
The History of Mac Gaming - WoodenChair
https://unbound.co.uk/books/macgaming
======
geerlingguy
Fun fact: Bungie was planning on releasing Halo (one of the genre-defining FPS
games) for Mac, and even demoed it first on a Mac at MacWorld Expo in 1999...
then Microsoft bought them out[1].

I remember a while back (in the G3/G4 era), there were a lot of fun and
creative games that were either Mac-only or Mac/Windows... once consoles
started taking over more serious gaming, and once DirectX started taking a
stranglehold on game dev in the early 2000s, it seems the 'blockbuster' or
'hardcore' Mac gaming market really dried up.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Halo_and_buyout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#Halo_and_buyout)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Also the original X-Box had the same processor as the Macs did at the time,
PowerPC if I'm not mistaken. There were X-Box developers with Macbooks, or so
I've heard from someone I knew who worked for Lionhead and Microsoft.

~~~
stordoff
The original Xbox was x86. The Xbox 360 was PPC though (some of the early 360
demos were actually running on Powermac G5s -
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/1686/5](http://www.anandtech.com/show/1686/5) )

~~~
pandaman
In addition: Every 7th generation console had a PPC CPU but only Wii had one
similar to Mac's [1]. X360 and PS3 had PPE cores from Cell, which had a PPC
ISA but not the performance of the "real" PPC that were used in Macs. E.g.
there was no OOE and the memory coherency was enforced by just locking a cache
line after a write so if you tried to read something from an address you just
wrote you'd stall for 50 clocks, the famous "load hit store" stall. Luckily,
we had SPEs on PS3 and the GPU on the 360 to do heavy computation.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_(microprocessor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_\(microprocessor\))

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Shivetya
One of my favorite games appeared on Apple before the Mac, Wizardry. I even
got it on the PC; complete with ASCII 3D hallways that worked just fine. I
remember days of Norton Disk Doctor and similar all trying to hack out
character data and writing basic programs to do it. I later became even more
fascinated with the games after finding out it was written in Pascal (what fun
it would be to have that source)

back on track, Mac games never entered my reality after the PC came about for
many reasons. One was I had ready access to PCs because my parents were in
IBM, but mostly because it just wasn't on anyone's local RADAR. Plus by then
the PC clones brought pricing to the point that a Mac looked like a luxury.

and finally the games market on the PC was just so rich with great variety
with early BBS providing easy access to many free games or the like

~~~
dmolony
The (unofficial) Wizardry source is available.
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/w...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.apple2/wizardry/comp.sys.apple2/2oDJTbQaJWU/Vge7HkIcYYwJ)

~~~
fzzzy
I'm pretty interested in this, but it seems the ftp links might be broken?
Does anyone have a backup of this?

~~~
fzzzy
Whoops, never mind, the link does work:

    
    
      ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/rpg/wizardry/wizardry_III/Wizardry_iii_SourceCode.zip

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favorited
Random fun fact: Naughty Dog co-founders Andy Gavin & Jason Rubin started out
making Apple II games, and later Mac games. If they hadn't both had Apple IIs
(and later Macs), they might never have started making games in high school.
Goodbye, Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and so
on.

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panglott
Came to Mac gaming in the early 2000s. It wasn't the high-end
overcommercialized hardcore market of twitchy games on the PC; it was a small
community of indie developers, who made some fun games (Escape Velocity: Nova
&c.). The big titles I was interested in (Sid Meier's Civilization) usually
came to Mac within a year.

~~~
spike021
EV Nova was such a great game. I'm not ashamed to admit I've played it several
times over, once even just a couple months ago.

It's unfortunate that smaller indie games like that aren't as big a deal
anymore.

~~~
jhbadger
Really? With Steam these days it seems indies are more popular (and generally
cross-platform) than ever.

~~~
spike021
I think I mean in terms of scale, from what I've seen games get kickstarted or
green-lit on Steam and the idea is to gain lots of traction by the community
if possible.

I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, but on the other hand it causes
games sometimes to lose what they were originally meant to be. Sort of
speaking from experience backing a Kickstarter game last year and many people
who did are complaining that the game has changed too much since the initial
build/kickstarter version.

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smpetrey
Oh StuntCopter was awesome! Still playable on OSX! [1]

[1]
[http://antell.com/software/games.html](http://antell.com/software/games.html)

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JoeDaDude
Would this be a good time to plug the Macintosh Garden?

[http://www.macintoshgarden.org/](http://www.macintoshgarden.org/)

The Mac Garden is an archive of old Mac games and abandonware. Most run on one
of the pre-OSX emulators. Not all games are there, as many commercial games
have been taken down, but there is plenty of nostalgia to be had.

------
nathancahill
Off topic, but I remember playing Spin Doctor growing up on Mac OS 7. Fun
game. Looks like someone made a version for iOS:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spin-
doctor/id335523121?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spin-
doctor/id335523121?mt=8)

~~~
grawlinson
I loved that game, it's been so long since I last played it yet I can still
remember the sounds.

Time to dig out an OS7 emulator!

~~~
amyjess
Spin Doctor, Power Pete, and Slick Willie were the games that got me setting
up an OS 7 emulator myself a couple of years ago. I have very fond memories of
playing them in the mid '90s, and it felt so good to experience them again.

Well, except Slick Willie. That game just doesn't emulate well for some
reason. But the other two played perfectly!

~~~
nathancahill
What emulator did you use?

~~~
amyjess
Basilisk II.

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jawngee
I remember playing Bolo in 92'ish. It was a pretty mind opening experience for
me at the time.

~~~
watersb
Was Bolo the first networked-multiplayer shooter for personal computers? I
know that "Maze War" and "XTrek" predate Bolo by quite a bit, but they
required $20,000 workstations.

~~~
netghost
I don't think it was, but it certainly existed when the whole idea of
networked games simply blew my mind.

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fzzzy
Cap'n Magneto was my favorite game growing up, along with Dark Castle. I also
spent a ton of time writing World Builder games and Hypercard stacks later. I
doubt I would be a programmer today, if BASIC and world builder hadn't been so
easy to use. Later, I tried to write a tile based RPG in Pascal but I didn't
have the attention span or help I needed to complete it. (Not to mention not
having a copy of Inside Macintosh)

I'm glad the ease of use of the early macintosh has made it into every device
now. Hopefully the ability to tinker, mod games, and program easily doesn't go
away as systems become more sanitized and locked down. The original web
browser had an editor built right in.

------
spike021
I logged so many hours in Starcraft and the Halo 1 tech demo back in the 'old'
days, not to mention Age of Empires II and Warcraft.

It's a bit disappointing that gaming on the Mac never really took off like on
Windows.

~~~
Aldo_MX
I personally am glad that gaming on the Mac never really took off like on
Windows, considering Apple sells a 2k USD "PRO" laptop that doesn't even
include a proper video card...

~~~
spike021
On the other hand, if it had taken off then maybe Apple would have gone
forward differently in terms of hardware/included video cards.

~~~
Razengan
It's not too late. It can still take off with external GPUs.

~~~
spike021
Sounds like if Apple re-releases the Thunderbolt Cinema Display it could have
a built-in discrete GPU.

That could work really well, and I'd imagine it could allow even a Macbook Air
to handle gaming fairly well.

~~~
Razengan
There's actually a rumor about exactly that!
[http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/01/5k-thunderbolt-
display-i...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/01/5k-thunderbolt-display-
integrated-gpu-possible/)

~~~
spike021
yeah I heard! that would be ideal, I think.

------
Razengan
I really hope that with Metal and the possibility of external GPUs with
Thunderbolt 3, Apple makes a concentrated push for Mac gaming already.

Their ecosystem in a very strong position for killer cross-device multiplayer
games too; for example an MMORPG that one can play on the Mac and then
seamlessly continue on their iPad, iPhone or Apple TV via Handoff/Continuity,
while getting messages and auction etc. alerts on their Apple Watch. Why
hasn't this happened yet?

~~~
derefr
I'm not sure Apple wants to touch PC (Mac) gaming right now. It really looks
like they're going all-in on mobile gaming instead. They've stopped calling
the Apple TV a "hobby", because it's now "how you play iOS games on a
TV"—which is an important thing, given the size of the iOS gaming ecosystem.
It makes sense to want to encourage gaming on iOS (which is really an OS for
_personal_ computers, in the sense that everyone has their own—meaning that
four players use four iOS devices to play), and tvOS has fancy frameworks to
couple tvOS apps to iOS apps, encouraging that thinking even more. The "Mac
Mini as extensible console" ecosystem—even if pushed really hard—would just
encourage people to buy controllers: not nearly as much of a money-faucet,
especially given that you aren't walking around with your controller all day
noticing that you could buy other apps for it. (Plus, the ATV is cheap enough
to upgrade in its entirety every few years. Macs aren't—so while you'd get
that GPU box upgraded, the CPU would fall behind.)

Apple is willing to bet, I think, that this "mobile devices + TV receiver" is
the direction gaming is going generally, too—not right this second, but soon.
Other console-makers seem to be on a similar footing. Nintendo looks to be
warming up to making mobile titles for iOS, and at the same time, their NX
might look a lot like the ATV+iPhone setup (their original intent with the Wii
U was that _each_ player have a gamepad with a screen in it—but they just
missed the wave of commodity-SoCs that would have enabled that. This time they
can!) And the gen after that might very well just drop the idea of a
console—their consoles are not selling well, compared to their handhelds—and
just create an ATV-like "partner box" for the 3DS++.

(Don't know what Microsoft and Sony will do. Their lunch is getting eaten as
third-parties move to Steam. Maybe VR? Either way, their next consoles won't
look like "consoles" in the sense they've been up to now, either.)

~~~
rarepostinlurkr
Agree that it doesn't seem like Apple is seriously interested in touching
desktop gaming.

On one hand, thats probably not a bad idea. Look at the scaling on mobile GPUs
vs desktop GPUs and the revenues in both. They are so far behind here, why
play catch up, just move to where the puck is going (or make a new place for
it to go).

Having said that, I'm not seeing the kind of investment I'd like to see in
Mobile & Apple TV based gaming from Apple, but that may be because Apple
simply doesn't care or doesn't understand that industry at its core. Guess we
get to watch it unfold.

------
macandcheese
Spent many hours playing Power Pete in the mid-90's. One of my first gaming
memories. A perfect candidate for an iOS revival, if you are reading this
Pangea ;)

