That quite depends on your personal viewpoint and - maybe even more important - your own personal experience. I grew up with Mac OS 7 and games like Sim City (2000), Civilization, Colonization, X-Wing, Doom, etc. etc. ... to me, those are "classics". I have no emotional relation towards b/w games whatsoever, though I can understand they certainly have a special appeal for people growing up with them and/or being macintosh users at the time.

I personally really really really love the "new" Macintosh Garden and it's idea to preserve all macintosh gaming classics and not only those of a short period of time. That said, thanks again admins for doing a great job

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

My own Classic Era is everything pre-OS X (no pun intended...), with a particular fondness for black and white. I don't oppose OS X abandonware finding a home here, though.

that's what attracted me to the website the most: they REALLY mean the classics
that come on floppydisks by imposing this limit.

I personally really really really love the "new" Macintosh Garden and it's idea to preserve all macintosh gaming classics and not only those of a short period of time.

Um, the 2MB/10MB limit was about conserving HOTU's bandwidth, not any kind of philosophy. Just like the present 400MB limit isn't meant to slight FMV games. (Although FMV games did, by and large, suck. )

I also agree on the Software made Pre- OS X, Pre-G3 Macs regardless of the medium,
Eg. I have the Out of this world, Flashback, Battllechess, etc.. that I bought in CD's
but that could easily fit in just a few floppies, and they are Still Classics

I guess Classics to me is the TIME LAPSE they were made
in my own personal opinion this time lapse is from 1984 to 1998
I didn't get to see the B/W software (I was very young) but thanks to Garage sales,
I got to know the Apple IIc ( I still Own one)
and Sites like Macintoshgarden I got to know the B/W Macintosh Good software.

Abandonware is anything that's ten years old and is no longer being sold or supported. So anything from 1999 and below is fair game. Consider this: Halo for Mac was released in 2003 and MacSoft no longer sells it, so four years from now, don't be surprise if it shows up in here--unless MacSoft keeps supporting it, which I think they won't.

Bah. Just give me a 4K Atari 2600 game and I'm happy. These new-fangled floppy drives are too big for their own good.

Hey, I support everything written in the original post.

I sometimes wonder if the big games might somehow threaten the future of the site. They make the bandwidth costs go up, and software associations really do send out letters to abandonware sites about recent games.

Playing the great classics can be a real hoot for those that remember them first time round. And I'm not wanting to stop anyone downloading and playing all the games they can, but I'm hoping that the purpose of the site is to actually preserve Macintosh software, to ensure that it is not lost forever. It's not like printed material, floppy disks and CD's deteriorate with age, even if stored under perfect conditions.

So anything that is more than X years since it was last sold should be fair game. X should relate to the shelf life of the media it was released on.

I thought dye was only used in the manufacture of CD-Rs. Commercial CDs are pressed, usually into metal (or gold as you say). CD-RW also uses metal.
Or am i out of touch with the cheap and tacky processes now used in China ?

"All proceeds go directly to our hosting and bandwidth costs which is currently at $150 USD a month."

Ideologically speaking, preserving all Mac games is great. But we are basically asking Maedi to pay a fair bit of money for it...

I did my research maybe 10-15 years ago:

CD-R's used an organic dye, which was vaporised by the CD laser when burning to mimic a "pit" in the CD data layer.

CD-RW's used a metal, which would be superheated to mimic a pit when burning, but melted by the laser at a lower power setting to "melt" the pit and it's surrounds back into an unset state.

CD's aren't burnt into dye at all, but pressed (just like vinyl records used to be) before the bottom plastic coating is applied.

May have all changed now, but I do remember reading this in both PCW (Personal Computer World) and Sci-Am. I probably still have the articles - along with the PCW review of the Lisa, from March 1983 which mentioned an upcoming project for a low-cost computer called Macintosh (low cost, right), which they thought would be a games computer.

Still in hardcopy, somewhere, mixed in with every copy of MacUser UK (minus 3 or 4 I lent out), every copy of MacWorld UK until May 2000, and every copy of MacFormat UK (minus the 10 or so copies that never turned up on my subscription). There's also a couple of years of MacWorld US from the early 90's. The magazines have been cut up, so it's just the interesting articles remaining, stored in plastic sheets in folders.

And a couple of early copies of Computer & Video Games UK (in complete form) from 1982, including issue 1. These have source code for simple games for Sharp MZ80K (I had one of these), Commodore PET (I had a PET 2001 - with paper keys), Atari 400 & 800, Oric 1, etc. maybe even some for the Apple I or II.

I have a few working scanners, so I can check what I've got and email it. Any requests ?

Did consider scanning everything, but it's about 700 sheets/year (1400 sides) for each of MacWorld / MacFormat, maybe 1000 sheets/2000 sides per year for MacUser. Give 60 seconds to scan, file and catalog each side, or even just 30 seconds ....

I have a few working scanners, so I can check what I've got and email it. Any requests ?

Anything from MacFormat will do. The older, the better. raul...@gmail.com.

I have (nearly) every issue going back to issue 1 (when it came out every 3 months), missing about 10 issues from 2003 to 2005. Any reviews you're looking for in paricular ? I kept everything except ads - you know the 38 page insert from Computer Warehouse, or whatever it was called.

We really do need a "Docs" section. Or at least a category under Apps or Games.

Do you have the February 2005 MacFormat? You could scan the review of the Macintosh Garden on page 74...

EDIT: Docs section is a good idea. I've got a complete set of MacUser 1995 PDFs that came on an Apple Color Printing CD - not scans, but the fully laid-out content of the magazines in vector format.

@Dax,

Found it, but only because I was imaging the MacFormat cover cd's for 2005 today, and I wanted to check which issue they belonged to. I'll do all 4 pages of the "What next for Mac games?" feature.

You have an email ? or you can email me for a reply ? (assuming you have my email from when I created my account on the site).

daxe...@hotmail.com

Thanks

my idea of abandon-ware is software that is at least 2 version numbers old (for example mac os 8.5 would be abandon-ware because the current version of mac os is mac os 10.5).
P.S. all the other points above define abandon-ware.
ps2 please for give me if i missed something above, this post is getting really big.

I have (nearly) every issue going back to issue 1 (when it came out every 3 months), missing about 10 issues from 2003 to 2005. Any reviews you're looking for in paricular ? I kept everything except ads - you know the 38 page insert from Computer Warehouse, or whatever it was called.

How about other kind of ads like full page ads by the likes of Adobe and MacPlay? As a former graphic designer I like to browse old magazine ads, so if you have any of those I would love to see them. If not then don't worry about it. Just scan a few reviews from the firts magazine you find and email them. I dont have any particular request in mind.

MacFormat at the start. Found the folder eventually, but MacFormat didn't mark the pages with the issue number until issue 12, so I can't tell what was which issue for the first 11. But I do still have all those game reviews and previews and "gamebusters" - a page of cheats.

I'll read through it and pick some of the unusual games and scan. 150dpi comes in about 800KB per page, 300dpi is about 4.5MB per page. Need a disposable email to send them too.

You got my email and daxteria's above. JPGs at 150dpi should do it.

Ideologically speaking, preserving all Mac games is great. But we are basically asking Maedi to pay a fair bit of money for it...

Unfortunately its true! It's costing an arm and a leg! Balrog and I are looking into solutions now, but if you can go easy on the bigger downloads, thanks!

A docs section makes perfect sense but it's another thing to worry about. I've got enough to stress right now, can we put it on the back burner? I don't mind the idea of putting old magazine clippings under an app or game. I think old articles are more of a general societal thing, maybe this is something for archive.org?

Maybe someone should start a wiki page linking to these PDF's? I'm interested to see the 2005 piece on Mac Garden.

If and when there's a Docs section, I'd like to add the 1984 advertisement (directed by Ridley Scott) - supposedly the best advertisement of all time. It's a good quality version.

I've also got the G4 Tanks advertisement in perfect quality, one of my favourites.

1984 is 13MB, G4Tanks is 3.2MB.

I also have a copy of the 87 minute "Welcome to Macintosh" documentary from 2008. Far too big for the site, and not of interest to the freeloaders, you'd have to be a Mac geek, and one from very early on to really enjoy it.

Details are here.

"Welcome to Macintosh" is available for sale, it has definitely not been abandoned. There would definitely have to be some guidelines for a docs section. Probably videos would have to be excluded, at least at first. Too much potential for everything going wrong with vids on this site.

I got a copy of welcome to Macintosh . I am not saying where i got it tho,as i am a huge apple nerd, I think the only one in quebec! XD

but i thought it was a good documentary I liked it alot.

But I still hate the one mouse buttion!

Well... back to the topic.

Hi everybody, my name is Alex and to me, classic mac gaming meets everything before X. I made my first mac experiences with Mac OS 7 on a IIsi, playing SimCity 2000, 8Ball Deluxe and all the other old gems. Here in Germany, it was quite hard to get some new software, especially games, you had to rely on the cdroms of the mac magazines published here. Later, the internet came up and lots of quite cool shareware games were released. I love to remember those days. Today, I kept a 5500/275 as a private retro refugium and every day I turn it on, I'm still amazed what this little beautiful baby can handle...

I love the Macintosh Garden the way it is now, I used to love it before.

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

In my opinion, classic mac games should run in Mac OS 6 and 7 (which, oddly enough, was the time that I was introduced to macs).
I found this site because I was looking for Civ. I and Armor Alley. The latter is an almost 20 year old network game! I had great fun with it in university.
My classic game list: Tetris, Risk, Civ. I, Civ II, Armor Alley, SimCity, Maelstrom, 3Tris, NetTrek, SameGame, Shadowgate.

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

Speaking of space constraints, it'd be really cool in the future (not too far..) if one could order CDs online of the content on here (obviously just the stuff that's not likely to be a legal problem). That way, it wouldn't have to be downloaded/available for download.

Order from whom? Most likely Amazon, used, I expect?

I think he/she was hinting that the admins burn a CD of 600MB of stuff and mail it in return for a contribution to the running of the site. If abandonware was a grey/gray area before, this would not help the site, although BMUG would charge $35 at the MacWorld Expo for their shareware CDs (called PD-ROMs).

I'd consider anything System 9 and older to be classic Mac games at this point.