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Mac OS X Classic Games Roundup
Alcimedes writes "Maybe I'm jaded as to the quality of games coming out these days, but I haven't found that much lately that really catches my eye. So it was with great joy that I returned to the SC2 project page to find out that my favorite game of all time, Star Control 2, has been ported to Mac OS X."
Jay Brewer writes "Small Fry Studios will be releasing a Mac OS X version of our new shareware game, Hillbilly Whack! Save Winnie May! this fall. We've launched a small preview site with teaser trailers and screenshots of the classic-style-on-steroid game."
Ambrosia has ported Escape Velocity and EV:Override (using the EV Nova engine) to Mac OS X, free to existing EV Nova customers.
And Cliff Johnson's amazing The Fool's Errand has a sequel coming on Halloween Day, The Fool and his Money. You can go over now and catch the preview material, and download free copies of The Fool's Errand and 3 in Three (which work mostly fine in Classic mode on Mac OS X).
After all, Escape Velocity was a classic, and the reason I've kept an old Macintosh around for many, many years. But what about even older Macintosh games? For instance, Dark Castle? There's a new version of that, too: http://www.deltatao.com
www.mythdev.org is the home of the volunteer project to update all three Myth games. While III was on OS X, Myth TFL was the thing that kept me dual booting for months after switching to OS X. I'm addicted all over again...
The multiplayer works for all three games, but Myth II is by far the most popular of the three. Geez it's good to play TFL again!
a cocoa frontend for the classic text adventure, "adventure" was released the other day. more info here
Yes, it was built by me, but it's still damn cool. So check it out.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
That game was lots of fun..
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/intro/
It was one of bungies first games actually. You can pick it up on the Mac Action Sack, which also has all the Marathon games on it also. You can read up on PID here: http://www.bungie.com/products/pid/pathways.htm
1) 68000
2) 68020
3) 68030
4) 68040
5) 601
5a) 603 (including 603e variants)
6) 604 (including 604e variants, and Mach5 computers)
7) G3
8) G4
9) G5
[603 being different from the 601 line, but existed largely beside the 601 and 604 processors]
Major OS releases:
1) System 6
2) System 7.0.x/7.1.x
3) System 7.5.x
4) MacOS 7.6.x
5) MacOS 8.0/8.1
6) MacOS 8.5/8.6
7) MacOS 9.0/9.1/9.2
8) OS X 10.0
9) OS X 10.1
10) OS X 10.2
Note that I lumped together OS's that were fairly similar (although you could definitely argue me sticking some like 7.0 and 7.1 together).
Ambrosia has taken a terrific step by porting override and EV classic to the Nova engine.
After downloading them, i realized that the ported version has a few fatal flaws which detract much from the original:
a) no forklift through conventional cheat -- the forklift was a terriffic weapon, accessed by option clicking the logo on the title screen, witing for a certail line of text to appear, and holding control-option-command-shift. This doesnt work under the nova engine.
b) no EV-Edit/.rsrc types for the Nova pilots! After playing the game a few times, it became repetitive; I got most of my play time out of the game by modifying it... making my own ships, planets, weapons, and outfits. the customizability of EV was endless and made the game fun for a long time... The ported versions save Nova-type pilot files which have to editing tools yet.
Although I'm enthused about the new releases, there's still a large part of the original EVs missing for me
Check out also ScummVM. Plays lots of good oldies, LucasArts' adventure games, Simon the Sorcerers, Beneath a Steel Sky etc. And enhanced with anti-aliasing too!
Sarien plays some Sierra oldies.
And perhaps FreeSCI (other Sierra oldies) might work some day on OS X too (native or via X11).
PiD was great, and in some ways much more sophisticated than Marathon (although it had its aggravation factor, like no run key--grr arg). Last time I tried loading it in Classic, though, it crashed, IIRC--it may not run in 9.2.2, unless you have gotten it to work? I may dust it off and try again.
I also seem to recall a project (which may be dormant) to do a PiD TC using Marathon Aleph One which would give a sorta-kinda OS X conversion, even though you wouldn't have fun stuff like random maze generation. Unfortunately, Bungie didn't release the source code for PiD before they were assimilated...
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
Delta Tao's Spaceward Ho! is still going strong and has been ported to OS X.
So has their long running MMORPG, Clanlord.
I swear recently reading somewhere that Power Pete had been purchased, updated, renamed, and was being distributed again.
[wait a few minutes to simulate the time it took me to do some Googling]
Ah, here you go. It has been renamed "Mighty Mike," and is now $15 shareware.
~Philly
If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1. This interpreter installs into /usr/local/bin and runs in the Terminal. It would be nice to have a Cocoa front-end for this. Perhaps some cool Mac Geek will find the time....
Frotz! 2.4.3 is also available in source code form if you're into building from source. You just have to make sure you have the ncurses library installed (Fink helps). I had to rename the "init_process" function (in src/common/process.c and src/main.c) to "my_init_process" before it would build. Some kind of symbol conflict with libSystem....
You can play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the web but I don't think it allows you to save the game.
Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file (option-click) right off the web and play it in Frotz!
As for other Infocom and Z-engine games, here are some links to resources straight out of the Mac Frotz readme file:
-- thinkyhead software and media
I play the original Castle Wolfenstein (and it's sequel Beyond Castle Wofenstein) using the great Apple emulator OSXII. You can download it from that same page on emulation.net (http://emulation.net/apple2).
take a look at
h a& alpha=67
http://mac.the-underdogs.org/index.php?show=alp
According to nethack.org, Nethack has been ported to MacOS 10 as well as 7.x - 9.x.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Looking for an OS X z-machine interpreter? Maybe Zoom is what you want? I'm not sure since I don't have a Mac, but it seems like it's mroe mac-friendly and capable than Frotz compiled for OS X...
It actually seems to work quite well. unfortunatly no one seems to be aware of it and playing it on the net.. unfortunatly the download link seems to be down right now.. versiontracker listing
XBolo