Mac Source Ports

Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: June 1, 2001

Did you like Heroes of Might and Magic III and want more of it? Like a lot more? Good news - between 1999 and 2001 New World Computing put out eight expansion packs under the heading of Heroes Chronicles. Some were retail, others were free, but retailers like GOG have collected them all into one package.

Note that the way VCMI works you will also need the base Heroes of Might and Magic III game installed.

Although my aim is to host signed and notarized game bundles on Mac Source Ports, the VCMI project recently added Apple Silicon support and is sufficiently complex that at this time I'm going to link to their work. We may host a notarized version in the future.

Because the app bundle is not notarized, on first run you may run into issues. The shortest answer is to right-click on the app bundle (VCMI.app) and select Open. The long answer is here.

  Buy Heroes Chronicles on GOG.com

Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: March 3, 1999

Heroes of Might and Magic III is another 4X turn-based strategy game and is one of the best games in the series.

Although my aim is to host signed and notarized game bundles on Mac Source Ports, the VCMI project recently added Apple Silicon support and is sufficiently complex that at this time I'm going to link to their work. We may host a notarized version in the future.

Because the app bundle is not notarized, on first run you may run into issues. The shortest answer is to right-click on the app bundle (VCMI.app) and select Open. The long answer is here.

  Buy Heroes of Might and Magic III on GOG.com

Developer: Epic Games
Release Date: May 22, 1998

Also known as that game that convinced you to buy a Voodoo card, Unreal was released in 1998 after a lengthy development cycle. Although the name Unreal is primarily known today as a game engine licensing powerhouse, the original entry in the series is more than a tech demo, it's a fasinating glimpse in to what it was like to try and make a polygonal FPS game before most of the rules were well known. It's also a perfect example of a game where what you remember is much different than what you play today.

The OldUnreal team, responsible for bringing us the Mac port of Unreal Tournament have received permission from Epic to also release a build of the original Unreal for the Mac. Although the original game was available for classic Mac OS, this is the first Mac port of it in... nevermind how long it's been.

Note that we are labeling this an Early Access release since the OldUnreal team is labeling this build a pre-release. The original renderer has been replaced with a new Metal-based renderer and some glitches are to be expected, but the game is definitely playable.

Developer: Jagex Limited
Release Date: January 4, 2001

Though probably not the oldest MMO still in existence, RuneScape is definitely one of the most popular. Employing a unique approach to game structuring, developer Jagex itrated on the original design resulting in the modern version of RuneScape (dubbed by some as RuneScape 3), while also maintaining - since 2013 - a separate, parallel version of the game from its circa 2007 incarnation under the title Old School RuneScape. And while Jagex maintains clients for the versions, it also allows other developers to develop clients as well such as this one: RuneLite, which is open source and offers a signed and notarized build for the Mac.

At this time RuneLite does not offer a Universal 2 app, so you will need to download the version that corresponds to your Mac. Apple Silicon users can run either build but performance is better with the Apple Silicon version.

Also note that Old School RuneScape is a free to play MMO, meaning that it must be online in order to play. In addition, some features may only be available to users with an optional paid subscription. Mac Source Ports does not benefit financially from any transactions in the game, we are only linking to this game in order to highlight examples of source ports with modern Mac support.

Developer: Chris Sawyer
Release Date: October 15, 2002

Another game from the mind of Chris Sawyer, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 shares the same pixel art style and hardcore interface as his other games.

  Buy RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 on GOG.com

  Buy RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 on the Humble Store

Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: October 1, 1996

Heroes of Might and Magic II is a 4X turn-based strategy game. Ranked once by PC Gamer as the sixth-best game of all time it features resource building, new factions, skills, and a single-player campaign.

  Buy Heroes of Might and Magic II on GOG.com

Developer: Epic MegaGames
Release Date: August 1, 1994

In the great mascot character wars of the 90's, Nintendo had Mario, Sega had Sonic the Hedehog, and the PC had Jazz Jackrabbit. Two of those characters are big enough have their own movie franchises now. The other one is Jazz Jackrabbit.

Nevertheless, back when work on the Unreal engine hadn't even started yet and before Epic became a billion dollar Fortnite force, they were Epic MegaGames and they released Jazz Jackrabbit the little game that could... show off your Super VGA graphics card.

Yeah this game didn't change the world, although it did get is own sequel and there was even the beginnings of a Super Mario 64 leap into 3D, but it's still a pretty charming game that's fun to play, if nowhere near as polished as its cartridge comrades.

  Buy Jazz Jackrabbit 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: Stainless Games
Release Date: June 13, 1997

An example of controversy for controversy's sake, Carmageddon basically took what people wanted to do in other racing games - crash into other cars and run over pedestrians - and turned it into the primary gameplay loop. They took the macabre joke about getting points for hitting people in your car and made it a gameplay mechanic. The game was successful both from a critical and commercial perspective, as well as its goal as a controversy magnet.

The dethrace project is a source port where in lieu of source code they're reverse engineering it, and according to their Twitter account they're approximately 70% of the way there. The game is very playable but may crash in some places, so I'm introducing a new tag: Early Access. This probably could use a better name but I'm using it to convey the notion that the project doesn't consider itself completely finished (though there are reports of people making it through the entire game), but it's still pretty awesome so I figured if nothing else it's worth putting up a quick build.

  Buy Carmageddon on GOG.com

Developer: Chris Sawyer
Release Date: 1995

OK, so this one is kinda weird. Here's the deal:

Transport Tycoon Deluxe was released in 1995, a simulation game by Chris Sawyer in his graphic/UI style about managing transportation in a city. Sort of the progenitor to things like Cities Skylines. Or maybe just the transportation parts of SimCity.

The source port OpenTTD, as its name might suggest, is a reimplementation of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Like some other ports on this site, it is not based on existing code, it is a reimplimentation of the engine designed to consume the Transport Tycoon Deluxe data files.

Straightforward enough, but what makes it unusual is that Transport Tycoon Deluxe is not commercially available anymore, not even on the usual suspects like Steam or GOG. So unless you have the files from somewhere you can't play it.

To address that, OpenTTD allows you to download third party clean room data implementations of the game data files. These are not the exact same as the commercial game but they get the job done. When you run the game for the first time, it will prompt you to download the files for you. There's also tons others to choose from.

This is a complete enough solution that OpenTTD is even on Steam and GOG itself as a full (free) game. You can get it from there or you can get it from the links below, which are straight from the developer's site. I'm listing it here because I want to show all of the signed and notarized Universal 2 options I come across.

So download it from wherever and fire it up and strap in for one of the most ridiculously hardcore games on this site so far.