Mac Source Ports

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: 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: Gearbox Software
Release Date: November 19, 1999

Half-Life: Opposing Force is the first expansion pack for Half-Life. It takes place during the events of the original game, but instead of playing as Gordon Freeman having a bad day at work you play from the perspective of one of the Marines sent into the complex. It was definitely an interesting maneuver, and one that avoided having to explain what happened after the end of the first game, they wouldn't go there until the sequel.

NOTE: the support for Opposing Force as a Xash3D FWGS mod is still in development. You may notice quirks like glitches with weapon animations. For this reason I have labeled the game as "Early Access". If you're willing to ignore the issues you can go ahead and experience the expansion pack on your Mac again.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.

Developer: Gearbox Software
Release Date: June 12, 2001

OK, so here's the deal: around 2001, Gearbox Software was contracted to port Half-Life to the Sega Dreamcast. Seeing as how they handled making the Half-Life: Opposing Force expansion, it made sense to hand the task off to them. And just to make the port even more special, Gearbox made a second expansion pack, Half-Life: Blue Shift, that would be exclusive to the Dreamcast version of the game. Whereas the first expansion followed the original game's story through the viewpoint of one of the Marines sent into the Black Mesa facility, Half-Life: Blue Shift does the same but from the perspective of Black Mesa security guard Barney.

Gamers were annoyed at the prospect of a single player expansion they couldn't run on their PC, so Valve capitulated and decided to release the expansion retail for PC gamers as well.

And then the Dreamcast port of Half-Life was canceled at the last minute. Like, almost literally the last mintue - some number of press review copies had alredy been sent out. There's a very small number of actual copies of the game.

Then when Blue Shift finally came out for the PC, many gamers were disappointed with its short length, unaware of the Dreamcast back story.

In any event, one of the mods that the Xash3D FWGS project supports is a port of Blue Shift, so I've updated the build to include it. You will need both the original game and the expansion. If you want more Half-Life, duty calls...

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.

Developer: Valve Software
Release Date: November 19, 1998

For the 100th game on Mac Source Ports, I wanted it to be something special. It turned out to be a quite a doozy as well.

It's not an overstatement to say Half-Life changed everything. It challenged what we thought first person shooters, narrative content, and gaming atmosphere in general were capable of. It spawned spinoffs, sequels, and launched Valve software into the massive force it is today. It says something that in a world filled with tons of games to choose from, everyone is still begging Valve to make another entry in this series to tie off the now fifteen-year cliffhanger of Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

Half-Life and the Mac have an interesting history, as well. Long before Steam was even a thought in their head, Valve announced and began work on porting the game to Mac OS 9, but it was eventually canceled. Then in 2013, Valve decided to release Steam for the Mac, the first non-Windows computer platform for it, and ported their games to Steam in the process, so now finally Half-Life was available on the Mac. However, the releases were 32-bit apps so when macOS 10.15 Catalina cut off support for 32-bit apps, Half-Life became unavailable to anyone who upgraded, and Apple Silicon Macs never had a chance to play it.

Meanwhile, a project arose called Xash3D. Since the engine for Half-Life, now retronymed GoldSrc for various reasons, was derived from Quake and Quake II, and the SDK for mods was also available, theoretically someone could reverse engineer the game with a lot of effort. The Xash3D project and the later successor project, Xash3D FWGS, appear to have done exactly that over the course of many years now. The result is a fascinating Frankenstein project meshing various id Tech engines and source ports together, the net effect of which is Half-Life can be played on everything from an Android phone to a Raspberry Pi.

In 2019, the Xash3D FWGS project dropped any official support for macOS and iOS due to Apple's deprecation of OpenGL and decision to move towards signed and notarized code (they have since restored support). As a result, I've had many people ask me to build this project so I figured I'd eventually do it and the one year anniversary of the site and the 100th game seemed appropriate to me. However the one year anniversary of the site was a month ago, but if there's an appropriate project for Valve Time to affect, it would be this one.

They're waiting for you. In the test chamber...

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.

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: 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: 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: Flying Bear Entertainment
Release Date: August 31, 2001

Insaniquarium is a game where you feed fish. And fight aliens. And feed fish to other fish. And avoid electrocution. By now you either think this game is pointless or endlessly addictive. And if you think that sounds addictive you're not alone, since this game was downloaded 20 million times in five years.

Insaniquarium was later re-released in an enhanced version dubbed Insaniquarium Deluxe, which is the version you can still get off of Steam to this day, and the version that Insaniquarium Portable uses.

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.