sas@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Scott Sutherland) (02/27/90)
The original article asked about games on the Supertwist display, and after replying I went on to talk about games on the Mac Portable. While I generally don't follow-up a poorly thought-out reply like the one below, I thought I had better set the record straight about the Mac Portable. Here's the reply: In article <2271@ultb.isc.rit.edu> dsf2652@ultb.isc.rit.edu (D.S. Fuller) writes: >I see you have never tried to actually use games on the Portable. Yes, >the screen is grand and wonderful, but there a *VERY* few games that >run on it and those that do are usually kinda funky because it does not >know how big the screen is and sets it for the Mac II and ends up cutting >the whole bottom of the screen off.. > >-Desi >[long (10 lines), wastefull signature deleted] While I won't pretend to be the world's greatest connoisseur of Macintosh games, I do have a half a dozen or so on the hard drive in my portable, and have had fairly good luck getting them to work. In almost every case, when a game has not run on the Portable, it also won't run on other machines. Sometimes the game is incompatable with the system software (eg: Continuum won't run on sys 6.0 or later), and sometimes the problem is with a game that makes assumptions about screen size (an inexcusably stupid thing for any mac programmer to do these days). Just to be sure, I called a large local computer store that sells the Mac Portable and also carries a large selection of games. I was told that while they have had some problems with games not functioning on the Portable, they have been largely of two types, 1) games designed specifically for the Mac II family of machines (making use of the Motorola 68882 co-processor), and 2) games designed for the Mac Plus, 512e, 512, etc. before the introduction of the Mac II (back when people were not so carefull about checking for screen size - oops). I have yet to find a non II-specific game that will run on my IIci (2 page monitor) and won't run on the Portable. There probably are some, but they aren't that common. Sorry for the novella, but hopefully it answered some questions. --- Scott Sutherland sas@cis.ohio-state.edu Staff Software Developer, OSU Department of Dance Disclaimer: The above opinions are mine, not OSU's