Mac Source Ports

Developer: DMA Designs
Release Date: February 14, 1991

You know what Lemmings is: that game where you have to get a bunch of cute little creatures from point A to point B and let just enough of them explode to be fun but not lose the level. The first game in the series was sort of a fluke that made enough money that the developer was obliged to make sequels and spinoffs. Then eventually they changed their name to Rockstar North and made all of the Grand Theft Auto games. Not kidding.

Anyway I've been wanting a Lemmings game on here for forever now but the issue is always that the fan projects are either doing something I'm not experienced with building, or they're a similar-but-not-Lemmings game like Pingus. And then here comes Erik Veland with a port of... well, all of them. The original game. The semi-sequel games. The three different holiday games. Preview support for the two full sequels. And six thousand fan levels.

Lemmings may be one of the most popular games you can't buy but here's enough of it to last you through the heat death of the universe.

Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 14, 1990

Not only is this literally id Software's first game, but they didn't even go by id Software yet, they went by the name Ideas from the Deep. Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons is a shareware side scroller with EGA graphics that predated sound cards. The first game in the series consisted of three episodes, and the Commander Genius source port went so far as to reverse engineer the PC speaker sound effects the game relied upon.

Note that most digital retailers market someting called the Commander Keen Complete Pack which contains the first two games' content but not the Keen Dreams spinoff or the final episode Aliens Ate My Babysitter due to the surprisingly complicated publication history of the series. Commander Genius has incomplete support for Keen Dreams, but fully supports Aliens Ate My Babysitter, should you be able to find it somewhere.

  Buy Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons on GOG.com

Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 15, 1991

Now going by id Software formally, Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! is a shareware sequel to the original game, consisting of two episodes. The third episode was spun off into a new game to fulfill a contractual obligation. The game features enhancements and new features such as parallax scrolling.

Note that most digital retailers market someting called the Commander Keen Complete Pack which contains the first two games' content but not the Keen Dreams spinoff or the final episode Aliens Ate My Babysitter due to the surprisingly complicated publication history of the series. Commander Genius has incomplete support for Keen Dreams, but fully supports Aliens Ate My Babysitter, should you be able to find it somewhere.

  Buy Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! on GOG.com

Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 1991

Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter is the final game in the Commander Keen series developed by id Software (though a Game Boy Color sequel/reboot would be developed externally in 2001). Released as a retail sequel, it contains the sixth episode of the original series (seventh if you count Keen Dreams).

Note that most digital retailers market someting called the Commander Keen Complete Pack which contains the first two games but not this final game due to the surprisingly complicated publication history of the series. Commander Genius has incomplete support for Keen Dreams, but fully supports Aliens Ate My Babysitter, should you be able to find it somewhere.

Developer: Splash Damage
Release Date: May 29, 2003
Source Code Release Date: August 12, 2010

The story goes that Activision commissioned an expansion pack for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which like the base game would offer both a single and multiplayer campaign, each assigned to different developers. For whatever reason, the single player campaign did not meet expectations while the multiplayer component was coming along nicely so the decision was made to cancel the expansion pack but release the multiplayer portion standalone for free as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

Although we have numerous options today, in 2003 this was an almost unheard of phenomenon: a free game with no strings attached and whose tech for mods and map making were already in use by the community. In 2010, the source code for the full game was released and the ET: Legacy project has been actively maintaining for years now, with an enthusiastic player base continuing to populate servers two decades later.

NOTE: due to the nature of compiled mods, not all servers may be playable for non-Windows players. Look for servers running the "Legacy" mod for the best chance of connection success.

  Buy Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on GOG.com

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: 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.

And just so the Windows folks don't get all the bragging rights, there is now a port from Night Sight Productions of the DOOM 2 RT project to Metal.

  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