Random Gaming Thoughts

[Hazerd]

I had a Mac as a kid as well, many black and white games were played.

I had a Mac Apple II GS, many games of Test Drive and Zany Golf were played in color!

[BoneSnapDeez]

Glad some other people had Macs.

I remember the particular version of Lemmings I had could be played in black & white with music or color with no music. Either that or I couldn't get the music to work in color mode for whatever reason (I was like 8 years old).

I always chose b&w w/ music because Lemmings has one of the coolest game soundtracks ever - remixes of "public domain" music. Love that version of Canon:

[Menegrothx]

can anyone suggest a non-retro gaming forum that has a member base with a knowledge of and appreciation for older games, but which tends to have interesting, insightful, and respectful discussions of newer stuff, changes in the industry and culture, etc.?

I'd like to find one myself RPG codex is great when it comes to the education/writing skill/knowledge level of average poster (many posters there often make references to old RPGs you never see any one talking about on retro game forums like Racketboy, youtube etc) and high quality, in depth discussion of gameplay mechanics, the changes in the industry and culture etc. But it's a RPG centric forum as the name suggests and "biased" against modern commercial games (but mainly due game design related reasons).

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of talk about retro Mac games, though Macintosh Garden has some great preservation/emulation stuff. I wonder how easy it would be to run some of this old stuff on a modern Mac computer...

Not much point in talking if you're refering to inferior ports of games available on multiple platforms. Unless you mean actual Mac games like Marathon. I've been always been under the impression that there simply weren't all that many Mac exclusive games, and because of that no one ever talks about Mac gaming. But I could be wrong.

That Lemmings song is awesome

[Nemoide]

Not much point in talking if you're refering to inferior ports of games available on multiple platforms. Unless you mean actual Mac games like Marathon. I've been always been under the impression that there simply weren't all that many Mac exclusive games, and because of that no one ever talks about Mac gaming. But I could be wrong.

That Lemmings song is awesome

I'm under the impression that Mac versions of games were generally superior to PC equivalents during the early 90s. While DOS games were generally limited to VGA graphics, Macs had way snazzier display capabilities. At least I remember playing Warcraft on a Mac and thinking it looked WAY better than the ugly DOS version. But once you get to the era of Windows 95 as the dominant platform for games, they became PRETTY EQUAL.

[Hobie-wan]

I'm under the impression that Mac versions of games were generally superior to PC equivalents during the early 90s. While DOS games were generally limited to VGA graphics, Macs had way snazzier display capabilities. At least I remember playing Warcraft on a Mac and thinking it looked WAY better than the ugly DOS version. But once you get to the era of Windows 95 as the dominant platform for games, they became PRETTY EQUAL.

I don't really see how that's possible unless there was an EGA option and you were playing on a really old PC. 640x400 256 color VGA that the game ran in had been around for years by the time that came out. PCs were capable of higher by then too. I can't really seem to find any Mac screenshots, but here are DOS ones.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/warcraft- ... creenshots

[BoneSnapDeez]

I liked how user-friendly our Mac was (lol hasn't that always been the selling point for Macs)?

I could pop in a disk, double-click, and load the game.

The stark black screen and blinking white cursor of DOS used to intimidate me as a child. I thought I could "break" the computer by messing up the commands or something haha.

[Hobie-wan]

The stark black screen and blinking white cursor of DOS used to intimidate me as a child. I thought I could "break" the computer by messing up the commands or something haha.

Format C: was a really fun game I hear. DEL *.* /S /F /Q was pretty fun too.

[Nemoide]

DOS was a challenge, but my family's computer had Windows 3.11 which made things way easier. I didn't really get a handle on DOS until I was in high school but I fell in love with it; I made the computer boot up with red text and ask "What is thy bidding my master?" instead of displaying the drive/location. IT MADE ME FEEL LIKE A 1337 HA><0r!

I'm under the impression that Mac versions of games were generally superior to PC equivalents during the early 90s. While DOS games were generally limited to VGA graphics, Macs had way snazzier display capabilities. At least I remember playing Warcraft on a Mac and thinking it looked WAY better than the ugly DOS version. But once you get to the era of Windows 95 as the dominant platform for games, they became PRETTY EQUAL.

I don't really see how that's possible unless there was an EGA option and you were playing on a really old PC. 640x400 256 color VGA that the game ran in had been around for years by the time that came out. PCs were capable of higher by then too. I can't really seem to find any Mac screenshots, but here are DOS ones.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/warcraft- ... creenshots

The second image on this pages is a decent screenshot to compare with the DOS version. I think it looks way more smooth.

[brunoafh]

I used to think I was a total computer badass when I was like 5 and figured out how to use the DOS prompt to install/run games. "You think your Jurassic Park lunchbox is cool Timmy? Yeah, well I installed Doom all by myself last night on Windows 3, your lunchbox ain't shit." I don't think it would feel as cool doing it now.

[Violent By Design]

I had a computer since I was 4 or 5, but I dont think I realized how to install things until I was like 11. I have no idea why it was so confusing to me given I was not computer illiterate for my age.

I remember everyone in middle school was utterly confused on how to get Counter-Strike to work. Probably why everyone used to go to lan centers during that time.