by Gaming on the Mac is a strange beast. Take a look at some top tier games and you’ll find an array of information telling you what isn’t compatible, rather than what will work. I’m looking at you X-Com 2. Running a system a couple of years old will stand you in good stead especially since Apple hasn’t updated some product lines in over 300 days, but even then if you don’t have the top of the line model you may be struggling with some of the most demanding games.
But what if your kit is like mine, perfectly adequate for day to day use it still runs the latest Mac OS betas fine but getting your game on isn’t going to happen and funds don’t permit purchasing of a new shiny? There’s retro gaming.
Retro Gaming has seen an incredible resurgence recently even more so as the process of gaming in the yesteryear era is now substantially easier. Before emulation / retro gaming could be a complete hassle. Previously it was a case of finding an emulator, finding a ROM to boot the emulator[1], configuring the emulator and then finding the ROM for the game you wanted to play. Depending on the game, you may have to tweak the emulation experience and then, finally, you’re up and running (hopefully).
However there is an easier way thanks to the excellent website GamesNostalgia All of the pain has been removed of configuration leaving you to just search for a game, download and run. That really is all that’s needed and I should know as I’ve wasted more than a few weekends rolling back the years with Speedball 2 or just one more match on Sensible World Of Soccer.
Thousands of games are available from a huge range of old console and computer formats such as Amiga, C64, Spectrum, Megadrive, SNES, Atari, Coleco, Gameboy… The list goes on and on, each game running near flawlessly on all my aging kit, including my 2009 MacBook Pro and my i7 iMac with a huge amount of ram powered by a weedy Intel HD graphics card.
Running retro games on a big screen did make me feel all nostalgic and for the brief moment I considered trying to work out how I might find a CRT and connect that up just so it would look fuzzier for the full old school gaming vibe.
Granted the experience hasn’t been perfect for a couple of reasons. Back in the day designers worked with the limitations of CRT screens. Back in those days colours would bleed together and on today’s LCD screens it looks almost jarringly sharp but that doesn’t detract from a horrendous level of addictiveness of some games. Also I don’t own a microswitched competition pro joystick or being a bit more up to date an Xbox controller, which is easily configured to work on the Mac, and has now been ordered from Amazon[2].
So if you want to game on your older equipment and you don’t fancy playing an iOS version of some games via airplay onto your TV go check out GamesNostalgia
[1] Not all emulators need this but the interesting ones like Dolphin and Playstation do.
[2] All the Amazon links here use our affiliate code. It would be great if you used them when shopping at Amazon.
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