Mac Gaming
So i’ve had my Macbook for a few months now, and the call of gaming is very hard to resist. We all know that the most popular big name games don’t make it to make, DirectX killed that off long ago, but there are alternatives.
Even if you have low-end graphics card in your mac like me there are lots of options for fun games that don’t rely on the latest shaders and effects to make up for poor game play.
A few of my favs are Fizzball, Kill Monty, Alantis Sky Patrol and of course Quinn.
There are a number of sites devoted to Mac gaming as well, a quick google reveals MacGamer, Inside Mac Games and iDevGames, as well as a section on the Apple website.
You can also get pretty good performance on windows games if your running Bootcamp, although the Macbook’s graphics are capable of doing the very modern stuff. Here is a good example of HL2 running on an iMac, and a tutorial for using Crossover.
But by far the best experience I’ve had with Mac gaming has been going back in time to the classics with a little thing called an Emulator.
Your best place to get them for the Mac is on The Emulator Zone, there is a nice selection there for the SNES, MegaDrive, N64 and even Gameboy advanced.
The next step is to find some ROMs, these are like virtual cartridges to plug into your virtual consoles, but there is a snag…
The next bit gets a little hazy, these games are obviously copyright but they are not for sale in shops anyone (except for those cool few that have every console ever!) so your going to have to be a little sneaky to get your ROMs. That is where our good friend Mr. Bittorrent comes in.
Grab your favourite Bittorrent Client, I like Xtorrent on the mac and its free too.
And then bounce off to Torrentz and get searching. Something like “Snes ROM” should find you some good stuff!
Enjoy!
ahh, emulation, great thing. brings back the classics.
how you liking the mac so far?
Adam on November 24, 2006 2:33 am
Yeah I really like it, everything is so pretty in osx
Andrew on November 24, 2006 10:30 am
As you have a career as a software developer, I thought you’d be the last person to suggest that people should “steal” IP. You’d be the first to complain if people started to share your hard work for free.
Also, not the smartest to publise how break UK law on your blog either … I’m sure your employer would love to read this.
Chris on November 26, 2006 5:06 pm
I’ll be the first person to be giving out my hard work for free
Andrew on November 26, 2006 5:24 pm
Just to confirm, the DMCA allows you to play ROMs from discontinued hardware, so this is not illegal.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20031029-3040.html
Andrew on November 29, 2006 10:16 am
Well there is not reason why you should scarfice your gamming urge just cause you have a mac book pro! I have seen your gamming machine it’s damn sweet. Just play when ever you feel like it, or of course have the time for it.
psychobabble on December 8, 2006 4:55 am
Actually I sold my PC before I moved to London, so the mac is all I have at the moment.
Andrew on December 8, 2006 9:16 am