Macintosh & Early PC Obscurities

[Anonymous No.8080917]

In a short-lived thread on obscure games, someone mentioned that "Macintosh games were easy mode," since all Mac games are obscure. It kind of made sense: early computer games kinda felt like the indies, where almost any dedicated oddball could put something out there.

So what are your favorite weird games for the early Mac/PC market? What's something you never see anyone talk about?

Picture included are a few images from various games by Lamprey Systems, which was one guy (Robert Carr) who made a bunch of simple games and desktop toys with the purpose of being intentionally offensive and ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.8080924]

>>8080917

Also, here's the early image I posted in the previous thread of Lamprey System's Mormonoids of the Deep.

You can find most of Lamprey Systems' games on the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/mac_Lamprey_Systems

[Anonymous No.8080960]

>>8080917
The Glider games (the 4.0 version was also ported to Windows 3.x) by John Calhoun are open-source and freeware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8_ypI_C7nM
Stunt Copter and other games by Duane Blehm are in the public domain, by decision of his parents after his passing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9JXI9xMtQY

[Anonymous No.8081021]

What would you recommend for a Mac emulator or emulation? The last time I tried to get a game called Number Maze up and running, it took me hours of bullshit to get it in a semi-running state, and there's no way I think I could remember to repeat the steps.

[Anonymous No.8081071]

>>8081021
Not OP but in my experience, Basilisk is very reliable and easy IF you're running on a 32-bit Windows, otherwise almost everything is broken.

[Anonymous No.8081352]

Marathon obviously, Ambrosia Software's games, Glider PRO with the level packs (you can get a curated selection here https://www.scuzzstuff.org/gliderpro/ or a much bigger collection here https://ludobloom.com/gliderfiles.html )

>>8081021

Mac emulation is a mess. Mini vMac is the easiest to set up, but it's limited to the B&W stuff and has its own quirks. https://invisibleup.com/articles/30/

[Anonymous No.8081759]

>>8080917
I'd mentioned this in the "art game" thread from a while back, but there's The Seven Colors: Legend of PSY・S City, a multi-media adventure game by Masaya Matsuura (of Parappa and UmJammer Lammy fame).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bQrlUtvHU

[Anonymous No.8081794]

>>8081759
What is this? Explain.

[Anonymous No.8081826]

>>8081759

It's a music-themed point 'n' click adventure, created as a tie-in/inspiration piece for an upcoming album by the pop-rock group PSY・S, which Masaya Matsuura was a member of. It's similar to Myst, though it pre-dates it by a few months. The game's interface is all English, but the dialogue is in Japanese (though I think there's a fan translation in the works).

The story is weird:
"This story starts in the heaven city up above PSY•S City. Residents of the heaven city are the angels who are sent to guard the earth. One day, a hasty angel, so inadvertently dropped the important Seven Hearts thAT govern the night. One of the seven, the Purple Heart has accidentally fallen into your hands. At the appeal of the Purple Heart, you have so kindly decided to go on an adventurous journey to seek for the rest of the lost hearts in order to retrieve the night in PSY•S city."

[Anonymous No.8081849]

>>8081759
Where can I get the music from the fucking club, damn this shit is hot!

[Anonymous No.8083917]

>>8080917
It might be something of a poor man's Splatterhouse, but I do like the look of Creepy Castle. There should have been more horror-influenced game on the early Mac. Black-and-white dithered graphics lend itself well to the subject matter.

https://youtu.be/Eiule0xGkCI

[Anonymous No.8084039]

Balance of the Planet
economical and ecological strategy

[Anonymous No.8084082]

>>8084039
I remember Chris Crawford was agitated that some reviewer cover this game, said it was "the closest thing to art to be sold as computer entertainment," then said it "wouldn't be right to endorse it" because it wasn't fun. Really, it's no wonder Crawford bailed out of the mainstream game industry.

[Anonymous No.8084095]

>>8080960
Glider is fun, here's a YT video of me playing Glider with LeftAtLondon :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwwpbtueukI

[Anonymous No.8084140]

>>8084095
omg a gamer girl??!? owo

[Anonymous No.8084154]

>>8084039
>>8084082
Imagine the utopia that we'd be living in if this sort of game became mainstream.

[Anonymous No.8084201]

>>8084082

I love Chris Crawford.

[Anonymous No.8084287]

>>8081826
Do you have an archive link of that thread?

[Anonymous No.8084334]

>>8084287

Yeah, I got you. >>/vr/thread/S8031898

[Anonymous No.8084432]

>>8084334
Thank you, have this free doujin game that I played a lot as a child, it's on the house:

https://www.old-games.com/download/2589/obake

[Anonymous No.8084467]

>>8080917

https://www.macintoshrepository.org/4304-ruckus
Despite being total jank, I don't think anything's really done a real-time tactical puzzle combat game before or since

[Anonymous No.8084773]

>>8084432
>https://www.old-games.com/download/2589/obake

Seems cool, but do you have any tips to get it running? I just get a garbled error message. I even tracked down another copy of the game on the Internet Archive (which included some other games by the dev), but no luck (which is odd because their other games ran without issues.

https://archive.org/details/the-obake-sam113-archive.-7z

[Anonymous No.8086226]

>>8084334
I found this playlist from that link. Thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRmMOveppLGPAZZdzY5zCZab5fqj1v_tl

[Anonymous No.8086284]

>>8080917

Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse is an odd one. It's not really a game, but a "hypertext novel." It's almost like an ARG for itself, a bunch of documents (digital art books, a fortune-telling program, letters, etc.) from your "Uncle Buddy," a guy who's disappeared and you don't even remember knowing.

There's no standard "gameplay" footage on YouTube, but there are a bunch of videos of the writer/developer talking about it. https://youtu.be/1v310zwoPxw

[Anonymous No.8086378]

>>8080917

[Anonymous No.8086402]

>>8086378
Good lord, I remember playing that. If you beat the story, you gained a kind of creator mode, could mess with basically everything. Not the fanciest thing in the world, but it was loads of fun.

[Anonymous No.8086438]

>>8086402
right? It was my first rpg back then and now and again I wish I still had a machine that could run the discs, mine died back in 2012 and I never bothered to look for a new one till the other day; even old power macs are being scalped now.

[Anonymous No.8086837]

>>8086284
>It's almost like an ARG for itself,
Do more things like this exist? I love self-referential madness. It is why I enjoyed House of Leaves.

[Anonymous No.8086936]

>>8086837
You might want to look into "hypertext fiction." In the 90's, there were a lot of people experimenting with computer software to make interactive fiction. Some were basically like proto-Twine games (though sometimes more complex then that), while others were weirder meta works lIke Uncle Buddy. Eastgate published a bunch of them (and still sells them, distributing them on flash drives), including:

afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce;
Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson; and
King of Space by Sarah Smith

The YouTube channel Electronic Literature Lab has a bunch of readings/videos on hypertext.

[Anonymous No.8086962]

>>8086936
Is any of that related to UbuWeb?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UbuWeb
https://www.ubuweb.com/

[Anonymous No.8087054]

>>8086378
Oh yeah, I remember The Obscuritory covered this one a few years ago. Seems like a trip.

https://obscuritory.com/rpg/taskmaker/

[Anonymous No.8087069]

>>8086962
I don't think any of the stuff I named is on there, but there are some articles on Ubuweb talking about hypertext lit/poetry, how it relates to pre-digital authors like Borges, etc.

https://www.ubu.com/papers/ol/glazier.html

,,,
,,,
,,,

Talking about other odd, early computer weirdness, here's one I found out about Yesterday: Zaum Gadget.

https://youtu.be/4ILPLroVwDE
https://youtu.be/acqDWEFZttY

"This 800K file is the only example of crossmedia psychotronic beliefware currently extant. The original program was found by Mr. Hardiker in Babelian ruins dated 9999 BC & deciphered from a since forgotten machine language. It is thought that Zaum Gadget was a subliminal event-structure capable of subtly manipulating the beliefs of any participant. A maze of twisted sound effects, extant texts, & interactive visuals."

I don't even know if it's a game or just a weird piece of software. It seems like in the early days of home computers, any oddball could put something weird on a floppy disk, send it out into the ether, and somebody MIGHT end up playing it.

[Anonymous No.8087262]

>>8087054
>https://obscuritory.com/rpg/taskmaker/
Now that I think about it, the helmet on this guy kinda reminds me of another Mac RPG, (two of them actually) the Samurai Mech games. Odd sci-fi/medieval Japan setting. The games were in that big dump of rare Japanese computer games a few years back. The art is pretty neat, and the second game has a really chill title song.
https://youtu.be/zLxhexXpVwc

[Anonymous No.8087527]

>>8087069
>>8086936
I remember this sort of thing being the cutting edge of literature. I'm sort of sad that it never really panned out to be the great revolution that they had hoped for.

[Anonymous No.8088487]

>>>/g/

[Anonymous No.8088495]

>>8088487
It's a thread about retro computer games, it belongs here

[Anonymous No.8089676]

>>8088487
Eh, some of the hypertext stuff might be pushing things a bit (though I still think Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse count), but the rest of thread fits. Shove off.

To present something a bit more traditionally gamey, here's Three in 3, Not super obscure, but an odd and funny little puzzle game from the creator of The Fool's Errand.

https://youtu.be/Lmxt51EcNrU

[Anonymous No.8089965]

>>8087262
They were on macintoshgarden long before that dump leaked.

>>8087054
That game was fucking hard. I recall "cheating" by using the restart spell to respawn ethereal potions and sell them for tons of money. Took me around 12 hours to beat the game with that method.
I tried registering the sequel afterwards but the dev guy didn't have the manual anymore (he still had the files but didn't feel like putting them together or something) and the main reason to register it is to find out what all the spells are, which isn't documented anywhere.

[Anonymous No.8090046]

>>8088487
>>>/kys/

[Anonymous No.8090779]

Great thread, love the aesthetic of these games. Lots of good memories playing them late at night as a kid. Anyone play Gang Wars?

[Anonymous No.8091381]

[Anonymous No.8091424]

>>8091381
Quagmire was my ultimate "What was this game called?" mystery. When I was 5 my aunt brought it along with Jewelbox (and one other game I completely forgot) to our house, which I played for probably a few months before forgetting about it. I spent a decade trying to remember anything about it other than it being a platformer with some levels having a motherboard-like background. Then around the age of 15/16 I had a dream that I was playing it, the oil bottles as health potions appeared to me in the dream, and I basically jolted out of bed remembering that the player character was a robot. A new lead brought me to Sammy the Cyclebot, which I had never played or heard of, which finally led me to Quagmire.

[Anonymous No.8091452]

>>8087262
Something about the dithering on black and white computer games looks so right to me.

[Anonymous No.8091549]

>>8091452
Yeah, the black and white dithered art on some of these games is quite nice. Samurai Mecha has some good pixel illustrations.

[Anonymous No.8091550]

>>8091549
It looks good in color too, though.

[Anonymous No.8091552]

>>8090779
holy shit I remember that one
didn't it have an edit mode as well so you could create your own levels/games?
>>8091424
Quagmire was great as well, don't think I could ever get past level 18 or something

anyone ever play the Big One or Darkwood/Siege of Darkwood?

[Anonymous No.8091868]

I remember this old Macintosh adventure game called Lost Dog or something that I played in my school's computer lab and have never been able to find info about ever again. Just a simple graphic adventure about finding your lost dog but I remember it pretty vividly. Had that old Macintosh flair.

[Anonymous No.8092387]

Dragonsword, made by a 12 year old kid

[Anonymous No.8092662]

>>8092387
Is it any good?

[Anonymous No.8092805]

>>8091549
that shit is gorgeous the limitations of the medium really spurred the art on it feels like.

[Anonymous No.8093123]

>>8092805
Not quite as densely detailed, but if you like this type of art I'd recommend checking out the book Zen & The Art of the Macintosh. Along with various musings on philosophy/science, it features tons of black and white art, all made on an early Mac computer.

[Anonymous No.8093469]

I love going to the Macintosh Repository site and sorting by year of release and looking at all the 80s stuff. Its so cheesy and feels so honest

[Anonymous No.8094696]

>>8093469
This is a port and with these kinds of games I'm never sure whether to try the Mac ports or the original garish low res color versions