Thank you for this interesting background information. It confirms some suspicions I had.
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Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games
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I always found the Atari ST/Amiga area much better than the IBM PC area.
The best thing was that many of the games were available on multiple platforms.
Lucasfilm games had a number of interesting games on 8-bit machines but they went off the rails after that.
I don't disagree, but many of us were limited to whatever our parents had in the house. I was never lucky enough to have an Amiga, but was thrilled when my Dad finally caved and bought me an AdLib card for the family's 286.
Wait, what? Monkey Island...Loom...those games were incredible, IMO.
Double edges sword for me. I was a C64 guy before the Amiga. While the Amiga hardware was clearly better, I have better memories of the C64 days. I had a friend with an Atari ST who was a die hard Atari fan. I never got into it, it felt a little more like a pro machine for some reason, less of a gaming machine. But that could be purly subjective. Another friend bought the Atari Falcon at some point coming from a modded C64. He planned to use it for Music, but then moved away. The IBM PC area felt a little different. They started as working machines as the Commodore world clearly had more and better looking games. But they caught up quickly. They had that premium feel, which might have been the clicky keyboards for me. Probably the reason I build one or two mechanical keyboards every year.
Indeed. They looked different of course and were handled differently. I can’t remember exactly, it was either one of the Indiana Jones Point’n Click adventures or Monkey Island that was easy to use on a PC (floppy discs and then install to HDD), while on the Amiga, it came with a ridiculous amount of floppy discs and you had to play DJ. But we had so many AppleII/Mac games those days. And it wasn’t some no-name games for the sake of having some games, those were the big titles back then. It’s too bad the younger folks here never lived through those days.
Absolutely. Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken were my highlights, later Indy and Monkey Island. They had more good stuff, if memory serves right The Dig was the last game I really enjoyed from them. Sam & Max and Full Throttle didn’t work for me personally, at least not to the level of the previous games. Day of the Tentacle was great and bad at the same time. It was a great game, but missed spooky mystery feeling of Maniac Mansion. Then they fell into the “Star Wars“ games trap, but that was later.
Everyone wanted the Roland MT-32 back then. But most, including myself, had to settle for less. Once a sound card was added, it was completely different game. RAM upgrades were another thing. It just helped so much and helped to avoid editing autoexec.bat and config.sys files for performance and ability to play a game at all.
All this talk really makes me want to play Space Quest, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKraken again. 🥲
Layers of Fear and The Medium are back on the Mac App Store in my region.
It's funny, they're back here too. 😄
Lies of P has huge discount on Steam with 40% off. It's more than Apple's sale. On MAS it costed $42 but on Steam it costs $36.
Lies of P on Steam
Lies of P is a thrilling soulslike that takes the story of Pinocchio, turns it on its head, and sets it against the darkly elegant backdrop of the Belle Epoque era.
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After feedback from the community Frostpunk 2 will be released two month later on Sep 20.
steamcommunity.com
Steam :: Frostpunk 2 :: Frostpunk 2 is getting bigger and better – thanks to you!
A message from Game Directors Jakub Stokalski and Łukasz Juszczyk.
Yeah, the Roland was an unattainable dream - so I happily settled for the AdLib. I think King's Quest IV was the first game I played that took advantage of it, but it was The Colonel's Bequest that blew my mind - the soundtrack and sound effects added a level of immersion that I didn't realize was possible. Loved the art direction too. Like I said - peak EGA! Looking back I see all sorts of problems with CB, but as a nine year old that game really spooked the hell out of me.
Don't forget Rebel Assault. It was a sensation when it was released in 1993, also being one of the first games to launch on CD-ROM.
Oh god, I completely forgot about that. With Sierra, it’s always Space/Police/Kings Quest that comes to mind first. Now that you mention it, I remembered Dagger of Amon Ra. And then there’s Larry of course. I guess I have to revisit all of those at some point. Will have to check what’s a good way to play these again without having to drag down old hardware from the attic… if that even still works. I think there used to be a SCI open source project a few years back. Or maybe a challenge to write a new emulator for fun.
Great game, just very different from what Lucasfilm Games delivered before. I think it was around the time when they invested less in adventures + the internal issues they had back then with employees.
I got the Atari 1040 ST and a Yamaha Clavinova. I had studied to be a pianist but the idea that I could program music gave me a project. I later had it modified to 4 MB of RAM, which was a soldering job. Technician decided to make some money copying my system ROMs, and surprisingly didn't have time to finish my upgrade. I waited a couple of months and finally got my system back.Double edges sword for me. I was a C64 guy before the Amiga. While the Amiga hardware was clearly better, I have better memories of the C64 days. I had a friend with an Atari ST who was a die hard Atari fan. I never got into it, it felt a little more like a pro machine for some reason, less of a gaming machine. But that could be purly subjective. Another friend bought the Atari Falcon at some point coming from a modded C64. He planned to use it for Music, but then moved away. The IBM PC area felt a little different. They started as working machines as the Commodore world clearly had more and better looking games. But they caught up quickly. They had that premium feel, which might have been the clicky keyboards for me. Probably the reason I build one or two mechanical keyboards every year.
Indeed. They looked different of course and were handled differently. I can’t remember exactly, it was either one of the Indiana Jones Point’n Click adventures or Monkey Island that was easy to use on a PC (floppy discs and then install to HDD), while on the Amiga, it came with a ridiculous amount of floppy discs and you had to play DJ. But we had so many AppleII/Mac games those days. And it wasn’t some no-name games for the sake of having some games, those were the big titles back then. It’s too bad the younger folks here never lived through those days.
Absolutely. Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken were my highlights, later Indy and Monkey Island. They had more good stuff, if memory serves right The Dig was the last game I really enjoyed from them. Sam & Max and Full Throttle didn’t work for me personally, at least not to the level of the previous games. Day of the Tentacle was great and bad at the same time. It was a great game, but missed spooky mystery feeling of Maniac Mansion. Then they fell into the “Star Wars“ games trap, but that was later.
Everyone wanted the Roland MT-32 back then. But most, including myself, had to settle for less. Once a sound card was added, it was completely different game. RAM upgrades were another thing. It just helped so much and helped to avoid editing autoexec.bat and config.sys files for performance and ability to play a game at all.
All this talk really makes me want to play Space Quest, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKraken again. 🥲
I couldn't stand the IBM PC keyboard. I was programming an IBM System/36 at the time and they handed me a new dumb terminal with that slow keyboard, after having what was essentially a Selectric typewriter keyboard on a dumb terminal. Later, I got something somewhat better.
Amiga, of course, had a Jay Miner chipset, which was a plus, just like the Atari 8-bit computers. I always liked having a graphics co-processor on a machine that was almost two times as fast as an Apple II before the graphics co-processor was engaged. Those machines needed a bigger bus bandwidth for graphics hardware.
Capcom will be showcasing Re 7 for Mac/iOS on July 2 at their event "Capcom Next - Summer 2024".
www.youtube.com
CAPCOM NEXT - Summer 2024 (US)
Tune in to CAPCOM NEXT - Summer 2024, a roughly 25 minute livestream sharing the latest info on 3 Capcom titles! Your favorite Zombie Paradise is back from t...
www.youtube.com
Was that the shifter mod? Not sure when that came out and I never saw one in the wild back then.
We have a guy in IT support still using a Model M keyboard (original, not knockoff) today. No one is allowed to touch it. But he's also reading his emails in iTerm... 😆
Looks like ScummVM improved support for AGI and SCI, so that's something to try and play on the Mac through a loophole. Those 80s and 90s games were really the golden age of Mac gaming. If only we could get back to that, that level of support would get us GTA6. Throwing around $1B would too.
I don't know that there was a name for the modification. He was replacing the 16 pin RAM chips with 18 pin chips, as I recall. It wasn't easy but if he had stayed focus on the actual job, it would have been done that day.Was that the shifter mod? Not sure when that came out and I never saw one in the wild back then.
We have a guy in IT support still using a Model M keyboard (original, not knockoff) today. No one is allowed to touch it. But he's also reading his emails in iTerm... 😆
Looks like ScummVM improved support for AGI and SCI, so that's something to try and play on the Mac through a loophole. Those 80s and 90s games were really the golden age of Mac gaming. If only we could get back to that, that level of support would get us GTA6. Throwing around $1B would too.
Those early Mac games looked like the Atari ST monochrome games, using patterns instead of colours.
Not too familiar with the mods. It sound't like it's not the shifter mod though. If memory serves right, the shifter one added a 4MB MMU and could still be switched back to 1MB (not sure why not 512k) with a switch... for whatever reason.
The very early days, yes. That was more like:
I was thinking more like:
It was just the selection of games back then. Games were available for so many systems, including Macs. That's the state we have to get back to.
Regarding Capcom, I find it amazing that they released 4 RE games in little more than 12 months! Doesn't that make them the most active game publisher ?
Also notable, it seems to me that the porting is going quite fast and that their code base is probably excellent and made it easy to move their games to Mac once the core Engine was ported.
Also notable, it seems to me that the porting is going quite fast and that their code base is probably excellent and made it easy to move their games to Mac once the core Engine was ported.
Their RE engine is indeed excellent, allowing them to port not only to Mac but also most other platforms while maintaining a certain quality.
As to why Capcom is this active in porting over to macOS, ever since the RE8 announcement 2 years ago I was convinced that VR game play of the RE series is the one thing that Apple is deeply interested in with VisionOS and future AR glass as well. I am surprised they didn't get RE8 running on VP already. Perhaps they want to lay down the ground work for running the vanilla version of the games first and then will release the VR later, much like how RE4 is on the PS5 VR.
I'm more curious why not port Monster Hunter (Series) and Street Fighter over. It feels like the RE Games are all similar enough that they can port them fairly easily (and quickly as shown), but other games types maybe are proving more difficult?
I agree but it has taken two years. They have released one game a year, Village in Oct 2022, RE 4 in Dec 2023 and 7 in July 2024. I guess RE 2 will be released near the end of 2024 or more likely early 2025.
My guess is it will come now that the engine supports Metal. They've been holding a fairly high release rate with one game a year so when they're done with RE they'll move on to other titles. It would be strange to jump to other titles after RE 4 and then go back even later to the Resident Evil series to keep porting Re 7 and 2. They also have other new RE titles afoot so perhaps they want to be done with the old titles quickly.
There is one reason that I don’t think been discussed in this thread about games’ exclusivity to Mac App Store. Here the talk has always been about Apple paying for the games and wanting exclusivity but in this article Apple’s software marketing manager Leland Martin says ”We’re seeing titles come to both Steam and the Mac App Store, and we’re seeing games come to the Mac via Steam exclusively. It’s really up to the developer’s choice, and we help them whichever decision they make.” So it’s the developers’ decision, not Apple’s.
The reason is to make more money. Can sound strange since many prefer Steam but for example Capcom is known for wanting to find new ways to maximize its profit. They release their Mac games on App Store to sell new copies. If they released them on Steam many who already have Resident Evil games wouldn’t need to buy a Mac copy. We see this happen to titles that already been released on Steam, like Death Stranding and RE games. That’s why new games released for the first time for PC and Mac get simultaneous release on Steam and MAS, like Lies of P, Riven Remake, Frostpunk 2, Layers of Fear and Fort Solis. It doesn’t matter then where people buy their copy.
So next time you wonder if a Mac game and especially Capcom game is coming to Steam look if it’s a brand new game or old. If old probably not. There are exceptions like Stray, SnowRunner, Valheim, The Medium and No Man’s Sky which are old but on both Steam and MAS but Hello Games for example said they didn’t have problem with people getting free Mac copies so it was their choice too.
This also raises the question of whether Apple actually pays developers because then they wouldn’t want to let Valve take a piece of the pie. Why would Apple pay some like Capcom and Hideo Kojima and not for Lies of P and Frostpunk 2? The only difference I see is RE games and Death Stranding having iOS ports but again Village doesn't have an iOS port.
The reason is to make more money. Can sound strange since many prefer Steam but for example Capcom is known for wanting to find new ways to maximize its profit. They release their Mac games on App Store to sell new copies. If they released them on Steam many who already have Resident Evil games wouldn’t need to buy a Mac copy. We see this happen to titles that already been released on Steam, like Death Stranding and RE games. That’s why new games released for the first time for PC and Mac get simultaneous release on Steam and MAS, like Lies of P, Riven Remake, Frostpunk 2, Layers of Fear and Fort Solis. It doesn’t matter then where people buy their copy.
So next time you wonder if a Mac game and especially Capcom game is coming to Steam look if it’s a brand new game or old. If old probably not. There are exceptions like Stray, SnowRunner, Valheim, The Medium and No Man’s Sky which are old but on both Steam and MAS but Hello Games for example said they didn’t have problem with people getting free Mac copies so it was their choice too.
This also raises the question of whether Apple actually pays developers because then they wouldn’t want to let Valve take a piece of the pie. Why would Apple pay some like Capcom and Hideo Kojima and not for Lies of P and Frostpunk 2? The only difference I see is RE games and Death Stranding having iOS ports but again Village doesn't have an iOS port.
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