• tyler@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    Huh? Mac had the better games! In fact I lived in the countryside and our school was mostly Macs until I got to high school.

      • tyler@programming.dev
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        10 hours ago

        The time period we are discussing is 25-45 years ago. Macs haven’t been a thing kids have “grown up on” in decades, so I’m guessing you’re quite young. Mac games blew Windows games out of the water for years.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        Mac had heaps of games in the 80s and 90s. Then from the 90s to the 2010s, it was WINDOWS TIME for games, with some being ported to OSX and Linux or run with compatibility software. Now it’s Windows/Linux hardcore and still only small or modest Mac support.

        Mac did have a ton of fun games back then, though! I didn’t get a Mac of my own until Intel Core Macs came out, but I loved the Macs I used at my friends’ houses and school.

        I went through an edgy “Apple is worst computers” phase in the 2000s, but I grew to like the hardware and OS after I picked one up to install Windows on to bring to LAN parties (all non-Mac laptops that could play games fuckin suuuuuucked back then and I was never at home.)

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I don’t know about better, but the Mac games I had in elementary school were awesome for kids that age. Oregon trail and number munchers. I don’t think pc gaming had really taken off much at all then. That was years before doom, even.

      • rabidhamster@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        In the 90s, especially early 90s, the hardware was just plain faster and more capable. Coupled with a remarkably robust shareware community, gaming was great on them. The difference between Doom II (the PC-DOS game everyone remembers) and Marathon, which was its mac contemporary, was ridiculous. Textures, resolution, gameplay complexity, the ability to actually look up and down, etc.

        Then Gil Amelio tried to turn them into a business-focused company for a few years, and mac gaming never fully bounced back from that. I mean, it almost did. Halo was going to be a Mac exclusive at launch, and then Microsoft bought out Bungie right before launch to sell their new X-Box.

        • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
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          18 hours ago

          I don’t know whether that example is so convincing.

          Marathon does look more advanced than Doom II, but Doom II was not much more than an extra campaign for Doom (with bigger levels).

          Doom was one full year Earlier than Marathon. While it may not seem a lot right now, back then that was a long time. One year after Marathon, Duke Nukem 3D came out, and that looked already like big leap.

          And 6 month later we got Quake, that is suddenly in full 3D instead of having sprites for the characters.

          • rabidhamster@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            16 hours ago

            No, that’s fair. Marathon came out about 1 year after the first Doom. But it ran at full 24 bit color, higher resolution, had gameplay mechanics such as secondary triggers, magazine-based weapons, maps that were proper 3D (Doom I and II couldn’t really loop parts of the map under/over each other, as it was essentially still a 2D map with 3D visuals). Basically during the 90s, a game was already obsolete once it was maybe a couple years old. More than anything, Marathon has a proper story and story writers, but that’s more about the gaming environment at the time than the hardware. Bungie pre-microsoft was kind of amazing. Them and Ambrosia Software were top of their niches.

            Duke Nukem was another leap, although they still hadn’t quite figured out the whole “look up or down without severe distortion” that so many 3D shooters in the mid 90s suffered from.

            But yeah, prior the the Pentium becoming the mainstream processor that most people would have in their machines, those Motorola 68k’s were powerhouses.

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          10 hours ago

          That’s the time period we’re discussing lol. The OP literally talks about kids growing up on Macs. No kids have grown up on Macs in school for decades. It’s either iPhones or iPads since then.

          So yeah I’m talking about 30 years ago, no shit. And no I’m not having trouble processing anything, it just seems like most people in this thread didn’t tie the time period together properly (probably correlates pretty well with the question honestly!).

      • dogdeanafternoon@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        You’re either very young, or didn’t have access to Mac’s as a kid. The games were great. Number Munchers was sick.

        • ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          I don’t think 40 (how long ago Number Munchers came out) can be considered “very young.”

          • dogdeanafternoon@lemmy.ca
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            2 days ago

            Yes, that’s my point. He’d have to be in his 20’s to have missed all the early Mac games.

            If he’s 40 he for sure would have either played them, or just never been around Mac’s as a kid.

            • ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml
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              7 hours ago

              He’d have to be in his 20’s to have missed all the early Mac games.

              More like 30s, minimum. If you were born 30 years ago in 1996, by the time you’re able to use a computer it’s already 2000 and Mac is left behind.