Mac Source Ports

Developer: Monolith Productions
Release Date: November 10, 2000

And now we have the first No One Lives Forever game on modern Macs again.

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is the first in the series that I believe was supposed to be titled The Operative with different subtitles but in typical Game Industry Naming Logic, they decided the subtitle was going to be the name of the series.

Anyway, like its sequel is a comedic first-person shooter in a 1960's Bond-esque world with a hip female protagonist. And like the second game, has been impossible to buy for years now for tedious business reasons.

And like the second game we now have a reverse engineered source port on the Mac. Similar to the Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas debate, there's a divide as to which of the two games people prefer, but now you can try them both out and see for yourself.

Developer: Monolith Productions
Release Date: October 1, 2002

I may have overused the term Cult Classic on this site, but this game goes one step further: it's one of gaming's Holy Grails.

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way is the second entry in the NOLF series. You play as Cate Archer, a spy for U.N.I.T.Y., a British counter-terrorism group fighting the H.A.R.M. organization. Basically it's a parody/homage to the James Bond movies of the 1960's with a stylish, groovy protagonist. The game was critically well recieved and is beloved within gaming fandom.

So why is it a White Whale? Because it has been commercially unavilable for many years now. It's a bizarre situaiton where the companies involved with making the games have been bought and sold and absorbed enough times that no one knows who owns the rights. The parties involve are willing to spend the effort to quash efforts from GOG and Night Dive to reissue the game but not enough to actually hash out the rights.

So consequently it was absolutely not on my Bingo card for this year that someone would figure out how to run the game on Apple Silicon. So if you fall in the Venn Diagram of people who want to play this game and are willing to figure out how to get the data on your Mac, prepare yourself for one of the best games money can't buy, though not for lack of trying.

Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: June 8, 1999

There's lots of game series whose entries reflect the evolution of gaming technology, but not many of them can lay claim to staring the series on the Apple II and Commodore 64.

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor is the seventh entry in the mainlne Might and Magic series, which runs parallel to the Hereos of Might and Magic series. Released in 1999 (the Best Year for Gaming, Ever) it is the second game in the series to use a 3D engine. The OpenEnroth project aims to implement Might and Magic VI, VII and VIII, but at the moment only VII is playable.

  Buy Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor on GOG.com

Developer: id Software
Release Date: June 22, 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 21, 1999

Quake is a first-person shooter, the first in the Quake series, which added polygonal enemies, advanced geometry, and a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails. A fascinating example of grappling with technology changes in parallel to gameplay, it spawned entire industries of modders and mutiplayer gaming.

The vkQuake port was derived from the QuakeSpasm Spiked port and uses Vulkan on macOS by way of MoltenVK. In addition, vkQuake recently added support for the remastered version of Quake from Night Dive Studios.

And because I've had a few requests for it, we are now hosting a build of DarkPlaces as an alternative port.

If you want to experience what it was like to play Quake at laumch before the advent of GLQuake or hardware acceleration, we have added Chocolate Quake as an additional option.

  Buy Quake on GOG.com

  Buy Quake on the Humble Store

Developer: Simtex Software
Release Date: September 1993

Described by some as "Civilization in space", Master of Orion is a 4X strategy game where you lead one of ten alien races to conquer the galaxy via dominaton or diplomacy. You start small, with a single homeworld and few resources and build out from there. There are different types of planets, the various races have different specialities, and there is a variety of technologies available to persue. The ultimate world to conquer is the titular Orion, which is also the hardest to conquer.

Although simplistic by today's standards, the game has developed a cult following, multiple sequels, spiritual successors, and even a reboot.

NOTE: the 1oom source port is compatible with the original, DOS-based version of the game from 1993, not the reboot from 2016 named Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars, which is sometimes just called Master of Orion. Most retailers sell the 1993 game in a 2-pack along with its first sequel under the titme Master of Orion 1+2.

  Buy Master of Orion on GOG.com

  Buy Master of Orion on the Humble Store

Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants
Release Date: September 18, 1997

A cheery game with a grotesque protagonist and a dark premise, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is one of the best selling PlayStation games of all time. This side scroller has you playing as Abe, an enslaved creature trying to rescue as many of his comrades as he can once they discover that management is about to go all "Soylent Green" on them for their next product line.

  Buy Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee on GOG.com

  Buy Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee on the Humble Store

Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants
Release Date: November 17, 1998

Following a year later, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus continues the story of Abe as he once again tries to save himself and others from becoming consumer products, a bevarage in this case. This game is considered both a sequel as well as a spin-off of the original title.

  Buy Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus on GOG.com

  Buy Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus on the Humble Store

Developer: Cavedog Entertainment
Release Date: September 27, 1997

Total Annihilation is an RTS game with a cult following. Whereas other games in the genre focused on resource scarcity or micromanagement of units, it focused on resource streaming and large scale battles across bigger maps.

The game's designer, Chris Taylor, would go on to make spiritual sequels in the form of Supreme Commander amd Planetary Annihilation.

  Buy Total Annihilation on GOG.com

  Buy Total Annihilation on the Humble Store

Developer: Ion Storm
Release Date: May 22, 2000

Yes, it's that game. Daikatana is the game known as much for its infamous advertising and the drama of its backstory as the content of the game itself.

Released in 2000 after a protracted (for the time anyway) three-year development cycle, John Romero's Daikatana was an ambitious game from an enthusiastic new developer that was unable to live up to the hype due to numerous issues at launch. Although some problems were addressed in patches, the Dallas branch of developer Ion Storm was unable to survive despite its pedigree (though their Austin branch would soldier on for a few more years).

Theorizing that the game's issues were not unsalvageable, a group of individuals online contacted the right people and were able to obtain the source under a non-open source license. Years later the Daikatana 1.3 Project released the first version of their attempt at fixing the game's issues with the years of what we've learned about game design as a guide (also the game used id Tech 2, same as Quake II).

For those of us who followed the 1990's Dallas FPS gaming scene, Daikatana has always been a fascinating case study in ambition versus expectations. Many critics agreed that there were genuinely good parts of the game bogged down by issues in the lesser sections. It's interesting to think what the gaming landscape might have been like had the game succeeded.

I first learned about this project via this excellent GManLives video and, upon learning that the game was also ported to Linux and Mac (the original release was Windows-only), I went to go download the Mac version to discover that it was years out of date and unplayable as a 32-bit executable. The reason was simple and a familar one: the (probably one) person who maintained it left the project years ago.

So, I wrote to the project and was able to get the source to work on it. I've been picking at it for months now and I finally got it working on Intel 64-bit as well as Apple Silicon. As mentioned above the source code is not available to the public but I intend to keep this one up to date.

  Buy Daikatana on GOG.com

  Buy Daikatana on the Humble Store

Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 2, 1999
Source Code Release Date: August 9, 2005

Quake III Arena is a first-person shooter, the first in the Quake series to focus on multiplayer. The ioquake3 source port has been maintained since the original source code release in 2005, featuring a Universal 2 app that supports Intel 64-bit and Apple Silicon as well as a Universal 1 app that can support Intel and PowerPC Macs going back to Mac OS X 10.3

  Buy Quake III: Arena on GOG.com

  Buy Quake III: Arena on the Humble Store