Classic Mac RGBers -- do you exist?

That works. Now I’ve got an externally accessible SD card in lieu of a hard drive.

Spoils the design a bit but there’s literally no other good way to get this out. The next best idea I had was cutting the plastic shroud around the audio jacks, which would have at least been on the back but I’m not too keen to cut this up.

This is a good YouTube channel for Classic Mac gaming tips

Play Different, also on Patreon

Most of these I have installed aren’t Mac exclusive but they are what I played growing up plus a couple of ones I wish I could’ve tried at the time.

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I had one of these a couple of months ago. Ended up getting rig of it because I needed the space. I’ve always loved the designs. It was back when you could easily disassemble an apple product that wasn’t held together with glue and adhesive.

Currently posting this on my recently upgraded Mac Pro 5,1 that I got for free a couple of years ago.

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I grew up absolutely LOVING the Macventures: I played a ton of Deja Vu and Uninvited on my Apple IIgs (Colour graphics!). Despite getting many many ports (including great NES ones), I still think playing this on a Mac or other Apple computer is still the best experience.

In this screenshot, the player is moments away from death. They have the right inventory item to survive, but the bottle looks unopened, meaning…

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The IIe was such a beast in it’s day. I can’t help but think of the number of times I played Karataka, Conan, Montezuma’s Revenge, Ms. Pac-Man, some vector game called Minitour. Just so many I can’t name them all, including the text adventures.

Wasn’t one of Bungie’s early games called Minotaur too?

Edit: yep. Must’ve been included in the Marathon Trilogy box set I was gifted back in the late 90s (IIRC).

Found this list on my Desktop from August 2018. No idea of the source, probably some relevant classic mac archive or website.

“top classic mac games.txt” (scroll to see full list)

9.0  Go Master 
8.9  Playmaker Football 
8.9  Oids 
8.8  Might And Magic II 
8.7  Spaceward Ho! 
8.6  Simcity 
8.6  Harpoon 
8.6  Armor Alley 
8.5  N.Y. Warriors 
8.4  Halls Of Montezuma 
8.4  Fool's Errand 
8.4  3 In Three 
8.3  Robosport 
8.2  Nethack 
8.1  Strategic Conquest 
8.1  Shadowgate 
8.1  Beyond Dark Castle 
8.0  Wizardry II 
8.0  Star 'Roids 7.0 
8.0  Ishido 
7.9  Wizardry 
7.9  Vette! 
7.9  Solarian II 
7.8  Reach For The Stars 
7.8  Journey 
7.7  Tetris 
7.7  Pirates! 
7.7  Falcon 
7.6  Solarian 
7.6  Might And Magic I 
7.6  Dark Castle 
7.6  Colony, The 
7.6  Balance Of Power (1990 Edition) 
7.5  Deja Vu II 
7.4  Mombasa 
7.3  Space Rogue 
7.3  Shanghai 
7.3  Leaderboard Golf 
7.3  Deja Vu 
7.3  Crystal Quest 
7.2  Uninvited 
7.2  Theldrow-Boden 
7.2  Sargon IV 
7.2  Pipe Dream 
7.0  World Dilemma: Guns And Butter, The 
7.0  Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego? 
7.0  Pool Of Radiance 
7.0  Mean 18 
7.0  King's Quest I 
7.0  Karnov 
7.0  Forty Thieves 
7.0  Crab Attack II 
7.0  Alterego 
6.9  Zork 
6.9  Simearth 
6.9  Macmoria 
6.9  Leprechaun 
6.9  Columns 
6.9  Bard's Tale I 
6.8  Skyshadow 
6.8  Hearts 0.8 
6.8  Grid Wars 
6.8  Arkanoid 
6.7  Thexder 
6.7  Sub Battle 
6.7  Risk 
6.7  Quarterstaff 
6.7  Panzer Battles 
6.7  Leisure Suit Larry I 
6.7  Continuum 
6.7  Chessmaster 2100 
6.6  Warlock 
6.6  Citadel 
6.5  Wayne Gretzky Hockey 
6.5  Shufflepuck Cafe 
6.5  Pt-109 
6.5  N.F.L. Challenge 
6.5  Fast Break 
6.5  Ambush 
6.4  Starflight 
6.4  Pararena 
6.4  King's Quest III 
6.4  Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade 
6.4  Glider+ 
6.4  Bomber 
6.4  Ancient Art Of War At Sea, The 
6.3  Test Drive II: The Duel 
6.3  Life And Death 
6.3  Iraq Attack 
6.3  Diamonds 
6.3  Cribbage King/Gin King 
6.3  Bard's Tale II 
6.3  Arthur 
6.3  Ancient Art Of War, The 
6.2  Welltris 
6.2  Taskmaker 
6.2  Space Quest II 
6.2  Macman 
6.2  Harrier Strike Mission II 
6.2  Color Sqix 
6.1  Maclanding 
6.1  Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy, The 
6.0  Super Hang-On 
6.0  Police Quest I 
6.0  Macgolf 
6.0  Hoyle's Book Of Games 
6.0  Grand Prix Circuit 
6.0  Gold Rush 
6.0  Curse Of The Azure Bonds 
6.0  Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer 
5.9  Lode Runner 
5.9  Glypha 
5.9  Balance Of Power 
5.8  Patton Vs. Rommel 
5.8  King's Quest II 
5.8  Jack Nicklaus 18 Holes Of Championship Golf 
5.8  Empire Builder 
5.8  Dungeon Of Doom 
5.8  Cribbage Tutor 
5.7  Xerion 
5.7  Trust And Betrayal: The Legacy Of Siboot 
5.7  Bane Of The Cosmic Forge 
5.6  Star Wars 
5.6  Klondike 
5.5  Scarab Of Ra 
5.5  Montana 
5.5  Mac Ski 
5.5  Jet 
5.5  Hidden Agenda 
5.5  Ferrari Grand Prix 
5.5  Apache Strike 
5.4  Flight Simulator 
5.4  Darwin's Dilemma 
5.3  Shogun 
5.3  Sargon III 
5.3  Earl Weaver Baseball 
5.3  Cumulonimbus 
5.3  Adventure Of The Snake 
5.2  Windwalker 
5.2  Universal Military Simulator 
5.2  Gato 
5.1  Omega 
5.0  Sierra Boxing 
5.0  Manhunter 2: San Francisco 
4.9  Sands Of Fire 
4.9  Autoduel 
4.8  Road Racer 
4.7  Hardball 
4.7  Balance Of The Planet 
4.5  Star Light 
4.5  Hole-In-One Miniature Golf 
4.5  Gauntlet 
4.4  Mission Starlight 
4.3  Hunt For Red October, The 
4.3  Crazy Cars 
4.2  Star Fleet I 
4.2  Archon 
4.0  Downhill Racer 
3.7  Microleague Baseball II 
3.1  Ogre 
3.1  Faces (...Tris III) 
3.0  Orbiter
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How can we trust a list like that if it doesn’t include Oregon Trail?!

Or maybe that’s just because I only really used these classic Macs in school, and all we had was Oregon Trail, Lode Runner and Number Munchers… I’m biased!

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The Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail II for Classic Mac

I still have my CIB copy of ‘Pathways Into Darkness’ that I played on my Macintosh LC as a kid. (To this day, I think it’s the oldest game that I still own, that I bought new.) I’ve only strayed from Apple to own one PC in my life–a Pentium II with a GeForce2 card.

I mostly gamed on the mac from 1986-2002.

Almost everything I can play elsewhere now except:

Marathon runs fine in modern OSes with Aleph One (software rendering with low resolution mode enabled in advanced options for the original two games though please!) but the still incredibly well-designed editors Forge and Anvil still only runs in Classic.

Shadowgate’s original black and white mac version is the definitive one for me, but the NES port and recent remake are good in their own ways.

all the Maxis Sim games from the 80s and early 90s are best on mac, especially the original Black and White Sim City and Sim City 2000.

Solarian II is a good Galaxian type game

Crystal Quest with its Critter Editor especially!

The 1988 Macintosh Tetris is the definitive Tetris to me, a cool thing about this era is the Mac was the only platform where everybody had at least 512x384 and everyone with color had 640x480 so many games had high res art exclusively in the mac version.

the Macintosh release of Lode Runner is my favorite original version.

Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, and Return to Dark Castle are classics if extremely frustrating ones.

Snakes Alive! is still my favorite snake game

Bubble Trouble is the best Pengo clone, better than the original

Ferazel’s Wand is a fun action platformer you can only play with a real Classic mac, last I checked at least no emulators supported some of the PowerPC extensions it relied on.

(those two are Ambrosia Software, who were accepting money for their games on their website but not sending out the actual license codes last I checked so be wary.)

Return to Zork (lots more full motion video than the DOS version the rereleases are based on)

Voyager CD-ROM releases, the precursor to the Criterion Collection, are a fascinating treasure trove.

The Macintosh was the best place for almost all the multimedia/FMV edutainment/games CD-ROMs of the early to mid 90s. Honestly anything released for Windows 3.1 and Mac I would recommend running on a Mac.

I also keep old Macintoshes around to run my favorite MIDI sequencers and synth editor, Opcode’s Vision, Musicshop, and Galaxy. I’ve used dozens of modern DAWs and still none of them do some of the things I enjoyed about these.

KPT Bryce 1/2/3, Photoshop 3/4/5/6, and Kai’s Power Tools are other classic mac software I wouldn’t recommend running in Windows.

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Stellar post!!!

Thanks for the info, that’s a good list!

I’ve been converting Hokusai’s “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” into 1-bit Classic Macintosh art.

I’m using PixaTool to allow me to do the palette change whilst giving me fine-grained control of the dithering, brightness, contrast, balance etc.

Next I plan to “clean up” each image, removing/adding stray pixels, whilst manually drawing to enhance any details that I think need to be more pronounced.

Here are some teasers straight out of PixaTool:

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That’s cool!

It’s game related in a way. One of my games, work in progress.

Quirks in PixaTool became too annoying so I’ve made my own tool.

Bringing the mac classic feels here.

Thank you!

I love those classic Macs. My school in grade 7 had a room of those monochrome ones.

Fans should check the modern game Return of the Obra Dinn as it takes visual inspiration from them (it has other classic monitor settings but I don’t think they suit it as well).

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