"Best of" List -- Mac Plus - Macintosh Garden

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2012, March 25 - 6:34pm

Arthegall

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Joined: 2011 Dec 31

"Best of" List -- Mac Plus

Okay vintage Mac software geniuses, let's put together a "best of" list for the Mac Plus.

I'm talking the 25 best apps of all time for the Mac Plus.

Requirements: Must be able to be run on a Mac Plus without obscure hacks. May require up to 4MB of RAM and Mac OS 7.5.3. May require a hard drive. Must have a 1-bit b/w mode.

Note: Some apps that were cool in color kinda sucked in B/W. M&M3: Isles of Terra, for example. Some didn't suck, like Prince of Persia. To make the list, the app has to be cool *on the Mac Plus.*

Nominate anything and everything, and we'll whittle down as necessary to a ranked list of 25.

Here's a dozen starting nominees (in no particular order):

Dark Castle
Prince of Persia
Shadowgate
SuperPaint
Microsoft Word 5.1
The Ancient Art of War
The Ancient Art of War at Sea
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Chessmaster 2000
Space Rogue
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
PGA Tour Golf

Why the Mac Plus?
The Mac Plus represents the first decade of the Mac era.
Introduced in Jan. 1986, it ran all the software designed for the original Mac 128k and the 512k. In production until Oct. 1991, it was a minimum compatibility mark for much Mac software well into the Mac OS 7 era. Supporting up to Mac OS 7.5.3, it will run many apps that were used on PowerPCs. It perfectly bridges the gap between the pre-hard drive era of floppy-only computers and the CD-ROM era of high-color graphics.

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

Comments

2012, March 26 - 12:21pm

MCP

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So many come to mind. Cliff Johnson's games, ICOM games, the original Spaceward Ho!, World Builder, Glider, Warlords, Solitaire Royale, Shanghai, the first couple of OXYD games, Ishido, Tesserae, Cogito...

2012, March 25 - 10:36pm

Jon God

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Dark Castle!

2012, March 26 - 12:26am

Thundersock

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Dude, Dark Castle is already there, unless you were cheering or something, like "Yay, Dark Castle!" then carry on.

2012, March 26 - 4:52am

watchsmart

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Joined: 2009 Apr 10

Cap'n Magneto
Continuum
The Dungeon of Doom

and especially...

Scarab of Ra

2012, March 26 - 6:11am

Jon God

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Joined: 2010 Jan 13

I am totally blind. Dannng.

So, yeah, Dark Castle Yay!

2012, March 26 - 8:00am

amatecha

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Joined: 2010 Mar 10

SimCity?

2012, March 26 - 5:26pm

bertyboy

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It's been a while since I've sen my box for SimCity, but I'm sure it required a 68020 processor or better, primarily to simulated the traffic flows, so one of the Maxis team told me at a MacWorld Expo.

+1 for Scarab of Ra, because it was so well written it ran fine in OSX 10.3 under Classic on my dual 2.5 G5 (hopefully just about to get yet another for pennies).

2012, March 27 - 4:33am

Ferazel-X

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Joined: 2009 Nov 29

Dungeon of Doom
Continuum
Cosmic Osmo
Scarab of Ra
World Builder

Pinball Construction Set!

2012, March 28 - 7:53am

#10

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

oooh, Ishido, NetTrek, Continuum, Dungeon of Doom, Uninvited, all +1

also, Mouse Stampede was hours of fun!

I still find it hard to fathom, that Ishido was as easy to play B&W as it was in colour!!!

That is how well it was written, and that is how good Mac B&W patterns were.

2012, March 28 - 9:22am

#11

Jon God

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Joined: 2010 Jan 13

Captain Magneato, Carman Sandiego, Crystal Quest, Glider, Lode Runner, Stunt Copter

2012, March 28 - 4:39pm

#12

Arthegall

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Joined: 2011 Dec 31

I posted this topic at the 68kmla forums, and Trash80toHP_Mini, one of the mods over there listed some apps that got me thinking.

For all its strengths, and for all the hours and hours of gaming bliss I experienced on my Mac Plus, the Mac Plus was not that great a gaming machine. It was super expensive, and it didn't have color. From a gaming point of view, the AtariST and certainly the Commodore Amiga were better platforms if you consider price, features, and game available.

But where are those two today?

The Mac lasted because the Mac Plus (and later Macs) invented desktop publishing. PageMaker, Fontographer, and PostScript allowed you to do things with a computer that had been simply impossible before, and the Mac excelled at these activities.

So I don't see how a *best of* list for the Mac Plus can leave off some of those apps. In fact, in a ranked list, I might put PageMaker at the very top.

Speaking of which, we could use better archives of early desktop publishing apps.

2012, March 28 - 6:49pm

#13

watchsmart

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How about.... Hypercard!

2012, March 28 - 7:38pm

#14

MikeTomTom

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Microsoft Word 5.1

IMO, Microsoft Word version 4.0 deserves the honor as best MS word processor for the Mac Plus, not 5.1.
Word 4.0 was a powerful wp for its time and made Word 5.1 look bloated in comparison (if installed onto a Mac Plus, 5.1 was a screen hog with its ribbon bar). A full install of Word 4.0 also bundled and installed SuperPaint 1.x
I think Word 4.0 was optimized to run well on the 68000 CPU, it was fast and responsive. Word 5.1 was more suited to the larger color screens of the '020 and later Mac CPUs, where it excelled to become the WP of choice for the Mac.

@Watchsmart: +1 for HyperCard on the Plus.

2012, March 30 - 9:04pm

#15

soudesune

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Joined: 2009 Dec 19

Risk, Civ I and SimCity. The Plus is not ideal for Civ I. Anything less than a PPC8100 running dual monitors at 1600x1200 is not ideal for Civ.

2012, March 30 - 9:30pm

#16

Arthegall

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Pretty sure Civ doesn't even run on a Mac Plus. Think it requires an 020 minimum.

2012, March 31 - 4:10am

#17

Daxeria

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Joined: 2009 Apr 8

Archon: The Light and the Dark
Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep
Deja Vu
The Fool's Errand
Glider 4.0
Lunar Rescue
ResEdit
Shufflepuck
Wesleyan Tetris
WriteNow

(Are you going to combine our suggestions with the 68KMLA's, or run two separate polls?)

It's been a while since I've sen my box for SimCity, but I'm sure it required a 68020 processor or better, primarily to simulated the traffic flows, so one of the Maxis team told me at a MacWorld Expo.

SimCity Classic ran on the Plus; it was SimCity Supreme that required an 020.

2012, March 31 - 6:15pm

#18

Arthegall

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I have a copy of SimCity Supreme. It has a B/W version that runs on a Plus.

2012, April 1 - 4:28pm

#19

IIGS_User

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The Print Shop