robertj@yale-zoo-suned..arpa (Rob Jellinghaus) (01/20/88)
Well, after doing my periodic survey of game manufacturers, I can say
that things look optimistic for those Mac II owners among us who hunger
for games. (All the comments below also apply to regular Macs, as I
certainly haven't encountered anyone yet who said their games run ONLY
on the II.)
SSI has no conversions planned for the Mac through March at least. Wah.
Silicon Beach is going to releaae Beyond Dark Castle for the Mac II!!
This will be cool. It's not going to be in color, they said, because
if it were it would have to take up ten floppy disks. They do not plan
to convert any of their other games for the II.
The game Crystal Quest (orderable from MacConnection, I don't know what
the company that publishes it is called) runs in color on the II, and
boy is it hot. If you like fast shootemups, with hilarious sound
effects, this is for you. Available NOW.
Mindscape said that all of their Mac games (Uninvited, Shadowgate, King
of Chicago, etc.) run on the II with the exception of Defender of the
Crown. They have no plans to colorize them, though.
I read in Sierra On-Line's journal that they are going to release all
the titles in the Quest series for the Mac, AND they will be in color
on the II!! The first one they mentioned will be Police Quest, released
for the Mac, which will support color when it comes out. Sorry, I don't
know if it's out yet... it might be... (These games are graphic
adventures with a difference: you control a character that can walk
around a three-dimensional terrain on the screen (i.e. left, right, or
back away from you and forward towards you). Quite highly acclaimed.)
Origin Systems said that OGRE and Ultima III are currently Mac II
compatible (no color, though). They are looking for outside contractors
to do more Mac II development, so their future plans are uncertain.
Spectrum Holobyte said that they will be releasing a monochrome version
of Falcon that is fully II compatible as soon as they get all the bugs
out of it... apparently they're working with Apple on getting it
running. They plan to do a color version, which will probably retail
for $99 (as opposed to $49 for the monochrome), but they said that it
wuld be a year or so before that gets out. There will probably be an
upgrade policy for owners of the monochrome version (i.e. pay the
difference in cost, and get the color version).
Omnitrend said that none of their games are II compatible (Universe,
Breach, &c.) and that they have no plans in that direction. Until
at least 2nd quarter, they said... so...
Interstel (makers of Star Fleet and Empire) said that they do plan
to come out with Mac versions of all their games, and they do plan to
support color, but they suffer from a lack of knowledgeable Mac
programmers to do the work. They're looking, though... maybe later
this year they'll have something.
Electronic Arts said that they are currently in the "decision-making"
stage. They have gotten many calls from people with Mac IIs, and
they do plan to do "a lot more work with the Mac in the coming year,"
but nothing definite right now.
So, in summary, there's not a whole lot available Right Now, but there
is quite a bit available RSN, and in a year or two we are going to be
DAZZLED. I for one can't wait!
If you know anything I didn't mention, please tell me! Thanks, and
I hope this was helpful.
Rob Jellinghaus | "And so, whenever you are in trouble,
jellinghaus@yale.edu.UUCP | look to the horizon! For running
ROBERTJ@{yalecs,yalevm}.BITNET | towards you you may see...
!..!ihnp4!hsi!yale!jellinghaus | THE TOXIC AVENGER!!!"buzz@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mahboud Zabetian) (01/20/88)
How about Microsoft Flight Simulator? -- Mahboud Zabetian buzz@phoenix.princeton.edu 183 Little Hall (609) 520-1270 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (609) 734-7760 ****** Anyone need a soon-to-graduate hardware/software engineer? ********
cosmos@druhi.ATT.COM (GuestRA) (01/20/88)
In article <21607@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, robertj@yale-zoo-suned..arpa (Rob Jellinghaus) writes: > Electronic Arts said that they are currently in the "decision-making" > stage. They have gotten many calls from people with Mac IIs, and > they do plan to do "a lot more work with the Mac in the coming year," > but nothing definite right now. I talked to them yesterday and they said they will be coming out with a fully compatible "done right" Mac II version of Chessmaster 2000. This means, according to the woman on the phone, that it will have full color support, support all of the screen sizes, etc. Ronald A. Guest ...!ihnp4!druhi!cosmos Supervisor AT&T Laboratories 12110 N. Pecos St. Denver, Colorado 80234 (303) 538-4896
chow@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) (01/23/88)
In article <21607@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> robertj@yale.UUCP writes: >Well, after doing my periodic survey of game manufacturers, I can say >that things look optimistic for those Mac II owners among us who hunger >for games. (All the comments below also apply to regular Macs, as I >certainly haven't encountered anyone yet who said their games run ONLY >on the II.) > ... It just occured to me that perhaps there is a way to get alot of game software for the Mac II. What about having a Mac II emulate an Atari ST? Something like the inverse of an Magic Sac would open up a vast amount of game software for the Mac II. Of course, it wouldn't be quite as nice has having real Mac II games, but its better than nothing. Has anyone else given any thoughts to this -- are there any difficulties in getting a Mac II to emulate an ST? Christopher Chow /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Internet: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (128.84.248.35 or 128.84.253.35) | | Usenet: ...{uw-beaver|ihnp4|decvax|vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!chow | | Bitnet: chow@crnlthry.bitnet | | Phone: 1-607-253-6699 Address: 7122 N. Campus 7, Ithaca, NY 14853 | | Delphi: chow2 PAN: chow | \---------------------------------------------------------------------------/
robertj@yale.UUCP (01/23/88)
In article <3475@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) writes: >It just occured to me that perhaps there is a way to get alot of game >software for the Mac II. What about having a Mac II emulate an Atari ST? >Something like the inverse of an Magic Sac would open up a vast amount of >game software for the Mac II. > >Of course, it wouldn't be quite as nice has having real Mac II games, but >its better than nothing. Has anyone else given any thoughts to this -- >are there any difficulties in getting a Mac II to emulate an ST? Well, offhand, one difficulty that occurs to me is that the Atari ST has a great deal of hardware graphics support. Sprites, smooth vertical and horizontal scrolling, fast color fills, etc., etc. Whether the Mac II has enough processor speed to smoothly emulate all of this is debat- able, especially when you consider that game programs tend to push a computer to its limits. The Magic Sac has a simpler time of it; it doesn't need to do anything except draw on the screen in a simple bitmap mode, since the Mac doesn't have any of the fancy graphics coprocessors. In fact, I heard (it may not be true) that the Magic Sac is actually faster than a Mac Plus in certain graphics-intensive applications, because the Sac uses the graph- ics chips to speed up drawing on the screen. What it boils down to is that the Atari ST line can do graphics much more quickly than the Mac line. Writing a Mac emulator on the ST is not that difficult (or the Sac wouldn't exist). Writing an ST emulator on the Mac necessitates doing a lot of complex graphics stuff with only the main CPU to work with. Perhaps the II's 68020 is fast enough to handle it... all I know is, if someone DID come out with such a toy and it worked well, I would buy it pronto! >Christopher Chow >/---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ >| Internet: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (128.84.248.35 or 128.84.253.35) | >| Usenet: ...{uw-beaver|ihnp4|decvax|vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!chow | >| Bitnet: chow@crnlthry.bitnet | >| Phone: 1-607-253-6699 Address: 7122 N. Campus 7, Ithaca, NY 14853 | >| Delphi: chow2 PAN: chow | >\---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ Rob Jellinghaus | "...And Renee was standing over me saying, jellinghaus@yale.edu.UUCP | 'What's wrong, hon?' 'I'm dying.' 'Oh. ROBERTJ@{yalecs,yalevm}.BITNET | And here I thought you were having a nice !..!ihnp4!hsi!yale!jellinghaus | time. Building sand castles.'" -- S. Gray