Plenty! Off the top of my head I would absolutely recommend Asterax, Cyclone II, SpaceInvader!, Centaurian, and Space Junkie just for shareware 2D space shoot'em ups outside of the Ambrosia banner. Specially Asterax, for some reason I absolutely love that little game.
I couldn’t justify buying packaged games for the Mac when I also had gaming consoles, but I used to tear into those shareware compilation CDs you’d find in magazines and attached to books and stuff.
Yeah, I have fond memories of playing SlimeInvaders 2.0 - the laugh of the skull has always remained clear in my head. I think we got it with a MacFormat demo disk. I did also enjoy the popular games, particularly Lemmings.
Yes, I loved Dirt Bike and Gopher Golf. I seem to recall both those games eventually made the jump to 3D environments. And I'm pretty sure there was an Atomic Tanks kind of game in 3D on the Mac, which was a lot of fun too.
The current official version of Pac-Man available for modern Macs in the Mac App Store also uses the original Japanese versions of the ghosts' names. Also, a fun bit of trivia nobody probably cares about: Pac-Man was one of the earliest games I remember being released to the Mac App Store. It features a little marquee with words that scroll by. Originally if you died, the marquee said Damn, but somebody must've complained because Namco updated it and now it says Oops! Oh man, Tristan! My old friend Tristan! I've got to pick that up again. Little Wing were the best.
For 3.5 years (Mar 1987 to Oct 1990) you couldn't buy a color mac with lower than 640 x 480 resoluttion. When the Mac LC came out with it's 12 inch screen at 512 x 384, pretty much all color games had to be adjusted to fit. It was sort of controversial at the time, at least in my recollection. The 512 x 384 resolution proved quite popular, of course, as it was less expensive, so it eventually saw widespread support, but early on, I imagine it was an inconvenience to developers who would have to redraw ALL of the art to fit the smaller screen as well as adjust the software coding to compensate.
@@insanelygruz It probably did but Apple's displays at the time were fixed resolutuion and the smallest was 640 x 480. It wasn't until the Macintosh 12-inch RGB display that came out with the Mac LC that color 512x384 was an official Apple option. Now, this could just be my recollection, but for Macs, that resolution was non-existant until the LC came out. Everything color was at least 640x480.
I was going to post the same. The Mac II was the first color Mac - often paired with an Apple Trinitron display (640 x 480). It was some years before the Color Classic with its smaller display became a thing. I'm pretty sure Ben hand-coded the blit routines in Solarian II and so also "hard coded" a 256-color, 640 byte-wide display.
Little Wing did some excellent pinball games. Never tried Tristan (though that's going to change real soon now that I know they have an app, lol), but I sunk a lot of my childhood into Looney Labyrinth. I still judge every pinball table I play against what Little Wing did. Unfortunately their webstore has been under "maintenance" for a number of years now, so I'm afraid their stuff-which had been so lovingly kept playable as technology updated-is sliding into faded memory.
I would also recommend Crystal Caliburn for another medieval themed pinball game if you haven't checked it out already. It's available on the Macintosh Garden. Edit: what do you guess! CC is also developed by Little Wing! I thought it was developed by StarPlay (of Shadow Wraith fame). Turns out they were the publishers.
I loved Solarian back in the day! Also remember having Tristan as well. I distinctly remember the inclusion of the pinball, because my older brother tricked me into thinking it was necessary to have it to play it on the computer haha
Man, I got such a good time out of Solarian II and Slime Invaders, simple as they were. Those damn flying pentagons. I loved how early Mac games just picked sound effects seemingly at random, too.
I feel you on the Solarian sfx. So many Mac shareware games have that same…what’s the sonic equivalent of an aesthetic, a soundscape? Anyway, playing all those games has cemented in my mind the fact that the stock “cash register” sound effect you hear everywhere has a guy saying “yeah” at the end and I’ll never un-hear it.
Nice video. I never knew about the Pinball game. Will have to check that out. I always had fun with the early Pinball games on computers. Davids midnight magic and EA's Pinball Construction set were favorites on the Apple II and for me the Commodore 64. They were out in about 1983.
As for one of the first pinball games for computers, there were a few before. Apple II had Pinball Construction Set and David's Midnight Magic, both released in the early '80s. Atari also released one called Video Pinball, which wasn't that great. Admittedly, Tristan looks much better. I seem to remember other games in color. It's been years and I might misremember, but what about Wavy Navy or Spare Change? I think I've seen those in color. I think there was one called Sticky Bear? It's been ages.
Why don't you cover the game Cyclone II It was the best way outside of a Vectrex or an arcade machine to play Star Castle, a 1980 arcade classic by Cinematronics. Cyclone II was published by a company calling themselves High Risk Ventures. It includes a color version that is more or less a clone of the arcade classic in either original or enhanced graphics. It also included an updated version of the game that was also pretty good adding bonuses and power ups. I've been playing it for 30 years. While there have been a few other clones of Star Castle, none were any good. Not on the Amiga, not on PC and not on Mac. They really did this game right. The only competition it ever had was the Vectrex which has a licensed port of Star Castle. But the system is pretty rare and the cartridge even more so (I have both).
I wonder what languages these games were programmed in. I'm guessing C? This video is actually quite timely with me reading a bit about programming for vintage Macintosh, with my own desire to mayyyybe someday write my own game on the platform, even if it'll be a while. There's a book I skimmed called Sex, Lies, and Videogames that talks about exactly that specific genre.
Solarian II looks pretty interesting! As for early pinball computer games ... 1991 is a decade too late to be considered "early". GUI pioneering Pinball Construction Set and classics like Night Mission Pinball are from 1982. There were also earlier pinball computer games, but I think these are a couple of the earliest ones that were more on the simulation side rather than being a videogame inspired by pinball.
Thanks for the recommendations I’ve been looking for games that work with my Color classic can’t seem to find games that are compatible with its native resolution
Does anyone remember an educational game with a little elf (reminiscent of Link)? He's inside some sort of castle. I played this on my PowerMac and cannot remember the name of it for the life of me.
The stock LC supports 512x384 in 8-Bit (256 colors) and 640x480 in 4-Bit (16 colors), tho with a VRAM upgrade it can do 16-Bit (thousands of colors) at 512x384 or 8-Bit at 640x480!
Anyone else play shareware / freeware games like these? Or do you stick to popular games like Prince of Persia or Sim City?
Plenty! Off the top of my head I would absolutely recommend Asterax, Cyclone II, SpaceInvader!, Centaurian, and Space Junkie just for shareware 2D space shoot'em ups outside of the Ambrosia banner. Specially Asterax, for some reason I absolutely love that little game.
I couldn’t justify buying packaged games for the Mac when I also had gaming consoles, but I used to tear into those shareware compilation CDs you’d find in magazines and attached to books and stuff.
Yeah, I have fond memories of playing SlimeInvaders 2.0 - the laugh of the skull has always remained clear in my head. I think we got it with a MacFormat demo disk. I did also enjoy the popular games, particularly Lemmings.
Yes, I loved Dirt Bike and Gopher Golf. I seem to recall both those games eventually made the jump to 3D environments. And I'm pretty sure there was an Atomic Tanks kind of game in 3D on the Mac, which was a lot of fun too.
The story of Tristan being kept alive by the original devs for decades is incredible
The current official version of Pac-Man available for modern Macs in the Mac App Store also uses the original Japanese versions of the ghosts' names. Also, a fun bit of trivia nobody probably cares about: Pac-Man was one of the earliest games I remember being released to the Mac App Store. It features a little marquee with words that scroll by. Originally if you died, the marquee said Damn, but somebody must've complained because Namco updated it and now it says Oops!
Oh man, Tristan! My old friend Tristan! I've got to pick that up again. Little Wing were the best.
Nice selection. GOD, makes me wanna repair my Color Classic and its shoddy analog board edge connector even more.
Hopefully you've done the upgrade to 640x480 otherwise your Colour Classic won't play many of these!
For 3.5 years (Mar 1987 to Oct 1990) you couldn't buy a color mac with lower than 640 x 480 resoluttion. When the Mac LC came out with it's 12 inch screen at 512 x 384, pretty much all color games had to be adjusted to fit. It was sort of controversial at the time, at least in my recollection. The 512 x 384 resolution proved quite popular, of course, as it was less expensive, so it eventually saw widespread support, but early on, I imagine it was an inconvenience to developers who would have to redraw ALL of the art to fit the smaller screen as well as adjust the software coding to compensate.
I thought the Mac II supported 512x384?
@@insanelygruz It probably did but Apple's displays at the time were fixed resolutuion and the smallest was 640 x 480. It wasn't until the Macintosh 12-inch RGB display that came out with the Mac LC that color 512x384 was an official Apple option.
Now, this could just be my recollection, but for Macs, that resolution was non-existant until the LC came out. Everything color was at least 640x480.
I was going to post the same. The Mac II was the first color Mac - often paired with an Apple Trinitron display (640 x 480). It was some years before the Color Classic with its smaller display became a thing.
I'm pretty sure Ben hand-coded the blit routines in Solarian II and so also "hard coded" a 256-color, 640 byte-wide display.
I really like Fu's Bar in the Slime Invaders 2.0 background. If you aren't familiar with the term FUBAR, look it up, haha.
Little Wing did some excellent pinball games. Never tried Tristan (though that's going to change real soon now that I know they have an app, lol), but I sunk a lot of my childhood into Looney Labyrinth. I still judge every pinball table I play against what Little Wing did. Unfortunately their webstore has been under "maintenance" for a number of years now, so I'm afraid their stuff-which had been so lovingly kept playable as technology updated-is sliding into faded memory.
I would also recommend Crystal Caliburn for another medieval themed pinball game if you haven't checked it out already. It's available on the Macintosh Garden.
Edit: what do you guess! CC is also developed by Little Wing! I thought it was developed by StarPlay (of Shadow Wraith fame). Turns out they were the publishers.
I loved Solarian back in the day! Also remember having Tristan as well. I distinctly remember the inclusion of the pinball, because my older brother tricked me into thinking it was necessary to have it to play it on the computer haha
Man, I got such a good time out of Solarian II and Slime Invaders, simple as they were. Those damn flying pentagons. I loved how early Mac games just picked sound effects seemingly at random, too.
holy crap, these took me back. I had a CD with 50 shareware titles on it that had a few of these.
Oh yeah. Ran Sollarian II on my IIci the day I bought it. Great times.
I feel you on the Solarian sfx. So many Mac shareware games have that same…what’s the sonic equivalent of an aesthetic, a soundscape?
Anyway, playing all those games has cemented in my mind the fact that the stock “cash register” sound effect you hear everywhere has a guy saying “yeah” at the end and I’ll never un-hear it.
I believe a lot of the Ambrosia Software games did the same kind of thing Solarian II did.
Nice video. I never knew about the Pinball game. Will have to check that out. I always had fun with the early Pinball games on computers. Davids midnight magic and EA's Pinball Construction set were favorites on the Apple II and for me the Commodore 64. They were out in about 1983.
As for one of the first pinball games for computers, there were a few before. Apple II had Pinball Construction Set and David's Midnight Magic, both released in the early '80s. Atari also released one called Video Pinball, which wasn't that great. Admittedly, Tristan looks much better.
I seem to remember other games in color. It's been years and I might misremember, but what about Wavy Navy or Spare Change? I think I've seen those in color. I think there was one called Sticky Bear? It's been ages.
Why don't you cover the game Cyclone II It was the best way outside of a Vectrex or an arcade machine to play Star Castle, a 1980 arcade classic by Cinematronics. Cyclone II was published by a company calling themselves High Risk Ventures.
It includes a color version that is more or less a clone of the arcade classic in either original or enhanced graphics. It also included an updated version of the game that was also pretty good adding bonuses and power ups. I've been playing it for 30 years.
While there have been a few other clones of Star Castle, none were any good. Not on the Amiga, not on PC and not on Mac. They really did this game right. The only competition it ever had was the Vectrex which has a licensed port of Star Castle. But the system is pretty rare and the cartridge even more so (I have both).
I wonder what languages these games were programmed in. I'm guessing C?
This video is actually quite timely with me reading a bit about programming for vintage Macintosh, with my own desire to mayyyybe someday write my own game on the platform, even if it'll be a while. There's a book I skimmed called Sex, Lies, and Videogames that talks about exactly that specific genre.
Given the time frame they were made in, it wouldn't surprise me if some of these games were developed in Pascal.
Bill Hensler did a great job with that book! Makes everything so easy to understand!
Like Wally mentioned, if you look at a lot of the documentation from that time the examples are heavily weighted toward Pascal.
Solarian II looks pretty interesting! As for early pinball computer games ... 1991 is a decade too late to be considered "early". GUI pioneering Pinball Construction Set and classics like Night Mission Pinball are from 1982.
There were also earlier pinball computer games, but I think these are a couple of the earliest ones that were more on the simulation side rather than being a videogame inspired by pinball.
Solarian II is where it's at. I've recorded a complete run of the game...Very difficult indeed, and as you progress it doesn't get any easier!
"Tristan" is great. "Eight Ball Deluxe" should be in a future video of yours.
Thanks for the recommendations I’ve been looking for games that work with my Color classic can’t seem to find games that are compatible with its native resolution
Does anyone remember an educational game with a little elf (reminiscent of Link)? He's inside some sort of castle. I played this on my PowerMac and cannot remember the name of it for the life of me.
I've played all but the 2 Pac-Man games you mentioned. They're all fun!
Is it true that Tristan pinball can make use of a optional FPU for better physics?
My color classic is sadly gonna be in storage until there is a way to connect the color CRT display to external sources
Some games to even show my LC some gaming love... oh yeah!
Another great video.
I thought the LC was 640x400 in 256 colors. (256k)
Basic VGA cards have enough memory for that but they do 320x400 at most in 256colors.
The stock LC supports 512x384 in 8-Bit (256 colors) and 640x480 in 4-Bit (16 colors), tho with a VRAM upgrade it can do 16-Bit (thousands of colors) at 512x384 or 8-Bit at 640x480!