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any fun game for g4 powerbook?

K

kevin242

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 28, 2006
44
0
will any good games or emulators run on a 15" G4 Powerbook (1.25 mhz, 1gb ram, os x 10.5)?? any suggestions appreciated.
 
As for emulators, Richard Bannister has a whole suite of emulators for OS X. They generally run quite well - my iBook has no issues with running any of them.

However, he charges for such features as controller support and -- get this -- fullscreening the emulator. This would be fine if he coded the emulators himself, but... the large part of the emulators were coded by others, and Bannister just crippled them to try to cash in with Emulator Enhancer. If you absolutely HAVE to use one of his emulators, well, I hope you like being nagged every time you try to start something. At least it's limited to that, and it doesn't stop working on you...

I would highly recommend finding alternatives, if at all possible. Fortunately, he has no PPC SNES emulator available, so snes9x is an option that won't nag you every startup.

I'll cut myself off here before I get into more angry ranting. I just need to figure out at some point how I can improve FCEUX's performance and give it a proper GUI... if I can manage that, I'll certainly release binaries. I just have some moral problems with him profiting off others' work. (Sure, he ported them, but... the emulator cores, as far as I know, are completely others' work.)

Also, Minecraft may run poorly on a PowerPC machine. My dual 1.8 G5 struggles on it, even... yet my 2.6 Core 2 Duo PC doesn't seem to have much issue with it. Granted, there's a substantial video card difference (Radeon 9600XT 128MB vs. GeForce 9500GT 1GB), but the game doesn't look THAT visually intensive. Then again, it IS entirely coded in Java...
 
Gt Fable or Sacrifice. Both amazing classics with great graphics.
 
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crystal quest!
 
Where does one find these older games? I want to play some games on my PB G4 also, but can't seem to find these powerpc only babies around.
 
Playing through "return to castle Wolfenstein" at the moment. Also still have the original max Paine to go. Both run great on ppc
 
Oh, another one that's come to mind is Sauerbraten. Ports exist for Windows and Linux as well, and it will run on a PPC machine. You may have to lower the settings to get it running like you'd want, but I'd imagine a G4 of that caliber could at least handle it at a playable rate.

If you don't like FPSes or building maps, though, this isn't for you.
 
When I play Unreal Tournament 2004 he uses his 1.33 Ghz Powerbook with 2GB of ram. Runs pretty well considering it's age.
Click to expand...
UT2K4 plays on Macs? D: I did not know this... *goes away to install*

Check out Neverwinter Nights if you are an RPG fan, it's a classic game based on the DnD ruleset. NWN2 also works on PPC, but graphically it's way beyond the scope of a G4. But try NWN, I've totaled weeks playing that game!
 
If you have OS X 10.3, you can run some classic games, like Solarian II, SuperMaze Wars, Jewelbox 2.0.2, and Marathon.

Oh, the memories...

EDIT: I see you're running 10.5. I am not aware if it has OS 9 Classic installed. Maybe someone here can chime in.
 
Theres a pretty good thread of some G4 PowerPC compatible games here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1051298/

Also, here's a list of the contents of my Son's 'game box' from his iMac G4.

'Indie' Games. There are some good fun and quite new indie games that work nicely and are cheap:

  • And yet it moves
  • Aquaria
  • Gish
  • Machinarium
  • Osmos
  • Samarost
  • Samarost 2
  • VVVVVV
  • Windosill
  • World of Goo

Flash Games. These ran like rubbish in-browser. So I pinched the SWFs and put them in a stand-alone flashplayer package and, low and behold, they run Muuuuch better and become fully playable out-of-browser. I also added icons for him (the games below are just examples that happen to be in his gamebox but you could obviously do this with any flash game which is usually too slow to play on your G4):

  • Balloon pets
  • Cover Orange 1&2
  • Don't Look Back
  • Little Wheel
  • Meat boy
  • Sunny Bloom
  • Trap-o-Matic
  • wake up the royalty

Classic Games/Emulators. Just a few of these on my Son's mac but there are lots more.

  • Macmame (MameOSX is more up to date, but I found this to be faster for the games it runs).
  • ScummVM (Runs Lucasart's (and other's) point-and-click-adventures like Curse of Monkey Island and Day of the Tenticle etc beautifully).
  • UAE (For Lemmings, because all the ports of the game are nowhere near as good as the Amiga version. UAE emulates it pretty much perfectly. I dedicated it to that one game and added a lemmings icon).
  • Dos Box (For Little Big Adventure, but obviously runs lots more Dos games).
 
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