Gaming on a G5 Mac
Yeah, our machines are old and don’t have the sheer power of a new quad core iMac. But they can still play some cool games. I’ll just toss a few of my favorites for you to find copies of and enjoy.
Last Updated: 1/31/2019
Fallout 1 and 2
Fallout 1 and 2 are some of the best classic RPGs ever created. They feature engrossing, detailed stories with huge worlds to explore and lots of options to make it different each time you play through. What kind of character will you build? How will you solve conflicts – with you words, your weapons, or your wits? You should be able to find a copy on Amazon or eBay for cheap. Enjoy. You’ll thank me for it later.
Cave Story
Cave Story at first feels like a throwback/ripoff to those classic Nintendo games of old, but it turns out to be beautiful and compelling in its own right. This is a platformer with multiple endings, a fun story, and creative gameplay. And, yes, it’s available for PowerPC (version 0.9.0).
Starcraft
Starcraft is such a blast of a game, one of the great classic strategy science fiction games that holds up after all these years. While there are not carbon versions of Warcraft II, Warcraft, or Diablo for our Macs, Blizzard was kind enough to put together a Carbon Installer that works great. You will need your Starcraft CD and/or Brood Wars CD to install. Incidentally, Blizzard released Starcraft for free recently, but it does not work on our PowerPC machines unfortunately. The link above is to the Carbon installer, BTW.
Baseball Sim
OotP Baseball is a free older version of the simulation heavy baseball management game. This thing is thickly detailed and can rob days of your life as you search for the best trades, fine tune your team, draft players, and manage a full professional baseball team. Heck of a lot of fun.
Marathon Trilogy
The Marathon trilogy was created by Bungie long before Halo was a reality. Today, all three games are released free and have been enhanced with updated graphics and more features. You can also find new story lines and levels to explore through user content. It’s definitely worth a download. (Please note – I’m not sure which version is the last to be PowerPC compatible.)
FPS
Why not play some good ol’ Quake on your G5? This website details how to get up and running with Quake with just a couple of quick downloads, running the basic Shareware levels of this fun 3D classic.
ZDoom is a free, open source, enhanced port of the classic first person shooter, DOOM. Talk about a blast from the past. While you still need the commercial WADS to play the classic game, you can either download the old shareware files or grab new levels that take advantage of optimization and new features in the classic engine. Just a lot of fun.
Duke Nukem – Duke Nukem is also available in a native Mac OS X version with lots of add-ons and pure mayhem.
Descent – One of the great 3D first person games of the 90s, Descent lives on with this updated port for Mac OS X. Like these others, you will need the original game files to play the game, although they tend to be available for free.
Create an RPG
Blades of Exile is a RPG engine from SpiderWeb software, makers of classic rpgs like Avernum. This is an older system, more of a flat tile based look than a 3d look. Still, it includes some starting scenarios, and you can make your own stories using the system. Lots of fun.