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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple Entertainment Games

Mac OS X Classic Games Roundup 100

Posted by pudge from the i-pity-the-fool dept.
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).
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Mac OS X Classic Games Roundup More

Mac OS X Classic Games Roundup

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  • Nifty... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Badge 17 ( 613974 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:35PM (#6739214)
    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 [deltatao.com]

    • Re:Nifty... (Score:5, Informative)

      by lordDallan ( 685707 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:41PM (#6739257)
      Plus the cool stuff happening over at Marathon Open source [bungie.org] with Aleph One etc..

    • Re:Nifty... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @07:15AM (#6742425)
      How many years has Return to Dark Castle been in development? A lot.

      Personally I wish the first two Dark Castles were available. Even though they were B&W with primitive graphics, they were great games. For those who never played them they were, for lack of a better description, something like Donkey Kong meets Joust meets a Prince of Persia. Very old school. But I have fond memories of playing it on one of the old all-in-one Mac+ systems with a meg of memory. (Ah that seemed like a lot at the time)

      • I still remember the sound those annoying little hand shaped things made as you flew over the swamp, trying to kill them.

        "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah."
        "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah."
        "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah."
        *whoosh*
        *smack*
        "Youch!"

  • Myth baby! (Score:5, Informative)

    by cruppel ( 603595 ) * on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:38PM (#6739234) Homepage

    www.mythdev.org [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!

  • speaking of classic... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xluserpetex ( 666816 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:48PM (#6739310)
    a cocoa frontend for the classic text adventure, "adventure" was released the other day. more info here [lobotomo.com]

    • Infocom Games! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Slur ( 61510 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @05:13PM (#6748590) Homepage Journal

      If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1 [macslacker.com]. 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 [douglasadams.com] but I don't think it allows you to save the game.

      Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file [douglasadams.com] (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:

      • Zoom? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Damek ( 515688 )
        Looking for an OS X z-machine interpreter? Maybe Zoom [demon.co.uk] 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...
        • Wow, I like Zoom a lot. It's a nice compact and basic curses window that runs Z-Code, and the full-screen mode is really nice. Oh well, I started "MacFrotz" [kicks-ass.net] so I guess I ought to bring it up to standard. Styled text and all that...

          I've been turning the idea over in my mind to add a flag to dfrotz itself that would output everything tagged (as XML for example). This would make its output suitable for use in any client whatsoever. That's one idea.

          On the other hand frotz has a backslash command facility used
    • I got into messing with REALbasic yesterday (yeah, yeah, don't worry... i know how to use it.) and whipped together a nifty front-end for "dfrotz" (the dumb version of Frotz?). It can run an unlimited number of adventure files, and has some other wacky features tailored for the standard Infocom games. Anyhow you can download the beta application from this page:

      MacFrotz! [kicks-ass.net] (includes the dfrotz binary and source code).

      Not sure if this version requires ncurses.

      The information fields are parsed out of the raw

  • a Risk clone (Score:5, Informative)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:29PM (#6739599) Homepage Journal
    Lux [sillysoft.net] is a modern-day version of the classic Risk game that's built specifically for Mac OS X.

    Yes, it was built by me, but it's still damn cool. So check it out.

  • Klondike for OS X! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:53PM (#6739739)
    Do Mac games get any more classic than Klondike?

    Version 7.7.1 runs on the 68k MacPlus with System 6 all the way up to the new G5s running Mac OS 10.2.

    By my count, that spans 8 generations of processors.

    Okay, that might not impress you command line folk, but thats quite a life for a GUI app.

    • Re:Klondike for OS X! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by .smoke ( 167893 )
      Dunno about Klondike, but I remember playing the Fool's Errand and 3 in Three puzzle games mentioned in the original post on System 6! Another post mentioned Bolo - I played that on my Apple //e, so if that can still be played on newer hardware, there's a few more generations :)

      I've been contemplation hooking up my System 7 68k mac recently in order to play some of the earlier Ambrosia games. Hearing that Fool's Errand is freely available, I'm definitely going to do it, because I never got around to finish
      • OK, I've just downloaded 3 in Three, and it's brilliant. Just one question... how the hell do the elevator levels work? I get how the numbers at the bottom show the movement, but why do the damn elevators either side move as well?

        Thanks for any tips...

        Oliver.

    • Re:Klondike for OS X! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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 s

    • Re:Klondike for OS X! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      By my count, that spans 8 generations of processors. Okay, that might not impress you command line folk, but thats quite a life for a GUI app

      Windows 95 could run on 386es. Lemmings christmas is 12 years old, and I just rediscovered the 2 floppy version of Photoshop Mac :-)

  • What about Bolo? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Frac ( 27516 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @08:53PM (#6739741)
    That game was lots of fun..

    http://www.lgm.com/bolo/intro/ [lgm.com]

  • Sweet! Fool's Errand kicks butt! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yroJJory ( 559141 ) <me@[ ]y.org ['jor' in gap]> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @09:55PM (#6740193) Homepage
    I have been playing that game off and on since 1989 and I can't get enough. I still play it on my PowerBook using vMac under OS X. I'm thrilled to know that he's got a sequel coming and I've already pre-ordered it.

    BTW, Deja Vu and Leisure Suit Larry I both work under vMac, too!
  • Anyone even remember this game? Man I lost so many hours playing it and trying to find everything, talk to all the dead Nazi's and kill the creatures which were pretty damn cool if I do say so, and it was on the mac, which made me so glad I had one. Wish they'd re-issue it, I thought the story line alone made it an instant classic. It kept me glued to the monitor. Come to think about it I don't remember if I ever beat it... time to dust off the LCIII.
    • 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
      • 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. Un

  • Getting warmer... (Score:5, Informative)

    by madcoder47 ( 541409 ) <development.madcoder@net> on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @12:53AM (#6741183) Homepage Journal
    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

    • 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.

      Are you complaining about lack of editting tools for the data files, or for the pilots? Nova is just as customisable as EV Classic

  • I'd like to see battle-girl ported to OS X. It wouldn't need much, I think, just HID support and LCD flicker elimination.

    • Re:battle-girl (Score:2, Interesting)

      by alices ice ( 699932 )
      oh god yes, it's my last real reason to fear the end of classic support in OSX. ..and provoke my first ever slashdot post after years of lurking!
      I'm skeptical about the chances of a port tho ;(

      "hey!" "cool!" "watch it!"

  • virtual valerie (Score:4, Funny)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @02:29AM (#6741556)
    any efforts to bring her back?

    • Puzzles and Smut (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @10:57AM (#6744199) Journal
      It's an interesting but true observation that modern gaming has almost totally neglected two genres that were previously kings: puzzle games and smutty games. Sure, there's a puzzle every now and then (ICO) and there's plenty of smut IN games (GTA, DOA, every female character design, etc), though few are actually about sex in the manner of virtual valerie or Leisure Suit Larry were. Too bad (especially with regard to the puzzles).

      I'm reminded about how Tetris was invented by a Russian programmer, who was strictly limited by the capabilities of his substandard hardware. Despite that it's arguably the best computer game of all time. I guess simplicity is out of style, and dirty thoughts (or at least acting on them in anything more serious than Maxim magazine) is out of favor.
    • Heck with that. I want an OSX version of MacPlaymate. Anyone remember THAT one?

      I still have fond memories of watching the midget with the eight-ball for a head dive in and hump the poorly animated, black and white vixen, while listening to her moan pathetically:

      "Ooh. Ahh. Ohh. Oh yes!"

      Now that was smut. No wonder my eyesight went bad so early.
      • What a treat. Just used google and found MacPlaymate. Runs in Classic, but this version doesn't have the sex partners feature.

        I can't believe what used to pass for tittilating.

  • Apeiron baby! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by salamander_sjv ( 619309 )
    Forget the rest. Ambrosia is porting Apeiron to OS X. I get a shiver up my spine thinking about the relief I used to feel when the sparse whooshing sound of my standard bullets transitioned into the steady dull beat of the triple-shot power-up. I can hear it now... Bring it on baby!

  • ScummVM, Sarien, FreeSCI (Score:4, Informative)

    by twain ( 166520 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @03:27AM (#6741814)
    Check out also ScummVM [scummvm.org]. Plays lots of good oldies, LucasArts' adventure games, Simon the Sorcerers, Beneath a Steel Sky etc. And enhanced with anti-aliasing too!

    Sarien [sourceforge.net] plays some Sierra oldies.

    And perhaps FreeSCI [linuxgames.com] (other Sierra oldies) might work some day on OS X too (native or via X11).

  • Mac Foxes (Score:3, Funny)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @09:13AM (#6743223) Journal
    Now THERE was a game. Any word if there will be an OS X version?

    Use the Jack Daniels bottle!
    • well, that brings back memories.
    • I prefered the Drill Doinker or the frat paddle.
    • Okay, MacFoxes was funny as shit.

      Someone ought to be able to do an OS X equivalent rather easily... the animation was ridiculously primative but very entertaining.

      So, does anyone know where I can score the original version???

      All I have are about eight sounds that I extracted from it years and years ago ("All this cheering is making me hot!")

      --Richard
      • Oh trust me, I've looked. I can find a few here and there on the Net, but they want me to buy it. Bastards! I thought sex was free...

        "Whip me now". Heh heh...
  • I used to run the original Apple ][ "Castle Wolfenstein" under OS 9, using "Stop the Madness." Haven't done anything with it since X came out. Has anybody tried KEGS [emulation.net]?
    • No, but I gotta tell you--regardless of the nostalgia factor (and I lurved the original game with an unnatural intensity), after playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein, playing the original would probably be like playing it on an abacus.

    • Re:What? No Castle Wolfenstein? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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).

  • You guys are missing the best game of all... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tsmit ( 222375 ) <tsmit50@ya h o o .com> on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @09:29AM (#6743388) Homepage
    Photoshop.
  • Anybody ever play C&G's Mission Thunderbolt? It's an old graphical rogue-like with a strong science-fiction theme. The graphics, sound, and descriptions really gave it a chilling atmosphere. Highly addictive if you're into games like nethack.

    I was really hoping C&G (or MegaCorp?) would freely release the game since they called it quits (kind of like how Glider was freely released). I'm particularly interested in getting my hands on the rare sequel, Mission Firestorm. I've never seen a copy of it ev
  • I'm me-tooing on The Fool's Errand. Some of the puzzles were really devilish, even more so for non-anglophones. Maybe I wasn't looking at the right places, but I couldn't find any puzzle games getting close to it. Or some Apple ][ ones.
    • I blew hundreds of hours swapping floppies playing FE on my Mac+ in college. I was actually sad when I finally solved the entire thing.

      Don't forget to "dance a jig". :-)
      -Rusty
  • This is slightly off-topic here, but still worth pointing out: Not only has the EV/EVO content been ported to the OS X Nova engine, but it has also been ported to the Windows engine. Good news for everyone who still wants to play it but threw out their last Mac a while ago...
  • Is there an open source turtle project thats decent, and ported to os x? I have a soft spot in my heart for it, and my original se 30 :) If not, guess its time to write one...
  • Between EV, Marathon, and the best Tetris clone which I can't remember the name of right now, made me proud to play with a Mac in the last 90's. At least Ambrosia stayed away from the dark side!

  • Spaceward Ho! (Score:2, Informative)

    by phredd_ ( 153380 )
    Delta Tao's Spaceward Ho! [deltatao.com] is still going strong and has been ported to OS X.

    So has their long running MMORPG, Clanlord [deltatao.com].
  • I had a mac when I was 7, and the only thing that kept me from getting mad at my parents for buying a game that had such a lousy library of games was power pete. For the unenlightened, Power Pete is a body builder who goes back in time to to save these bunnies, all while collecting various power-ups and such. I lost the install floppy, and MacPlay doesn't support or publish it anymore, and the demo (http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/7334 / ) doesn't run great on my IBook. But it is great from t
  • came on the software restore CD for my old preforma 6115CD. Spin Doctor Challenger, a strange game in which you controlled a spininng wand and had to move it to different dots, avoiding acid, bombs, and other wands that could kill you. such a cool game, but the people who created it seem to no longer exists, and i currently have to boot into calssic to play the demo. i've been thinking about using the Cocoa Sprite Kit from www.sugarcubesoftware.com/csk to do a port, but im 1) lazy and 2) have lots of cra
    • Spin Doctor was one of those classic puzzle/arcade games that really should have taken off like Tetris but, sadly, didn't. It was pure fun and incredibly hard at the upper levels (at least that same "free" version). I think I could probably still beat the game after not having played it in two years, though.

      Between Spectre and Bolo, the true multiplayer games for Mac rocked. I played Spectre back in high school on a Mac Classic that I borrowed from my high school. Even the single player mode was incred
  • Does anybody know whatever became of this game? Many, many lost hours ...

  • ScummVM! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gamgee5273 ( 410326 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @01:58PM (#6746367) Journal
    I'm able to play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis again on my G4! It's amazing that a game from 1992 works just fine in 2003. Now I have to see if I can find some other Scumm LucasArts games hanging around. I hope they're not on floppy...
  • My wife (then girlfriend) and I had fun one night playing that.

    [sigh] college was awesome.
  • I loved Robosport. A group of us used to build a localtalk LAN, before LAN parties were well known, and play Robosport until all hours. Maxis decided not to update it and stopped selling the game. I loved the death screams of the robots.
    • You can still find Robosport for the PC (where I played with it). Actually, I have it for the Windows machines. I'm not sure if it's still out there, but creative Google searching should yeild results. I found it on one of those lovely sites that keep archives of old discontinued games around for download. Illegally, I think. I totally forgot it was available for the Mac first. Now that I have one, I may have to see about finding that somewhere....

  • Icom games rocked! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by capmilk ( 604826 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @06:11AM (#6752885)
    A company named Icom Simulations [lysator.liu.se] created adventure games with a genuine Mac GUI: Deja Vu, Uninvited and my all time favorite: Shadowgate. Would love to play those again.
  • I am thrilled to hear that the sequel to Fool's Errand is finally coming out. I actually still have my original floppy discs for FE - not that I have a working floppy drive that can read the old single-sided 440k discs.

    Anyway - does anybody know if there is any plans to port the graphically fantastic Firefall Arcade, which I believe was published by Pangea. They updated it and released it in 2000, but it wasn't for OS X.

  • Unplayable in classic, only 60% complete in SCUMMVM, and the sequel just got canned. Makes ya wanna get on your Corley Motors street hog and beat some programmer to oblivion. Ho hum.

  • Those golden Ambrosia Classics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bluethundr ( 562578 ) * on Thursday August 21, 2003 @04:26PM (#6758442) Homepage Journal
    Does anybody remember Avara? [avara.org] If I remember correctly, the README for Avara initially (and brazenly) touted itself as "The game that would soon supplant Bolo [lgm.com] as the defacto standard for gaming on campus and corporate networks. " Then after a little while, the newer README began touting itself as the game that DID replace Bolo as the standard for gaming on corporate and campus networks.

    That was certainly the case as far as my very good newly departed friend [slashdot.org] and I were concerned. After slaving away at Microwarehouse Tech [microwarehousesucks.com] all day, we'd race home to our beach apartments and battle it out via our little LAN. After playing Avara over 14.4 dial-up you reeeeaaaalllly appreaciated the convenience of having ethernet dangling out your window to your neighbor's apartment! (not long before., we were using phone-net!)

    My upstairs neighbor (at that same beach apartment) created a pretty brilliant plug-in for Escape Velocity, [ambrosiasw.com] turning all of the ships into Star Wars ships [tripod.com](painstakingly rendered in Infini-D!!!). EV was a great game too, I've personally killed many hours (and brain cells!!!) playing my friend Mark's SW plug-in!

  • Nethack has been ported to MacOS X. (Score:3, Informative)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @05:18PM (#6759041) Journal
    According to nethack.org [nethack.org], Nethack has been ported to MacOS 10 as well as 7.x - 9.x.
  • I can't believe nobody has mentioned such classic games as Hardhat Mack or One-on-One (Dr. J vs. Larry Bird).

    And for a more /. oriented suggestion, how about Netrek? Has anyone made an OS X port of that game yet?

    Thanks for the info on the Zork engine, BTW, I think I'm going to go back and re-live my mis-spent adolescence this weekend!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'd love to see an update of this classic adventure.
  • That is a classic Mac game. It has given me many hours of fun. Ambrosia -- please port it to MacOS X!

  • ShadowWraith [ebay.com] was a pretty fun Mac game. We played it on the Quadra in science class.
  • Just about all the "classic" games I play on my iBook are old SNES titles.

    SNES9x [macosxapps.com] works fine under OS X.

    I could play Commander Keen on OS X no work would be done around here....

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