Developer: John Calhoun
Release Date: 1994
Source Code Release Date: 2016

There's this fascinating book called The Secret History of Mac Gaming, which chronicles what gaming on the Mac was like prior to Mac OS X, back before 3D graphics were a thing and people were exploring what to do with this 512x342 graphics screen. An entire chapter titled "Quintessentially Mac" is dedicated John Calhoun and his games, in particular Glider.

Glider was one of those deceptively simple games - you maneuver a paper airplane through a house. Things like air conditioner vents and candles provide methods of keeping it aloft, and there's certain items you need to hit, and others you need to avoid. I'm going to confess that as I wasn't a Mac person back in the day I wasn't familiar with this game, but amongst those who were, Glider is a game treated with the same reverence as DOOM.

Being in the era when games when treated more like software than entertainment products there was the original Glider, then later a version for color Macs called Glider 4.0 that included a level editor, then a version that added more elements and was sold retail in a box called Glider PRO. In the years since the source code was released and Eric Lasota ported the game to modern systems, including Apple Silicon. It includes both the level editor as well as a simulated version of what it was like to play this on a Classic Macintosh.

This is the full game so you can download and play it immediately.

Developer: John Stiles
Release Date: 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 31, 2015

Candy Criis is an old shareware game smilar to the Puyo Puyo series where you match different colored candy pieces in pairs to form groups and clear them from the board. It was a Mac-exclusive cult classic shareware game in the 90's later ported to Windows. It's also the one Iliyas Jorio source port that I missed up until now as it wasn't on his itch.io which mostly highlights his Pangea Software ports.

This is the full game, no extra data needed, so you can download and play it immediately.

Developer: Impressions Games
Release Date: November 2, 1999

Pharaoh uses the engine from Caesar III but moves the setting to Ancient Egypt where you oversee the building of a city to ensure citizens are fed, employed, healthy and protected from diseases, disasters and wars. An expansion pack titled Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile followed in 2000, and modern digital retailers sell the pair as a bundle entitled Pharaoh + Cleopatra

Since the game was derived from the engine to Caesar III a source port called Akhenaten was forked from the Augustus source port to run the game.

  Buy Pharaoh on GOG.com

Developer: GSC Game World
Release Date: October 2, 2009

I know I've used the term "hardcore" a bit on here but this game is not only pretty hardcore, the process of running it is going to be a little involved too.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a series of survival horror FPS games set in a fictional dystopian version of Ukraine after a second Chernobyl disaster. You play as a stalker, someone who ventures into the wasteland looking for loot and encountering mutated monsters.

Combining elements of FPS games, survival horror, role playing elements and the bleak atmosphere and resource scarcity associated with Eastern European game development, the series has always had a fairly devout niche. The developer released a trilogy of games in three years, the last of which was S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. In the years since the OpenXray project has worked on a source port for modern systems.

I try not to use the "Early Access" tag on here too often but it's appropriate here since we're hosting a build with some caveats. For now it's Apple Silicon only until I can hammer out some issues with Intel builds. The game also requires additional data to be present that is not in the original game data or in the app bundle, so there is a second file of data to download and install. Please read the instructions carefully.

KNOWN ISSUE: quitting the game via CMD+Q may cause the game to crash or hang, however exiting via the menu works correctly.

  Buy S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat on GOG.com

Developer: Black Isle Studios
Release Date: December 10, 1999

There are games that are cult classics, and then there are games like Planescape: Torment that define the term cult classic.

So, true story: I'm working for a Babbage's circa 2001 or so and the Infinity Engine games are very popular. We had customers that came in asking for more. They'd played Baldur's Gate and its expansion and Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale and they wanted more and we would tell them sorry, there's not any more. Utterly and completely oblivious that this game with maybe the worst box art ever was indeed another Infinity Engine game and exactly what they were looking for.

Yes, Planescape: Torment is the game everyone wanted long after it was out of print. It uses a D&D setting that's unusual and it turns several RPG conventions on their heads, like how in some cases your character dying is how you *solve* a puzzle.

Note that like other Infinity Engine games, the GemRB project plays the original version, not the Enhanced Edition, but on places like GOG will also include the regular edition when you purchased the Enhanced Edition. Also note that according to the GemRB status page, Planescape: Torment is listed as finishable, but not yet polished.

  Buy Planescape: Torment on GOG.com

Developer: Black Isle Studios
Release Date: August 27, 2002

So as much as the GemRB project is great, one thing people have pointed out to me is that you can already play modern versions of the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate with the Enhanced Editions that are already native to the Mac, which is true. But one thing you'll notice is that there are five Infinity Engine games but only four Enhanced Editions. The fifth and final game, Icewind Dale II, has never had an EE.

The reason? The source code has been lost. Yeah, for whatever reason due to bad backups or the dissolution of the developer or just the state of source control around the turn of the century the source code has been lost.

My bet is that it turns up eventually in someone's attic (hey, it's happened before) but in the meantime the only way to play the game on a modern source port is if someone were to reverse engineer the differences and while that may be infeasible for commercial development, the GemRB project has stepped up to the plate and as of October 2024 the game is reported to be "completable".

Note that "completable" is not the same thing as "polished" so I'm labeling this as Early Access because it's more for the brave gamers who really want to play this lost game right now (reportedly it will be more polished in the forthcoming Version 0.9.4)

  Buy Icewind Dale II on GOG.com

Developer: 2015, Inc.
Release Date: January 22, 2002

This is a neat little surprise. The Medal of Honor series started out its life as a first person shooter for the original PlayStation, a console not known for FPS titles, and whose game concept and story came from Steven Spielberg of all people. The series has seen over a dozen games including a reboot but in 2002 they released the third game, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, for the PC on the engine we would now call id Tech 3, with some help from the ÜberTools enhancements made by Ritual Entertainment.

While the source code was never released, the OpenMoHAA project appears to have taken ioquake3 as well as the Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 SDK (which used ÜberTools) and managed to make the game playable on modern systems. The result is not entirely unlike the Xash3D FWGS project.

The game supports multiplayer as well as the expansion packs, though the options for video configuration are limited at this time and the expansion packs need to be launched from the command line. If you're familiar with editing the configuration files for Quake III: Arena however, it's not much different than that. For rhese reasons though, we're labeling this Early Access. Later on we may add a launcher menu to simplify things.

NOTE: if you downloaded an earlier version there is a chance your save file might not work with this newer version. If that is the case and you want to continue from your saved game you can download the previous version here.

  Buy Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on GOG.com

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.

Developer: Voidpoint
Release Date: October 2, 2023
Source Code Release Date: October 2, 2023

Ion Fury: Aftershock is the expasion pack for Ion Fury. If you liked the first game you'll like the expansion pack because now there's more of it. Similar to the original game, the developer is not distributing Mac builds so our build is the only way to play it on the Mac short of rolling your own.

Thanks to a tip from the community, the issues building the EDuke32 source port have been resolved and so we are able to give you the latest version, capable of playing the expansion pack.

NOTE: the new version of EDuke32 may be incompatible with earlier saved games. If you need to revert to the old version it is still available here. Also you may need to select an "8-bpp" video mode on Apple Silicon Macs to achieve acceptable performance.

  Buy Ion Fury: Aftershock on GOG.com

  Buy Ion Fury: Aftershock on the Humble Store

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.