buying a vintage mac for RPGs/gaming

gonna grab one off ebay. super psyched.

first mac ever. gonna get a PPC early 2000s model. can't wait!

any of you guys still have or use a vintage computer of some sort? share it here.

But…. Why?!?

Originally Posted by vanedor
But…. Why?!?

I've been emulating Mac lately and fell in love with it. Gonna grab an L-shaped desk for a little corner in my room to setup a vintage Mac area. Just fell in love with the OS and the type of games from that era (1985-early/mid 2000s)

I had a classic commodore that I had bought and restored in the early nineties set up in Canada, but when I came back to the states I bequeathed it to a mate. There are many days that I regret doing that, enjoy your Mac, you'll be in gaming heaven!!

Originally Posted by Carnifex
I had a classic commodore that I had bought and restored in the early nineties set up in Canada, but when I came back to the states I bequeathed it to a mate. There are many days that I regret doing that, enjoy your Mac, you'll be in gaming heaven!!

aw, sorry to hear about your loss, but it's cool u made your friend very happy! and thank u, gaming heaven is guaranteed!

I have never kept a Mac due to the excellent resale value meaning I can largely fund new Macs by selling the old ones

Some of my faves through the years:
- Mac SE (my first Mac, had Apple ][+ before that)
- Powerbook 170C
- Quadra 605 - powerful, small, reasonable price
- Pismo (Powerbook G3-400)
- TiBook (Powerbook G4 first gen)

I have noted before that my last desktop of any type was back in 1997 - laptops are objectively a more expensive and limited option for someone who is a gamer, but I prefer them anyway.

My oldest current computer is an HP Omnibook 300 - it is from 1993, and has Word & Excel (and other stuff) preinstalled on a flash storage. The pop-out mouse was one of my faves ever (I also have the more powerful Omnibook 800CT from ~1998 with Pentium 166 and color screen).

super cool, @txa1265! i am looking at a few of the g3/g4 models, both tower and laptop models. Trying to find a powerful one but that can still run older stuff from the mid 80s to 90s mainly. nice collection u had there. i may go with a laptop too, just not sure yet.

You could try out that old Mac-only game that originally came with Mike Oldfield's music album "The songs of distant earth".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_So…album)#Release

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
You could try out that old Mac-only game that originally came with Mike Oldfield's music album "The songs of distant earth".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_So…album)#Release

huh. I don't know much about Mike Oldfield but I do have his Tubular Bells cassette tape and it was pretty cool. There's a ton of Mac stuff I want to dig into! So much cool stuff out there, really.

buying a vintage mac for RPGs/gaming

I know you're serious yet no matter how many times I read that title it looks like an obvious troll post.

Why not stay with emulation? It has nothing but advantages: faster on load, save anywhere, and takes no extra space. It also can't break.

That's what I recommended to a friend who wanted to buy an Amiga. He didn't listen.

The joy is in finding, obtaining, and setting up the old system. I'm not into that sort of thing myself, but I can understand how some people find it cool.

The only old things, computer wise, I want are a CRT monitor for some older games, and some midi units like mt32 and sound canvas. Otherwise I'm all good with modern computing as long as it can be emulated. I do miss a turbo button through.

Originally Posted by JDR13
The joy is in finding, obtaining, and setting up the old system. I'm not into that sort of thing myself, but I can understand how some people find it cool.

Exactly- there are a few things I regret selling off (HP200LX, Newton MessagePad 2100, Powerbook G3 'Pismo'), but based on my minimal usage of the retro tech (also music hardware and synths) I haven't bought anything … but occasionally check eBay

But I think my thing is - even as someone who has been a staunch 'Apple defender' and has owned Apple products continuously for more than 40 years … by the late 80s I no longer bought a Mac for gaming, and by mid 90s PCs were definitely the way to play.

The only two exceptions were Star Wars games - as noted many times, the *best* version of Dark Forces was the 'Mac Enhanced' version, and in mid 2002 the best Powerbook played Jedi Knight II (the Yavin Swamp areas in particular) better than the best available PC laptop.

Damn … now off to eBay to remind myself that I don't REALLY want one of these things … (or rather I don't want to drop a few hundred $$ on it )

Originally Posted by ilm
Why not stay with emulation? It has nothing but advantages: faster on load, save anywhere, and takes no extra space. It also can't break.

That's what I recommended to a friend who wanted to buy an Amiga. He didn't listen.

Emulation doesn't have advantages. Many Mac games won't run on emulation and require the proper system to play. A lot of the best games, too, actually, that I really want to play just don't work with emulation.

Originally Posted by JDR13
The joy is in finding, obtaining, and setting up the old system. I'm not into that sort of thing myself, but I can understand how some people find it cool.

Yeah, it's pretty cool to me. I used to dabble in vintage music gear, too, and that stuff has a lot of personality and uniqueness that I enjoyed a lot. It will be nice to have a vintage computer nook in my room that I can just play with when I feel like. Something different for me.

hey @txa1265 , what do u think of a 17" 800mhz iMac? I got it because it can dual boot OSes (9 & X). I also will be upgrading the ram to 2gb and putting in a 250gb ssd, new thermal paste, etc..

Originally Posted by TheRealFluent
hey @txa1265 , what do u think of a 17" 800mhz iMac? I got it because it can dual boot OSes (9 & X). I also will be upgrading the ram to 2gb and putting in a 250gb ssd, new thermal paste, etc..

Is that the one that looks like a desk lamp? I have heard good things about those - dual-booting is cool, it must have been one of the last series that allowed it. I liked that option - it allowed you to keep running software not updated for OS X a bit longer, but Apple obviously wanted to force things to OS X.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Is that the one that looks like a desk lamp? I have heard good things about those - dual-booting is cool, it must have been one of the last series that allowed it. I liked that option - it allowed you to keep running software not updated for OS X a bit longer, but Apple obviously wanted to force things to OS X.

Yep, it's the desk lamp, 'all in one' computer. Dual booting is sweet because a lot of what I want to do is on OS 9. I want to play a lot of classic stuff from 1985-1999, so instead of using the inferior Classic Mode on OS X, I can play them directly with OS 9. Good stuff. And I'm doing all the upgrades on it.

What games do you intend to play? Are they exclusives or does mac provide the best version?

Originally Posted by ilm
What games do you intend to play? Are they exclusives or does mac provide the best version?

I believe some of them are exclusive to Mac as well as the best versions. I plan on playing black and white as well as color text adventures, called "world builder" series. I really enjoy them and a lot of them don't work on emulation…

Other games from 1985-1999 also don't work with emulation. If u run the Mac OS 9.2.2., u can play the vintage games natively and they run fine.

Some games I want to play are Realmz, The New Centurions, Journey, Where in the world is carmen sandiego, Darkwood, Autoduel, The Dungeon Revealed, Adventure!, the Zork series, the Ishar series, and many, many others. So far on emulation I have around 50+ pieces of software downloaded, and about 20 more that didn't work with emulation. There's quite a bit of cool stuff I'm interested in.