Who’s Got Game? Not Game Programmers For The Mac

November 18th, 2003 at 2:00 PM - Columns and Opinions by Tony Overbay

Iim the Mac user who likes to play sports games. Yes, Iim THE ONE! Iim the guy who spent hours playing Virtua Soccer on the Mac at the London Macworld Expo back in 1996, excited that sports games would soon be coming to the Mac. Iim the guy that used to keep win and loss totals for each of the players in Casady and Greeneis Pararena. OK, maybe that wasnit your "typical" sports game, but the players were trying to knock a ball in a hole. When the closest thing to a sports game at the time was Glider, I wasnit too picky.

And Iim the guy who pre-ordered Virtua Soccer only to never have it make the trip across the pond. I tried desperately to get a hold of a copy from someone on The Continent, but alas, services like Hotline were but a dream.

Iive been laughed at by my office counterparts. While they were busily playing games like Myst, Warcraft and others, I was playing Atari Basketball circa 1980 using a Macintosh Arcade emulator that worked (and I use the term loosely) on my Duo Dock 2300.

Then came John Madden for the Mac. Once again I held my head high amongst my peecee friends. Sure they had been playing the latest and greatest sports games on their systems for nearly a decade, but now I, too, could play big-time computer football on my Mac. OK, maybe the system requirements were a bit too high, but I needed a new machine anyway, what with all of the new sports games sure to follow this pioneer of sports games for the Mac.

Sure I had John Madden football for my PlayStation. Sure it was much easier to play with the PlayStation controllers, but I was playing on my Mac, and all was well with the world. Now Iim forced to report that John Madden was the beginning and the end of sports games for the Mac, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. I now find myself playing my 5-year-old kidis titles, Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball, in order to get my sports fix on my Mac. Sure itis nice to brush up on my math skills in order to complete a pass, but itis just not the same.

I even gave Virtual PC a shot on my old 6400. On the same day I bought a basic PC basketball game for my Mac and a copy of Virtual PC. Armed with this combination I was sure to be draining buckets on the likes of George Mikan and Bob Cousy in just a matter of minutes (OK, I went with a REALLY old basketball game in hopes of my machine being able to run both the program and the game on the trusty old 603e processor).

One week later I resigned myself to playing solitaire on my virtual PC system (although I did create solitaire team names and hold a season; props go out to the Card Sharkis victory over the One-Eyed Jacks in the championship series).

Where are you, Mac sports game developer? Iim desperately looking for you! Iim now a scratch golfer on LinksLS, Iive actually figured out how to play Cricket with the shareware game of the same name. Iim money on a computer dartboard, Iive slalomed my way down the course in record time on MacSki, but I need my hoops! Let me play baseball! Help me Mac Sports Game Programmer, youire my only hope!

Tony Overbay is the CEO of Diskology by day, and a closet technology writer (not actually writing about the technology behind closets, but...well, never mind) by night. Tony can be reached at tony@diskology.com.