Mac Source Ports

Developer: PopCap Games
Release Date: May 5, 2009

Plants vs. Zombies is an example of casual game perfection, from developer PopCap Games at their peak, pre-acquisition. Effectively a tower defense game without being a tower defense game, it has a difficulty curve so incredibly well done that at some point you're pulling off elaborate strategies without ever feeling like you're not ready for it. With an addicting amount of depth, additional mini-games once you finish the campaign, and no microtransactions or mismatched mechanics, it's a game that absolutely holds up.

It's also a game where I had no idea there was a modding community, let alone a nearly perfect reverse engineered source port nearly five years in the making. I honestly thought for a minute it was some sort of trick but no, PvZ Portable is a true reverse engineered port.

NOTE: While PvZ-Portable definitely works with Plants vs. Zombies: Game of the Year Edition, I'm not clear if it works with the regular (non-GOTY) edition. As of this writing the GOTY edition is the only version on Steam. As far as I can tell it does not work with the recent Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted edition.

Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 10, 1993
Source Code Release Date: December 23, 1997

You can't *not* have DOOM on a site like this. With its classic and low system requirements, DOOM famously runs on anything with a screen and a processor, so naturally it (still) runs on the Mac. The most active source port is GZDoom, which is ahead of the curve on having a Universal 2 app with M1 Mac support so we're just linking to it here. Be sure to check out their website for more info.

We've also linked to ZDoom, an older but discontinued predecessor to GZDoom, for those of you who want to run DOOM on an older PowerPC Mac.

  Buy DOOM on GOG.com

Developer: id Software
Release Date: October 10, 1994
Source Code Release Date: December 23, 1997

The retail sequel to DOOM eschews episodes for one long campaign of levels. Adding new weapons and monsters, DOOM II delivers on its promise of more DOOM.

  Buy DOOM II on GOG.com

Developer: TeamTNT
Release Date: June 17, 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 23, 1997

Final DOOM was a retail product which contained two 32-level campaigns, TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment. It used the same weapon and feature set as DOOM II and the episodes were contracted out from the DOOM level editing community.

  Buy Final DOOM on GOG.com

Developer: Raven Software
Release Date: December 23, 1994
Source Code Release Date: January 11, 1999

Running on the DOOM engine, Heretic went an entirely different direction with dark fantasy elements, interactive environments, and inventory items. Also sometimes you can fly.

  Buy Heretic on GOG.com

Developer: Raven Software
Release Date: October 30, 1995
Source Code Release Date: January 11, 1999

The sequel to Heretic, also running on the DOOM, Hexen: Beyond Heretic builds on Heretic's foundation by adding selectable classes and a hub structure.

  Buy Hexen: Beyond Heretic on GOG.com

Developer: Rogue Software
Release Date: May 15, 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 12, 2014

Demonstrating the flexibility of the DOOM engine (or at least developers' willingness to try and use it everywhere), Strife is an RPG with FPS elements. If nothing else, it's a neat idea. One interesting side note is that the original source code for this game was lost, the support for this game was reverse engineered.

  Buy Strife on GOG.com

Developer: Digital Café
Release Date: 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 23, 1997

Legendary for being the first video game released in a cereal box (or at least the first good one), Chex Quest is a fantastic FPS game using the DOOM engine but eschewing the violence for cartoon zapping. Essentially a kid-friendly DOOM total conversion with new levels, this marketing tool has continued to entertain, especially if you have a kid who wants to play a retro first person shooter.

The first game in the series was released on a CD-ROM in boxes of Chex, the second game was available for download on Chex's website, and the third game was commissioned in 2008 (!). There's a reason why everyone from AVGN to John Oliver have commented on this game.

The WAD files are available for free here.

Developer: Quetoo Team
Release Date: May 22, 2026

So this is interesting, I just stumbled on this randomly a few weeks back right after it was released, although it was apparently in the works for twenty years.

Quetoo is an open source project that's a combination of id Tech engines and technologies, incorporating every graphics technique the source port communities are known for, and recreating some of the classic maps of the Quake series without actually using any of its data.

The result is a purely community focused freeware arena shooter that can even be edited with modern tools like Trenchboom.
Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Developer: Thalion Software
Release Date: April 11, 1993
Source Code Release Date: May 7, 2023

The Commodore Amiga was one of those computers where it jumped ahead of the competition by several miles, but then stayed there for a long time and got surpassed by the competition. I think this is why there's such a distinctive look to the games the platform and why it was so accessible to smaller game designers, the types we'd call "indie" today.

Ambermoon is an RPG for the Amiga that really looks like an Amiga game. It was the second part of an unfinished trilogy. Although the original game's source has been released, the source port we're pointing to is Ambermoon.net which like it sounds is a recreation of the original game in C#/.NET (the original game was Amiga-specific Assembly language and isn't a great candidate for portability).

In addition to being able to download it below from the developer's GitHub page, the game is also available on itch.io as a "Name your own price" download in case you want to support or tip the developer.