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Mac Gaming History Remembered 117

Posted by simoniker from the woz-woz-here dept.
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.")
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Mac Gaming History Remembered More

Mac Gaming History Remembered

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  • Two words:

    Armour Alley [scene.pl]

    Like all great games: simple to get into, difficult to master.
  • Dark Castle ("One of the first successful action games to use a mouse for shooting things.")

    Both I and my carpal-tunnel-crippled hand respectfully disagree.

    • Dark Castle stank. Platforming had already been perfected on the 8-bit machines, and Dark Castle was a distinct step backwards. Yes, it used the mouse. It also made it damn near impossible to move your sprite around by virtue of an impossible keyboard layout (hint: the keys with the arrows on them are commonly understood to move things in the direction the arrows are pointing...). And the mouse input was a gimmick.

      Deja Vu was a much better game, albeit a bit simple (I finished it in one not even very long

  • Bolo! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    BOLO!

    http://www.lgm.com/bolo/

    or if your a Windows/Linux user:

    http://www.winbolo.com/

    • You shot my LGM!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mole ( 22725 )
      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

  • I assume "classic" = "pre-90's" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @06:39PM (#9523736) Journal
    Since Bungie was only mentioned at the end of the article, and Ambrosia [ambrosiasw.com] 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
    • Yeah, this was more of a look back as far as possible article. There have continued to be many excellent mac games since then. My game was built and released on OS X first. Part of a new breed of mac games?
  • but they were awesome none the less. 1. Oregon Trail 2. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego It was '91 or '92 but those were the games I remember from back then...
    • makes me want to install a 5.25" drive in my machine...

      i remember playing those games in 2nd/3rd grade on ancient macintoshes...

      ahh.
      that my friends is the smell of the good old days.

      i would pay a few fingers for a good emulator and some roms. Anyone know of any?
  • Macfoxes.

    There were three games that we played a lot of at Carnegie Mellon in my time. Maelstrom (ie, Asteroids), Marathon, and Macfoxes. If only they would port Macfoxes over to OS X.
  • If I remember right, this started out on the Mac. Great classic Cold War geopolitical simulator, although I always ended up getting the world buried in nuclear ash...
  • How odd to see this up. 3 days ago my work told me I could have all the old macs. This got me:
    4 30/SE
    1 SE
    1 7600/132
    1 quadra 700 [not sure].

    I downloaded some games etc. had some fun. I'm going to set them up for the kids to play with [I have 6 kids]. Some interesting notes:

    the se/30's have 40 MB hard drives. they still work. 8 MB of ram on these bad boys...16 Mhz. Amazing-and the games are still mildly entertaining. shanghai, civ, etc.

    they were free-and there is some decent games for them in shar
    • Some reommendations from when I had an LCII (a 16mHz/4mb RAM machine):

      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)

      • If you liked 3 in Three, also check out Fool's Errand, which was made by the same person, Cliff Johnson. It is, bar none, the best puzzle game I have ever played.

        Cliff is in the process of making a sequel to it as well, due out on Halloween.

  • Memories (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gogo Dodo ( 129808 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @07:12PM (#9523947)
    Ah, the memories of playing Crystal Quest [the-underdogs.org], Crystal Crazy [the-underdogs.org], and Shufflepuck Cafe [the-underdogs.org]. And blowing stuff up with the Spectre series of games.
    • Shufflepuck was awesome. Spent many many hours...
      I used to play another game, that was equally awesome but I don't remember the name. I do remember the instructions "Shoot everything, don't get hit"
      any help?

  • Pity. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Arkhain ( 630247 )
    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 [tinyurl.com] has become. I mean, Panther wipes the floor with XP for just about everything except games.
    • Those were good times. Sometimes I get upset that Bungie is now owned by Microsoft, but at least they're still producing awesome games.

      At home my macs are called Tycho, Durandal, and Leela. Thanks, Bungie. :)

  • Mouse Stampede! (Score:3, Informative)

    by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @07:49PM (#9524105) Homepage
    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 [motu.com]

    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!

  • Honestly, the only MAC game that comes to mind was Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego that I played in grade school. That is sad. Somewhere things went terribly wrong for Jobs and company.
    • You hit a pet hate of mine - it's "Mac" not "MAC". MAC is an acronym of Media Access Control and has absolutely nothing to do specifically with Apple, however Mac's have MACs which is where it gets confusing if you don't know the difference.

    • Somewhere things went terribly wrong for Jobs and company.

      Although I wasn't a developer around that era, from what I've heard it was mostly because Apple was extremely tight-fisted over access to development tools and APIs. They still primarily wanted the Mac to be taken seriously as a business and education computer, so it was tough to convince them to even let you try to write games for it.
    • "Honestly, the only MAC game that comes to mind was Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego that I played in grade school. That is sad. Somewhere things went terribly wrong for Jobs and company."

      The sad thing is that you probably didn't play them on a Mac. You probably played them first on an Apple II e and then the (color!) IIgs.

      In my grade school, us little kids were allowed to touch any macs, if they existed.

  • No More (Score:4, Funny)

    by RaisinBread ( 315323 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @07:55PM (#9524131) Homepage
    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 [redvsblue.com] 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
    • At one point, I did miss moving my gaming away from the Mac to my consoles... but it has helped me put the computer itself in perspective. I see games as something I want to relax with, not sitting in my den at the same place I was writing a leeter or doing my taxes.

      That said, I still play older games using ScummVM or the wonderfully updated Myth II and StarCraft on my Mac. But it's not the same.

      Maybe I need to hook up a used machine to my TV... hmmmm...

  • All these posts (Score:3, Funny)

    by wheresdrew ( 735202 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @07:56PM (#9524136) Journal
    and nobody mentions the Mac Gamer [redvsblue.com] video from Red vs. Blue? O.o

  • Two words: (Score:3, Informative)

    by rbanzai ( 596355 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @07:58PM (#9524147)
    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. :)
    • Come on, you played that much Shufflepuck Cafe and yet couldn't recall that the final boss's name was Biff Raunch? That's a name I'll *never* forget.
  • I just finished watching this movie, and its amazing how well it relates to this article.
  • to become at least competitve in terms of games. With the newest G5 revision, all power macs come with 2 cpus and a halfway decent video(9600 XT) card for $50 more. Now granted, the pm market is a small share of the already small mac market, but it still could mean more profits if you can port it for cheap(ie you coded it well)....time will tell I guess.

  • Bah! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:41PM (#9524362) Homepage
    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...
    • That was such a nice game, I remember playing the PC version a bit years later.

      I wonder how hard it would be to make a modern port, and how it would stack up to modern RTS...
      • It wouldn't be hard, and it would be far better than any modern RTS. Although if you remade AAoW, you would want to remove the RT aspect. That was always one of the most irritating things about the game.
  • Doom. Doom was orignally designed to run on an Apple II. Quake was also originally on a Mac. And Wolfenstein 3D.
  • Prince of Persia was also available on the Mac platform...

    eudas

  • Major omission (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:08PM (#9524502) Homepage
    Bolo.

    • Bolo (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Macgrrl ( 762836 )

      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.

  • How is it that no one has mentioned Cyan Software yet? They are the makers of Myst and that uber-classic, The Manhole.
    • I adore Cyan's earlier project Spelunx. Exploring the caves of Professor Pseudo... anyone remember it? More importantly, anyone know where to get it?

  • Marathon (Score:4, Interesting)

    by T.Hobbes ( 101603 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @10:17PM (#9524865)
    My first FPS, and still my favorite.

    best line - 'They're everywhere'

  • I've said for years... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stanza ( 35421 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @10:21PM (#9524881) Homepage Journal
    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

    • BattleGirl (anyone tell me how to make this work on OS X and I'll be your friend forever)

      Basilisk.

    • BattleGirl works fine for me under Classic last time I checked... although the other poster's mention of Basilisk does intrigue me.
    • So many great ones here. You just named my youth! I was 5 in 1984 and blazed through all sorts of stuff. The Uninvited, Shufflepuck, Dark Castle series (to this day my favorite game(s) of all time), even the little space video game in After Dark! The 90s was Spaceship Warlock, Iron Helix, Lunicus... man I wish I had those games again.

      It's been taking a long time, but there is a remake of Dark Castle, with the originals slated to be included in the release!

      http://zsculpt.com/website/games/darkcastle3/da r k

  • Another Omission (Score:3, Interesting)

    by great throwdini ( 118430 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @10:52PM (#9525007)

    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 ...

  • So... (Score:3, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday June 25, 2004 @12:17AM (#9525418) Homepage Journal
    ... who else in the PC world is stunned that the history of Mac gaming was longer than one page? Heh.
  • It was the 'first' serious multiplayer first person shooter you could download and set up and play for a whole weekend on the office network.

    Man that was a fun game. Too bad DOOM came along and stole all the thunder ...

  • umm... (Score:1, Troll)

    by jonasw ( 778909 )
    Mac gaming
    Now you're just making stuff up.
  • Somewhere among all my bookmarks is an online version of Dark Castle (Java? Shockwave? I forget...).

    All it did was remind me of how bad I was at throwing rocks at rats on screens 2 and 3.

    (if somebody happens to have the URL available and can post it before I dig it up, I promise that you'll ruin my productivity for the weekend)

  • 1987, 88. I can't rememember the name, but you were in a overhead view controlling a rotatable/thrustable ship (a la Asteroids) that you had to fly through a maze. Most of the maze walls meant death, but some you could bounce off of (as could your shots). There were guns that shot at you, and some of the mazes/screens had a "gravity" feature that would pull you towards some point source (always with "death walls" between you and it.) It was pre-color macs by a long ways; I played it quite a lot in 1988
  • Any one remeber the original wolfenstein game [ufpel.edu.br] (and I am not talking about ID's wolf3d).... It was 1981, top-down prespective and blocky graphics, what more do you want?
  • Then there's the nearly completely forgotten Citadel: Adventures in the Crystal Keep [the-underdogs.org]

    Entirely drag and drop inventory system and visible character statuses on character icon, and pixel-by-pixel character movement in icon combat area (as opposed to block movement like Ultima). Monster combat was done in a different window than the dungeon view (which was like Wizardry) and had a targeting circle around your character to show range.

    Drag 'n Drop inventory is everywhere in RPGs nowadays, but back then, every
  • For some damn reason, the first game that comes to mind when I think of Apple and games is still Crisis Mountain. [thelegacy.de]

    Fortunately my first gaming memories of Macintosh gaming rests solely with Ultima II, which is just a tad bit better.

    I liked Dark Castle, but played it more on different systems (Still have it for C64 and Genesis) than the mac, and I still think I liked Uninvited and Shadowgate better than Deja Vu.
  • There was that great port of Risk...awesome dorm game.

    Some stuff came later, what was that one that had an early rendition of Dilbert? Like "MVOD", moving vehicles of destruction?

    And Weslyan Tetris.

    And Milles Bourne, loved that.

    Never had a mac but loved 'em.
  • Enough said. That game was one of the best.

  • (from the article:) From Dark Castle, then, descends the modern first-person shooter. Mouse-look is essentially a 3D rendition of what Dark Castle did in two dimensions (although Abuse refined the concept into something more readily recognizable as the precursor of first-person point-and-shoot). See what you want to hit? Point the mouse at it and do it. Point, and click.

    Sorry guys, you totally missed it. 'Abuse' was not a first-person-shooter. It was a 2D side-scroller along the theme of the movie 'Alie

    • I loved Abuse. I was on the QA team at Origin, that was publishing the thing for Crack Dot Com. The game even shipped with some multiplayer maps that my team designed. The room with all the traps has a lot of my work in it...although nobody except me liked to play it. : )

      FrAbs is a Free Abuse clone. It's still lots of fun. I'd love to see the TCP/IP networking work...
  • This is admittedly a little spammy, but very relevant, so here goes...

    Blitz Max, a variant of Blitz Basic [blitzbasic.com] 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 [blitzbasic.com]

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