When Windows 95 came out, I didn’t care. Sure, I was just a kid, but I could clearly see that it was inferior to System 7.5.5. Years later I learned this isn’t strictly true -- although the feature gap was almost non-existent (despite what Windows’ marketing suggested), they each possessed different strengths and weaknesses. But all I saw was an ugly interface, a continued reliance on the...
My introduction to both video games and computers came from a rather unusual source for a child raised in the 1990s. Other kids my age were inheriting 8-bit consoles or picking up the Super Nintendo or Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, or they were experiencing the torture of MS-DOS. As for me, I had a Mac. Not a shiny new Mac, mind you, but an aging Macintosh Plus, with a monochrome 9-inch monitor, no...
The iPhone and iPod Touch App Store is brimming with content for just about every niché (except those that will never meet Apple’s stringent requirements). But so many apps are terrible that it can sometimes be a dice roll whether you’ll find what you want. This is doubly so for fans of retro games and technology, with countless attempts made to trick you out of your money in an orgasmic...
Mac gamers are a sad bunch. Every few years someone or something comes along that is going to transform the Mac gaming landscape. But nothing happens. Promise after promise has been broken, and few good things have emerged. So you can excuse the cynics who say gaming on the Mac will never amount to anything. Most look elsewhere for their gaming fix, either unsatisfied with or unaware of the...
Small developers have long had a strong following on the Mac, from the early days of shareware with Pangea Software, Duane Blehm, John Calhoun, and Cyan (amongst others), to the emergence of Ambrosia Software, Spiderweb Software and Freeverse in the mid-90s, and countless others who have tried their luck making games for the Mac.
Last time, I wrote about history of gaming on the Mac. We took a look at how it came to be in such a sorry state by the time Apple announced the move from PowerPC to Intel architecture. We left off with the reaction to the Intel switch from developers, commentators and users. Some predicted the transition would be the final death-knell of Mac games, since there was no longer a barrier...
Next week we will be introduced to a new product from Apple. This product will be the long rumored tablet-device which Steve Jobs has been intimately involved with for the past couple of years. I don't care what the device is called (my money is with iPad at this point), what I do care about it is what the device can do for me. I'm a gamer; so why should I care?
The Mac isn't exactly known for its ability to play games. And given the repeated snubbing from big publishers and developers in recent years, this isn't without reason. But it hasn't always been a wasteland for games, sparsely populated by a handful of the PC's sloppy seconds. In this series of articles I will discuss the highs and lows of Mac gaming. We start with some history, then we...
Multiple sources are posting that many gaming related media outlets as well as game developers have been invited to Apple's January 27th media event. The overwhelming majority of news sites and analysts expect Apple to be introducing their tablet device and recent reports from Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN have brought up the possibility of iPhone OS, iLife, and iWork...
Today I wanted to explore why emulation techniques were devised and what makes this hobby so fascinating. I list and explain the most obvious reasons, but this topic surely is very personal and thus the reasons for it quite subjective. Feel free to mention your reasons for the interest in emulation in the comments.