With the new Intel Macs, games and other applications that run only on OS9 or lower are actually not playable from the factory on new computers. They can be sloppily emulated-- and with the unbelievable raw power computers have these days, that works fine occasionally-- but in general, an OS9 game just doesn't play cooperatively on a new system.
There are a few long running series of games that definitely should be brought back to life
Warcraft: This series, as anyone who has ever played all of the games through will know, is pretty amazing (unless you hate the type of game in general). The storyline is ongoing and although it starts to run in circles through WC2 and takes a crazy twist in WC3, it's really quite a story. The gameplay of WC2 is ######ing amazing, as many people will attest to. It's like Starcraft minus the WC3 style features-- control groups, etc-- of Starcraft. Absurdly fast paced, based on land, sea, and in the air, with complicated strategies that can be elaborated on as long as the player's trickiness keeps figuring out new ways to manipulate the board. I have never loved WC3's gameplay as much, but the "new RTS" type features-- as I said, control groups, heroes that are more powerful than other units, more complex spells, etc-- make it more than playable and it has that wonderful Warcraft feel to it. The issue with this is that 1. WC4 is LONG overdue-- the WC3 expansion ended in a bitch of a cliffhanger, and 2. The earlier games are unplayable and abandon-ware. I have a feeling that it wouldn't hurt Blizzard one little bit to dig up the source code to the games and port them or even give just a few programmers just a few days to make an official OS X/Universal version of the games, retaining all the simplicity and grainy graphics, but just making them playable. I would like to see this happen.

Myst: I don't think I need to say much about this. Myst was itself a real classic and one hell of a game. Riven was possibly the most amazing world I have ever seen created and awesome to play. Exile, Revelation, and End of Ages all have a really fancy graphics system that puts you in a 3D world and allows you to move about it and touch parts of it-- Revelation is ######ing scary after 20 minutes, when you forget you're in a game. However, these just don't have that something that Riven did. I honestly don't care as much about the original Myst-- I'd like to see it back usable but it just wasn't the work of art that Riven was. Nothing really is. There is a project called Riven X that is pretty much what it sounds like-- OS X Riven (should be easy-- just use the pictures and animations and link them together)-- but last time I checked it was non functional and not moving anywhere. Cyan goes in and out-- someone else actually did Exile and I didn't really like it that much-- and I'm not sure the company still exists, and I doubt they have a programmer to assign to porting Riven functionally. But damn, I would love that.

Any other games like this? Anyone want to sign a petition to port Riven and Warcraft? Comments, questions, flames?

I don't care overly much for warcraft...it would be fun to play again, but mostly for nostalgia value very occasionally.

Riven, however, is something I would greatly like to see again. The world was great, the huge puzzles were fantastic, and I did fall in love with it...but I also found it when I was of an age where the puzzles were even more challenging to me than they would be if I picked it up now...so being able to figure them out was an incredible boost for the game's value to me. I picked up both Exile and Revelations later on (and would love to have the last one), but yeah...Riven was fantastic.

Well, rejoice, they are working on Starcraft II. Any way, they aren't going to do another Myst game, I'm pretty sure, because they have specifically said that the last one was the final one. Too bad, though.

MoO2 and Ares. And on the game consoles, and just discovered recently, E.V.O.

If i got metal warriors in 3d I would donate the rest of my life to charity. maybe.

I would like to see a WC4, but the way things have gone with WoW, the series might be irreparably destroyed in terms of storyline so it might be best if WC4 just never got made.

I would love to see an Ares X.

Oh! How about a new SimCity that doesn't suck.

People need to stop making this assumption. Porting is hard work; you need only look at the games advertised on this site for evidence of that. Ambrosia tries as hard as anyone to keep up with the latest Mac systems (just look at iToner), yet they've said they can't port old classics like Ferazel or PoG, even when a demand for them is evident. Without evidence to the contrary, I would assume Blizzard is the same way.

potentially thread-derailing aside:When I've gone to the game developer's conference, there's been a talk or two about preserving old games; how they can be archived not just so we can continue to enjoy them, but so our grandkids will know what a Mario game was like, the way we can watch the films that defined our grandparent's pop culture. Every time, I, and I suspect most other people there, just had better talks to attend, so it's been an ignored topic for video games. It's a shame, but until something changes, this is just going to become a greater problem for some people over time.

I might well get flamed for saying this, but I never understood why people liked Warcrat so much, especially Warcraft III. It was ok, but I found the extremely bulky-looking units and general art style to be rather unsightly, and the gameplay was really nothing special. Certainly not as deep as Age of Mythology, the all-time greatest strategy game in my opinion. It was better than the C&C games, but then, what isn't? Warcraft II was a lot of fun for a while, but it got old rather fast for me.

Unless they retcon out everything they added from WoW, agreed. If you were to read the lore segements of the manuals from WC1 to WC3, you'll notice how much they've watered down the lore. For example, the human's have gone from following a vague catholic-seeming religion to following some philosophy of the light. The Orcs have gone from almost satanic to demon-worshipers to demon-possesed "chaos orcs" to demon-possed "fel orcs". The whole shamanistic thing is excusable, given the retcons.



Warcraft 1 was pretty genre defining at the time. Warcraft 2 furthur define the genre. Then Starcraft defined it yet again. Then Warcraft 3 didn't really do much, except make some money for Blizzard and produce a bunch of fun "use map settings" style maps. It should have stayed Orcs vs. Humans, that's what Warcraft was meant to be about.

Quest For Glory was an awesome series, though I only played the few that made it to the Mac.

It ought to be revived.

--BP

Am I really the first to say Escape Velocity?

EV isn't dead, it continues to live on. And if you're talking about EVC specifically, that was ported to Nova.

Hehe, for saying that, I'll forgive your criticism of Warcraft. Yeah, you're right, Warcraft III sort of sucked. But it wasn't an RTS anymore. Warcraft II, though simplistic, set the bar for RTS for a long time until Blizzard was able to set the bar again.



If I remember right, the Orcs were shamanistic back on Draenor until the shadow council started screwing with stuff.

Assuming the transition was done correctly, I would buy it. I would also buy Rock 'N Roll Racing 3D. Best SNES games since A Link to the Past and StarFox.


I'm actually quite impressed and delighted that they've kept up with StarCraft and Diablo II so well. Not to mention that they even have full fledged Mac ports of their current (much less older) offerings, which can't be said for the vast majority of big-name game companies. All considered, their legacy support – which I would like to point out, does not pay the bills – is fantastic.


I agree there needs to be some way to archive and distribute old games. It's a shame so many great old games go by the waste basket everyday, simply because they can't be run anymore. The Virtual Console on the Wii is a step in the right direction, but executed somewhat poorly (namely that only Nintendo and affiliate produced titles are available).


I frankly never saw what was so great about WarCraft's story. It always seemed like just-another-generic-fantasy premise to me. But then again, prior to playing WarCraft, I had played Myth and Myth II which had vastly more original storylines and impacting presentation, nevermind revolutionary gameplay for the RTS genre.

That said, Blizzard did far, far better with StarCraft's storyline and presentation. I think it rates as quite possibly the best sci-fi story experience in a game to date, at least for me. StarCraft's gameplay also far exceeds any of the WarCraft series in my opinion.

Ares X + Avara X = Epic Winawesomeness

Note to JoshTigerHeart: There just happens to be a sequal to MoO2. It's called MoO3. It's fun, but complicated.

I'm surprised Cosmic Nuisance hasn't said Marathon yet...
I'd like to see Cythera (I know it'll probably never happen, hehe), maybe something like a nextgen Loderunner

As requested-- Marathon. I somehow missed this topic...

Beating. A. Dead. Horse.

Won't someone please think of the horses?

I've played MoO3. It was alright, but it really was only a sequel to MoO3 storyline-wise and loosely on gameplay. It wasn't hardly the same. They cut they more interesting races and made almost all of the rest too similiar to one or two others. MoO3 was also known for asking for fan input on what the came should be like, and then completely ignoring all the suggestions.

I own moo3. It's hard, complictated, badly explained and not really all that great. Theres some potential to be an interesting game but it just fails in comparison to the past.

Moo2 is better.

Yeah that was what i was getting at.

Solar winds. A remake of this game would be awesome. Also there's this dos star trek game I'm playing right now that would be glorious in 3d.

Oh, that reminds me of X-wing. There have been various spaceflight sims since then, some by LucasArts, but none that captured the fun of dogfighting in zero-g like X-wing did. And make it for Mac, too .

Exobattle.

Did I say SimTower? I don't think I did. So yeah, SimTower.

Avara, but that's beating a dead horse again.

I wonder what Ray Dunakin has been up to lately. A full 3D Ray's Maze would be the most awesome puzzle game in of eternity.

I'm seconding exobattle. Someone should've pimped that out.

I'd go with lemmings. Holy crap, that game was awesome.


*EDIT*

Hey, I actually can play this game now.
Sheep shaver time!

Deus Ex. Probably as a prequel.

Call it Machina.

Ares. I guess no one is surprised to read me say that . Other Games that should be continued are StarCraft (they're working on SC2. Yay), and the Jedi Knight series, so they can try and undo the damage done to this decent series by the monstrous failure that was Jedi Academy (story- and feeling-wise, that is). I also kind of liked Cythera. Today's RPGs might slightly surpass it's graphics (heh heh), but the come nowhere close to the feel and depht it offered. I'd like it minus the bugs, though.

However, I'm not particularly keen on sequels to either Diablo or Warcraft, as the former is adequately continued with Hellgate London, and the latter lost all reason to exist after being outclassed by StarCraft in every respect. And WCIII and WoW didn't exactly help things, either.

I agree wholeheartedly. A good remake of SimTower would be excellent; I can appreciate the advancements made by Yoot Tower, but we definitely need sum dat edifice all up in dis!

The bugs and glitches are the only thing that keeps it alive these days. Look at the Cythera boards, that's all they talk about besides Chronicles.

I agree, the bugs actually in the game were fun, but i rather meant without new bugs, since these days developers hardly put any good bugs in their games anymore.