I've been reminiscing about mac games I played in the 90s, as that was the most gaming I ever really did in that era. Sure, I might go to a friend's house and play SNES or Goldeneye (some of my favorite childhood memories), but there are a lot of games that I really enjoyed that simply aren't talked about anymore, although when I bring them up, people say to me, "Oh, yeah, I remember that."

Firstly, I'd like to bring up The Dig. This game was done by Lucasarts, and was apparently one of the better point and click adventure games out there. I played the crap out of it, although a few of the puzzles defeated me thoroughly. It followed a team of three astronauts as they seek to blow an asteroid away from Earth, but said asteroid turns out to be an alien craft that takes them to a point and click beautiful, but sinister alien world. The three astronauts are Low, the typical gruff white guy with brown hair and stubble that every videogame is required to have as a protagonist, Brink, the snooty academic German scientist who I identified with immensely, especially after he dies and gets resurrected by a life crystal, turning him into a maniac, and Maggie, an annoying reporter who nobody likes, but exists only to be the female on the mission, even though she really doesn't do much. They end up solving the problems and bringing back the lost race of the planet, and finding their way home. All in all, it's a well written game, as Orson Scott Card and Steven Spielburg both worked on it. The soundtrack is phenomenal as well. The truly sad thing about this game is it really does seem to be buried in time, as people rarely talk about it, despite it being a pretty solid game- its one fault being the difficulty curve on some of the puzzles.

Another interesting game is Gadget. While not being so much a game as a superlinear myst clone, this game had style and messed with your head like none other. It has a deep plot, although you need to read the artbook to fully understand what is happening. It follows a military agent in a eastern european facist country that combines 1920s retro style with futuristic technology as he investigates several scientists who worked on a brainwashing project, and are now trying to build a spaceship to escape a comet that is headed towards the planet. Psychadelic, nightmarish, and overall great, it lacks a challenge, and thus few people really remember it.

The next game I want to talk about is the Journeyman project. This game was a myst clone, but set in the future, past, and other timelines. You play a temporal agent assigned to stop an alien ambassador from being killed by re-rewriting history after a crazy person tampered with it, triggering an interstellar war. Great story, weird gameplay. Good graphics for its time, and a very good soundtrack, although it's impossible to find these days. There were sequels to this game, but I never played them. Still, the idea of being a temporal agent has stuck with me for a long time, and I would love to get apparel for this series, if there is any.

I would talk about Marathon here, but I talk about Marathon too much. Marathon was good, blah blah, Bungie should remake it, blah blah, Master Chief is the marathon guy, blah blah.

Going a bit simpler, I really enjoyed the game Bolo. This simple tank game could be played over the earlynet, and it involves a tank, an island, a little guy that could build things, gather things, and randomly die, and pillboxes. It was simple, fun, and easy to play. Dustin mentioned remaking it, perhaps on flash, and I think that's a good game.

A game that nobody seems to remember is Mantra. It is somewhat of a Zelda clone for mac, but it had great music, decent graphics for what it was, and was just a solid, fun game. It follows Saric, a shipwrecked traveler who washes up on this land controlled by an evil wizard. You must find the mantras, which are elemental spells, and collect them to kill the evil wizard and free the land of tyranny. It's a simple adventure game, but it is genuinely entertaining, and the cute graphics and good music really make it work.

Exile is a rather plot heavy game that seems to also be lost in the sands of time, despite several sequels. It is a very complicated rpg, despite the graphics being fairly simple. The plot is you, and some friends, commit some defiant act in a tyrannical kingdom and are sent through a dimensional portal to a cave world, where other criminals and the like have already created settlements. Overall, this game was very frustrating, with a very high difficulty curve thanks to random monster groups that would occasionally spawn after you slept. Most of the time you could handle the monster groups, but one monster group in particular, called the slith, came in massive hoardes with wizards and archers, and could waste an entire party in no time. Even better, these enemies could spawn at any time, screwing you over right after you leave the first town. Even so, the rich characters and interesting plot kept me playing this game, despite leaving me screaming and swearing at my computer every now and then if I forgot to save.

A similar game was Realmz, although this game had a much better difficulty curve. You could genuinely survive most encounters, and loot was easy to come by- every enemy you killed would usually have chest armor, a helmet, and a weapon. If you could identify these, you could become rich very quickly. The general plot was akin to a dungeons and dragon game, and there were multiple scenarios you could buy. I only played the shareware version, so I got one scenario, but the level of detail and craftsmanship that went into it was really amazing. The one fault I would give to this game was a lack of music and awkward graphics at times. Even so, it was a fun RPG for what it was.

Finally, there was my favorite RPG, Taskmaker. This game followed the path of a young warrior as he did 10 tasks for the Taskmaker, the king. It was a decent rpg with no real music, sub-par graphics, and lots of little things you could do to get epic level weapons before completing the first task, but it was fun. Furthermore, it had a lot of humor, and didn't take itself too seriously- Lord British is one of the NPCs, and you can fight evil macintosh computers. The real appeal of this game, however, was after you defeat the final boss, you gain the 'master's menu' which allows you to control the game- you can rebuild levels, create npcs and monsters, and pretty much recreate any of the levels to your own desire. I spent more time doing this than actually playing the games, and in one of my saved games, ended up making most of the levels into completely different levels. Even so, this game is relatively unknown, and despite it being fun to rebuild the levels, doesn't hold much value these days. Storm impact, the company that made this, is also known for Skifree, which was far more popular, but I will always hold Taskmaker in very high regard. There was a sequel, Tomb of the Taskmaker, but I really didn't care for it as much- it lost a lot of the humor of the original, and became a bit too complicated.

Anyway, those are my favorite unknown mac games from the 90s. If you have heard of these, then props to you. I really would like for some of these games to resurface, as it would be tragic for them to be lost to history. Furthermore, once I get a decent webcam and a mac emulator, I would like to possibly do reviews of these games.