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[–] 21 points 1 day ago (20 children)

I think one of the reasons is that MacOS didn't really have any games back then, so there was no reason for a kid to be glued to their computer. And if you use something for a long time, you collect problems and ways to solve them, getting the experience and some technical knowledge along the way.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 day ago (7 children)

    Number munchers and Oregon trail have entered the chat. Also the dozen other games on floppy disks (that my middle age mind cannot remember now) that we played on our Apple IIe's.

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  • [–] 6 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

    My mom worked at Software Etc in the 80's.

    There were so many more, and better games, for PCs.

    The only good games on Mac were ones ported from PC.

    I was my mother's official "troubleshooter". If a customer returned a game, she gave it to me, to test.

    There were definitely a lot more PC games returned than Mac, but there was almost never anything wrong with them. Probably came down to individual setups.

    Which was Mac's strong point. There was no real diversity in hardware, so everything worked.

    But all the Mac games SUCKED compared to PC.

    Unfortunately, this was also when I was exposed to Ultima IV... and my homework never saw me again.

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  • [–] 2 points 22 hours ago

    Were you under the impression I don't believe there were pc games back then? I didn't say that, also, funny enough you say

    The only good games on Mac were ones ported from PC.

    But the only games I specifically named actually were on Mac first then later ported to DOS.

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  • [–] 3 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

    I'm not so sure but I think back THEN there were less captivating PC games as well. My perspective is from the early 00s Russia, when you had to deal with pirated games, unbelievably slow Internet, funny videos shared between friends on CDs, going with a hard drive to a friend's house just to share your music collection, etc. Basically, we had to know how to do this kind of stuff because the alternative was so expensive. Now with LLMs you don't even have to "google" anymore, so there's no need to know, for example, what a file extension is.

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  • [–] 2 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

    Interesting perspective. I was in the rural US and my experience was probably closer to yours than you might think. 33-48kbps modems were insanely slow, even back then. Between that and my parents banning the Internet in the house, most everything I got my hands on was pirated, and either painstakingly (secretly) downloaded over midnight hours on the unreliable modem or from a floppy disk or burned CD from a friend! This was circa 1997-2001 until I moved out and got a usable Internet connection.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    Yeah, that checks out, I usually notice a 10-20 years "cultural" gap. Personal anecdote: watching The Sopranos in 2020s still felt like the topics in russian media and culture are just starting to catch up, before that no one really talked about depression as a disorder, and people taking ADs were seen as "crazy".

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  • [–] -4 points 1 day ago (10 children)

    Huh? Mac had the better games! In fact I lived in the countryside and our school was mostly Macs until I got to high school.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 day ago (8 children)

    Huh? Mac had the better games!

    That's a wild claim.

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  • [–] 6 points 22 hours ago

    Mac had heaps of games in the 80s and 90s. Then from the 90s to the 2010s, it was WINDOWS TIME for games, with some being ported to OSX and Linux or run with compatibility software. Now it’s Windows/Linux hardcore and still only small or modest Mac support.

    Mac did have a ton of fun games back then, though! I didn’t get a Mac of my own until Intel Core Macs came out, but I loved the Macs I used at my friends’ houses and school.

    I went through an edgy “Apple is worst computers” phase in the 2000s, but I grew to like the hardware and OS after I picked one up to install Windows on to bring to LAN parties (all non-Mac laptops that could play games fuckin suuuuuucked back then and I was never at home.)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    I don't know about better, but the Mac games I had in elementary school were awesome for kids that age. Oregon trail and number munchers. I don't think pc gaming had really taken off much at all then. That was years before doom, even.

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago*

    In the 90s, especially early 90s, the hardware was just plain faster and more capable. Coupled with a remarkably robust shareware community, gaming was great on them. The difference between Doom II (the PC-DOS game everyone remembers) and Marathon, which was its mac contemporary, was ridiculous. Textures, resolution, gameplay complexity, the ability to actually look up and down, etc.

    Then Gil Amelio tried to turn them into a business-focused company for a few years, and mac gaming never fully bounced back from that. I mean, it almost did. Halo was going to be a Mac exclusive at launch, and then Microsoft bought out Bungie right before launch to sell their new X-Box.

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  • [–] 1 point 19 hours ago (3 children)

    You’re either very young, or didn’t have access to Mac’s as a kid. The games were great. Number Munchers was sick.

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago (2 children)

    I don't think 40 (how long ago Number Munchers came out) can be considered "very young."

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  • [–] 1 point 16 hours ago (1 child)

    Yes, that’s my point. He’d have to be in his 20’s to have missed all the early Mac games.

    If he’s 40 he for sure would have either played them, or just never been around Mac’s as a kid.

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  • [–] 1 point 12 hours ago

    He’d have to be in his 20’s to have missed all the early Mac games.

    More like 30s. If you were born 30 years ago in 1996, by the time you're able to use a computer it's already 2000 and Mac is left behind.

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