I was hooked on Escape Velocity several years ago (and bought the game), and now there's a sequel, Nova. It's probably worth the download.
For crying out loud, it's the vi movement keys with reasonbly obvious extensions for diagonal movement!
hawk, fully aware that netack is the *only* game that matters
A few years back, I used to play a LOT of Realmz, available through Fantasoft, which is a role playing game with lots of plug in scenarios developed by the company and by independent game afficionados. It's not free, but it's not too pricey, and some of the scenarios were free if you were willing to be a Beta tester. You could get a good few hours out of the demos without paying anything.
Fantasoft used to be a Mac only developer, although they have ported to PCs now. They also have some other games with pretty extensive demos.
[nintendo] can't make any money off of [old games] anyways.
Not even if Nintendo or Konami or Acclaim or Capcom or somebody ports old games to the new hardware? Besides, Nintendo still makes money off Mario(tm), Donkey Kong(tm), Kirby(tm), Zelda(tm), Pokemon(tm), Metroid(tm), Earthbound(tm), Star Fox(tm), F-Zero(tm) even if the new releases aren't exact ports of the old ones. (And those are just the franchises included in the first version of Super Smash Bros.)
eventually i WILL have every rom for nes,snes, gameboy or any other outdated system.
Game Boy is NOT outdated. Commercial software, virtually all of which is proprietary, is still being produced for the 8-bit Game Boy Color system and the 32-bit Game Boy Advance system.
i'm not hurting their business
The fact that you're playing Super Mario Bros. 2 on LoopyNES or FCE Ultra, or Super Mario All-Stars or Super Mario World on SNES9x, means that you're probably not buying copies of games in the Super Mario Advance series (which currently includes SMB1 for GBC and SMB2 and SMW for GBA; Yoshi's Island and SMB3 are coming soon).
Will I retire or break 10K?