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Mac Gaming History Remembered
Thanks to 1UP/Ogamo for its feature discussing the early importance of the Apple Macintosh as a videogaming platform. The author argues: "The Mac definitely left its mark on gaming. Though it never became a gaming powerhouse, it played host to a few legitimate classics, and their ideas went on to influence developers to this day", before referencing titles such as ICOM's Deja Vu ("...has some of the wry sense of humor that [also] brightened up the best of Infocom's games") and Silicon Beach's Dark Castle ("One of the first successful action games to use a mouse for shooting things.")
Since Bungie was only mentioned at the end of the article, and Ambrosia wasn't mentioned at all, even though they are responsible for the best Mac-only games in existence.
Anyway, I coincidentally replayed Deja Vu for the NES last night; that brought back some fun memories. I knew the three NES ICOM games were just ports, but I didn't know they were originally on the Macintosh (I assumed PC or Amiga).
Rob
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Ah, the memories of playing Crystal Quest, Crystal Crazy, and Shufflepuck Cafe. And blowing stuff up with the Spectre series of games.
Pathways, Marathon, Maelstrom and Escape Velocity. Oh childhood, where art thou?
Oh yeah, playing Halo on a Microsoft Xbox and Freelancer on Windows XP.
Really a pity how shallow the Mac's gaming shelf has become. I mean, Panther wipes the floor with XP for just about everything except games.
Yep, I was working in the software industry when the Mac came out, and the first thing my company did was make a game. They did this millipede ripoff in about 1 month, and if I remember right the major portion of the budget was spent on designing and printing the packaging. However it certainly used the mouse, and it would be difficult or impossible to duplicate Millipede so well on a mouse-less MSDOS machine.
You can try it on a Mac here: Mouse Stampede
Jason Linhart wrote the game, but I got the job of drawing most of the icons. I'm particularily proud of the swiss cheese, it's pretty hard to draw something legible in a 16x32 space in two colors!
Thanks to 1UP/Ogamo for its feature discussing the early importance of the Apple Macintosh as a videogaming platform.
Whatever its contribution in the past, Apple is a gaming platform no more. As a Mac user and a semi-avid gamer, I really miss one aspect of my old PC - the über availability of games.
Anyone seen this parody? It's right on the money.
"The PC is so... so confusing! You go the store and there are like.... racks and racks of games. But on the Mac, there are just six!"
--J
and nobody mentions the Mac Gamer video from Red vs. Blue? O.o
Shufflepuck Cafe
:)
My God, did I play alot of Shufflepuck Cafe. I worked in a Software Etc. where we had a Mac Plus on display and that game got me through many a long, customer-free shift.
I can still hear the big, scary, fat dude that was the last opponent laughing at me when he got the puck past me.
Sorry, not classic enough. Gimme "Ancient Art of War" or give me death! First program I ever used on a Mac, and that in 1986.
Kids these days...
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
King's Quest 5
Civilization
Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis
Sim City
Quest for Glory 1
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (Deluxe)
3 in Three (a GREAT puzzle game for 10-14 y/o)
Bolo.
called Rescue Raiders, one very cool thing that the Mac version had was network play!
I used to share a flat with an Apple employee, and was friends with another Apple employee. Whenever they had to travel for business, they all used to take PhoneNet boxes for their PowerBooks (PB170-180 era) so they could play networked Bolo in the waiting lounge at the airport.
Just think how far we've come. And the irony of having their wireless networking offering called "Airport" makes me wonder if this was a common phenomenon for Apple globally.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
best line - 'They're everywhere'
All the best games come out for mac first. I'm not so sure it's true anymore, but for a while it definately seemed so.
Shufflepuck Cafe
Dark Castle
Crystal Quest (it was a sad day when this stopped working when I upgraded to "MultiFinder")
BattleGirl (anyone tell me how to make this work on OS X and I'll be your friend forever)
Snood
Escape Velocity series
I never did own a Mac back then, but I always enjoyed using others' for games. I don't think anyone has mentioned the (shareware?) arcade shooter Solarian II. Haven't played it since 1999, but now that I think about it, I wouldn't mind a quick game or two right about now ...
Apple II is a 8 bits computer with barely enough ram to run a BASIC interpreter. OTOH, Doom needed AT LEAST a 386-33 with at least 4Mo RAM and a VGA card. A better setup was a 486-66 with 8Mo RAM.
And Doom was developed on a NExT workstation. Yes, NExT was from the same guy as the Apple II. But there is a HUGE difference between a NExT workstation and an Apple II....
... who else in the PC world is stunned that the history of Mac gaming was longer than one page? Heh.
"Derp de derp."
Maybe the poster is thinking of the original Castle Wolfenstein? Yeah, it's a stretch...
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Amen! Bolo was a favorite game back in school and still a great strategy game played today. Bolo was designed and never quite finished by Stuart Cheshire of Rendezvous/ZeroConf fame. Released before the TCP stack matured on MacOS, and never updated since 1995. Still a great game, runs in black and white on classic macs or color, easily networked up to 16 players via PhoneNet (well, sometimes you get netsplits after 8 or 10). One thing I love about the Mac platform is this game was compiled for 680x0, runs in powerpc emulation, and in os x via classic, over the airport, across the world. It still works! I remember: - ladmo and indy bot - spiking pillboxes - designing maps - wasting entire lunch breaks and afternoons - 5 trees to build a boat - pillboxes have longer range than you, fire faster and take more damage. go out and capture them all. - collecting your teams pillboxes and breaking alliance. hehehe. - desperately waiting for your builder to parachute back in.
Continuum
Brian Wilson (one of the authors) even posted the source
One of my old faves, as well.
Blitz Max, a variant of Blitz Basic comes out on OS X in a couple of months' time, meaning a small but growing army of coders should be putting stuff out for the Mac soon (especially since they just have to recompile the code they've already written for Windows -- no port costs to worry about).
Gallery of stuff created with Blitz