Thanks for the ‘I was there when it happened’ perspective, because I’m coming in looking back and seeing a lot of what could have been.
Though I’m fairly convinced the lack of ‘professional’ software was intntional on Apple’s part to try discouraging people from migrating to the GS.
Also word perfect for the Apple II platforms got public domain’d.
I loved the look of early mac games and was disappointed that the masses seemed to care more for clunky crappy color than the beautiful detailed look of high resolution black and white.
Comparing Mac with the other games of the era I can kinda see where your’e coming from. However for me sound is just as much a factor as anything else, and sure the Mac had great resolution, but but its sound capability (at least on the 128 and 512k models) were… pithetic.
Oblig internet weirdness, “MACINTOSH PLUS”:
It really needed a MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, HyperCard kind of effort on Apple’s part to set a standard for business use of the machine. Instead it felt like publishers of Apple II software trying to step up to the new platform, and the first efforts were not so good. Granted, 1 of 2 years is not enough time for a platform to mature. But Apple certainly was not helping them and it just circled the drain.
I remember having fun with this HyperCard game, but I was in my early thirties when it came out…
I think I logged the most time on Dungeon of Doom/The Dungeon Revealed with Crystal Quest a close second. SimAnt was a bit later, but played it on B&W a lot as well.
I adored Spelunx. Both Miller brothers were surprised when I brought it up in interviews because unfortunately it was a commercial failure. Such a wonderfully playful, imaginative game — or rather more software toy. It rewarded exploration not only in a spatial sense but also in a creative one. You could compose songs and craft animations with drag and drop pieces, learn about science by interacting with little micro-simulations, bring paintings to life, and so much more. Even opening a desk drawer in Spelunx was exciting because it triggered something playful.
They planned to add more caves over time that you could patch in, like a forerunner to today’s downloadable content on consoles, but that never panned out because sales were too low. It didn’t help that the people doing the DOS port had to give up after a year because they couldn’t get it to run at an acceptable level of performance.
If you like Cyan’s pre-Myst stuff, I’d suggest you also keep an eye out for the next episode of my Ludiphilia podcast. I’m putting together a story on their first HyperCard kids exploration game, The Manhole — how it was made, why they made it, what influenced them, etc.
Ancient Art of War was one of my favorites for both systems. It looked so much nicer on the b/w Macs than color PC’s.
What, not a single reference to Cliff Johnson’s “Fool’s Errand”, “Puzzle Gallery” or “3 in Three”?
When I first got my Mac, Dark Castle and Fool’s Errand was on everybody’s machine (I went to a university where owning a Mac was mandatory at the time). So many hours solving puzzles.
They definitely had a massive amount of charm.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Hypercard was awesome for game creation. When I was in junior high our computer lab was all Mac SEs and I spent a lot of time putting together Myst-style games in Hypercard (back before Myst was a thing). This was where I learned to use ResEdit to extract audio from other software so I could embed it into my games.
Sounds great, thanks!
Don’t worry. He gets a whole chapter. At The Carnival was actually one of the first games I played.
To be fair, there was a whole log of bad decisions industry wide around that time in terms of “home multimedia” hybrid game machines. Apple was right to not give lots of resources to Pippin. With only Bandai signed on as a game creator, it stood zero chance of competing against the 3DO platform with multiple hardware and software vendors behind it.
Airborne was awesome! And it was neat how the cactus turned into a Christmas tree if you played on Christmas.
I think discourse has just destroyed your argument, as its scaling engine has just substituted grays for the original crisp black and white.
I’m just using my imagination, as someone once suggested 
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