Top Best Software for Pre-PPC Macs

I consider this to be the best arcade-style game of all time. It was produced by Casady & Greene. I think it was the first color game for the Mac. No plot, simple graphics and sound, simple game control. It was the best. I still play it today on my Color Classic and PB 520c.

Crystal Crazy came along later, but nothing beats the original. There's a bunch of websites that honor the game, but in a quick scan I couldn't find any that let you download the game though I'm sure you can find it somewhere.

@flipy: Sent you a PM

Oh, Hazel, look. The field! It's covered in blood

MpegDec is one of the the best (actualy, probably the only) mp3 players for 68k machines. It's free (under the gpl, IIRC), and the system requiremnets are very low, like '030 at 33mhz, and system 7.0.1. Check it out at: http://members.aol.com/xanathus/mpegdec/
Jeremy

MPEG Dec is a cool trick, but it isn't a useful app since it drains most to all of the sysem resources. Since if a PC advocate is buggin you about how useless such an old system is fire it up and watch them shut up

In contrast iCab is probably the most useful 68k app out there. Its the only modern browser that works on any mac in existance. icab.de IIRC

Older versions of Eudora are great too. I was still using an older version on a G3 before I moved to OS X

Crystal Quest was initially published as shareware by Patrick Buckland, then picked up by C & G. It's best played on a Mac Plus rather than an ADB Mac because the mouse seems more controllable and you can get higher scores... After level 100, CQ is a bit flat but it was the best thing for compact Macs. Apart from Dark Castle, of course. And the Infocom stuff is always worth a mention -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy et al.

Phil

Huh, didn't know that about Crystal Quest. Thanks for the clarification.

You're right, mouse reactions aren't the best. When your ship gets moving too fast it can be hard to control it.

But the sounds, oh the sounds! They still crack me up.

Whoa, you're right, that thing is a real dog. I just installed it on my PB 520c. It was fun listening to Modest Mouse, but it pretty much killed the machine's ability to run any other apps, let alone switch back to the finder while a song was playing. I think I'll only use it to show my wife that the ol' 520c is still good for something..

I have spent hours and hours making all sorts of unuseful HyperCard stacks, but it was fun . It can be used to some practical stuff too, collecting recipies etc.

ClarisWorks 2.1 is also a classic and is better than AppleWorks 6 (IMHO).

Magnus

HyperCard rocked. I programmed a whole Yahtzee! game in a HyperCard stack when I was in High School. I think I still have it kicking around somewhere...

James M. Baker
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Computer Nerd
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My site

There alot of stuff for free out there:

http://www.euronet.nl/users/mvdk/system_6_heaven.html

http://www.macosarchives.com/home.html

http://www.cornstalker.com/freeware/

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/

Just to name a few.......

Krow

Almost everyone swore no 68k would EVER be able to decode and play mepeg tunes. It's too bad the DSP accelerated version hasn't been finished, it would be especially cool to have a version of it running on the MPEG Media Card in one of the 630 variants, outputting directly to the Video card's Sound Subsystem so it wouldn't steal ANY cycles at all from the CPU unless you were using the menus, just like AVP plays video in a blank box. As far as the OS is concerned, it's just like any other dormant window on the desktop.

My vote for best 68k software goes to Fontographer, the ORIGINAL postscript illustration program, it predated Illustrator by quite a bit. My first copy used to run fine off a 400k floppy on the FatMac, but it's NFS tho. =8-P

jt

I just re-opened my Mac BBS. I'm setting up a 68k file area, I have a few good ole programs but haven't uploaded them yet. If your interested let me know I'll start uploading them to server. I'm running old NovaServer software which incidentally can run ona 68k mac. The Server address is blackscorpion.no-ip.org. You can telnet onto the server or get the NovaTerm Client 4.04 to log onto my BBS. Have fun.

I never really used Hypercard, and I never really was that interested in it. But you gotta give it its due -- it was pretty darned revolutionary software, anticipating the WWW model by many years and allowing lots of folks to program lots of useful things.

Matt

Best piece of 68k software? Two words: SimCity 2000.

I still have TONS of 68k stuff, just dont have the machines setup. But lets see if I can remember some stuff.

Games:

Marathon
Bolo
SimCity 2000
Apieron
Bubble Trouble
Crystal Quest
Flashback

Apps:

Claris Works 2.1
Netscape 4.7
HyperCard

Hmm... Been a while, having trouble remembering Maybe I will boot one of them up this weekend and look at all the old software on em.

This might be a good place to mention that, as part of maintaining the Mini vMac emulator ("http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/"), I maintain a list of list of currently available Macintosh software that works on the Mac Plus, at "http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/sw/". Most of this software should probably run on any later 68K Macintosh.

There are currently about 200 entries. I would appreciate hearing about any other software that qualifies for this list (i.e. that is being distributed by the copyright owner).