The Sad History of Mac Gaming

When Valve announced Steam was coming to the Mac, the hallelujah you heard was Mac users the world over. Finally, finally, after twenty years of bad ports and worse originals, Mac gaming had a chance in hell of being current. It was a bigger miracle for Mac owners than the iPod proving their brand loyalty absolutely right for once.

I’m a member of a minority, in that I’m a long time Mac user. As such, I’ve heard just about every ridiculous accusation about Macs; that they’re overpriced, usually an argument made by people who proceed to gloat about their $500 graphics card; that they’re ghey computers for people who don’t have the testicular fortitude to own a real computer, which Windows partisans don’t seem to realize is exactly what Linux users say to them; and that Macs don’t play games.

Now, just to be clear, PC gamers are, whether they realize it or not, the self-flagellating monks of the gaming world. Yeah, PCs used to be superior to game consoles, but this advantage dissolved somewhere around the PlayStation era. To keep up, you have to spend thousands of dollars on a machine designed exclusively to play games…which you can, uh, just buy from a store for a lot less and have a much wider selection. And what do you get to play? Games like “The Witcher”. Oh. Joy. Sign me up. It’s totally worth $5000 for a custom-built PC to play a game that thinks collecting nudie cards is the height of gameplay achievement. Or World of Warcraft. Gee. Killing bunnies to level up. How did I live without this?

On the other hand, it’s not like they’re wrong about Mac gaming. Gaming on the Mac sucked harder than a cheap hooker with a black hole in her throat. In fact, it sucked right from the start. Windows 3.1 came out of the gate with Solitaire and Minesweeper.

Mac users got this:

Even for the '80s, this is weak.