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General Chat => Games => Topic started by: The Doctor Alt 8 on 12 February, 2014, 05:18:40 PM

Title: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: The Doctor Alt 8 on 12 February, 2014, 05:18:40 PM
A friend has acquired an apple laptop (Don't ask me specifics... I only saw the distinctive logo and the fact that it seems rather.... THIN)


Are games made for these machines?


Any recommendations?

It's his birthday soon.
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Banners on 12 February, 2014, 05:37:42 PM
No - there are no games for Apple laptops.
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Frank on 12 February, 2014, 05:42:18 PM

A voucher to spend in the online game store would be the best idea:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/genre/mac-games/id12006?mt=12

Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Art on 12 February, 2014, 05:58:56 PM
There's some games on Steam as well:
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Metascore&sort_order=DESC&os=mac
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: von Boom on 13 February, 2014, 04:50:36 PM
If he likes rts games Starcraft 2 runs on mac.
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Goaty on 13 February, 2014, 05:30:13 PM
I only got Mac laptop in work, and it got loads of games in Steam, all Half Life and Portals, all GTA games, Batman both games. and Star Wars!! :) Perfect for me at lunchbreak.
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: The Doctor Alt 8 on 13 February, 2014, 05:37:57 PM
Oh Star Wars! he's heavily into that!
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: CheechFU on 14 February, 2014, 11:29:25 AM
Getting a mac for games is like getting an snes for photoshop  :lol:
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 14 February, 2014, 12:29:55 PM
Quote from: CheechFU on 14 February, 2014, 11:29:25 AM
Getting a mac for games is like getting an snes for photoshop

To be fair, gaming has never been a key demographic for the Mac, although it is amusing to speculate how different that might have been had Microsoft not bought up Bungie and Halo had been a Mac-exclusive title, as originally intended...

Cheers

Jim
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: radiator on 14 February, 2014, 12:42:54 PM
You can run Windows on a Mac, can't you?
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: IndigoPrime on 14 February, 2014, 12:49:01 PM
Quote from: radiator on 14 February, 2014, 12:42:54 PM
You can run Windows on a Mac, can't you?
Yes, either by dual-booting or using an emulator. When dual-booting, Macs perform admirably as Windows PCs (a friend liked the idea of a Mac, couldn't deal with OS X, but said his 'Mac' was the best 'PC' he'd ever owned). Emulation is slower but still acceptable for older games.

But OS X does have a reasonable selection these days, in part through Steam, in part through the few companies dedicated to porting titles (Feral, say), in part through the Mac App Store (which has a slew of iOS ports), and also because of growth in the sector.

Like Jim says, you'd be bad to by a Mac for games alone, but that doesn't say there aren't plenty of great games for the platform (albeit far fewer than for Windows—in other words, pretty much the opposite of the current situation on mobile).
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: jackstarr on 14 February, 2014, 02:16:00 PM
Quotehad Microsoft not bought up Bungie and Halo had been a Mac-exclusive title, as originally intended...
Yeah, but then Halo would have been a far smaller cult hit rather than the overwhelming success it was in terms of sales (xbox being considerably cheaper and more appealing to the mass market gamer than pc, let alone mac), and I doubt it would have spawned the sort of franchise that it has.

Steam is pretty much keeping gaming on pc/mac/linux alive - and I have as much of a love/hate relationship with Valve and their practices as I do with Apple...  :P

Keeping more on topic, Doc Alt 8 & co don't have a good history with Steam - but then running native mac games on Steam would probably be easier for them to get running than messing around with dual boots or emulation.


Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 14 February, 2014, 02:20:27 PM
Quote from: jackstarr on 14 February, 2014, 02:16:00 PM
Yeah, but then Halo would have been a far smaller cult hit rather than the overwhelming success it was in terms of sales (xbox being considerably cheaper and more appealing to the mass market gamer than pc, let alone mac), and I doubt it would have spawned the sort of franchise that it has.

Difficult to say, though. Apple were pushing it quite heavily at Expos (back when they used to go to such things), Jobs even showed off a demo during one of his presentations, and the gaming press were writing up advance articles touting Halo as an absolute game-changer. Clearly, Microsoft thought that was at least partly true, given that they bought the whole company just to make Halo an XBox exclusive title.

It doesn't seem like a huge stretch to think that Macs might have become a substantially more credible gaming platform...

Cheers

Jim
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: IndigoPrime on 14 February, 2014, 05:59:26 PM
I don't see that myself. Apple's never really cared about nor got gaming. It shows off games regularly, but largely because they rapidly show off the power of kit. Got a new iPad out? Great, now here's a high-end gaming shifting polygons and bling around like nobody's business. How about games controllers for iOS?

...

Oh. They're... um... not good, are they?
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: Trout on 15 February, 2014, 02:15:59 AM
Work made me take a MacBook Pro.

I dented it a little bit but I grew to quite like it.  :-\
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: ming on 25 February, 2014, 09:33:31 AM
Heh, I've just got Quake 2 running on my new Macbook Pro...   :)

One of the crappy things about Mac games (aside from the general lack of them) is the lack of backwards compatibility; I used to love Diablo 2, Wolfenstein, etc. but these just don't run with modern kit.  Out of curiosity I did a quick search and someone's developed a new client that lets Quake 2 run, at least...  Happy days!  Will dig around and see what other golden oldies I can get running.  The only recent-ish games I've picked up have been Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinite, but then I don't have much time to play these days...
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: IndigoPrime on 25 February, 2014, 10:24:54 AM
Generally, the best way to get old games running on OS X is through a DOSBox wrapper like Boxer (http://boxerapp.com) or some kind of Windows emulator (VirtualBox, Fusion, Parallels Desktop, etc.). For Mac-specific stuff, there are also emulators, such as Mini vMac for Classic-era hardware and SheepShaver for OS 9.

The Mac's never been great at backwards compatibility, versus Windows and its attempts to get everything running from the dark ages onwards. Both approaches have their benefits and pitfalls, but the Mac's certainly weaker at playing old games. (Mac fans of old console games should check out http://openemu.org though—it's very promising.)
Title: Re: Apple Laptops... are there any games?
Post by: ming on 25 February, 2014, 10:30:09 AM
Heh, I have spent many hours glued to various Macs, pretending they were 48k ZX Spectrums... :)

Spectra, whatever.

Good to know there are some other workarounds to investigate, IP - thanks for the tips.  Now, all I need is the spare time :(