The Secret History Of Mac Gaming: Expanded Edition

The Macintosh changed video games. It challenged the medium to be more than child’s play and quick reflexes. It made human-computer interaction friendly, inviting, and intuitive. Mac gaming led to much that is now taken for granted by PC gamers and spawned some of the biggest franchises in video game history — including Myst, Halo, and SimCity. It allowed anyone to create games and playful software with ease, and gave indie developers a home for their products.

It welcomed strange ideas and encouraged experimentation. It fostered passionate and creative communities who inspired and challenged developers to do better and to follow the Mac mantra: ‘think different’.

Written by award-winning journalist and game historian Richard Moss, The Secret History of Mac Gaming draws on a combination of archive material and around 80 interviews with key figures from the era to tell the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It’s a book about people who followed their hearts first and market trends second, showing how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful video games could be.

The Secret History of Mac Gaming also features guest chapters from Craig Fryar, Apple’s first Mac games evangelist and the co-creator of hit game Spectre, as well as specially-created divider illustrations and cover art by graphic designer and pixel artist JJ Signal, all styled in the gorgeous 1-bit aesthetics of early Macintosh games. At 480 pages long, The Secret History of Mac Gaming features eye-catching coloured page edges, a hardback cover printed with pantone inks and a colour-coded bookmark ribbon. As usual for Bitmap Books, they use thread sewn binding for extra durability and print lithographically on high-quality paper to showcase the gorgeous visuals as they deserve.

This newly-expanded edition adds around 70 pages of extra content, including a foreword by The 7th Guest co-creator and id Software and Apple alum Graeme Devine, plus an annotated timeline, over 60 extra images, an icon gallery, and more than 6,000 extra words added to the chapter narratives — on top of the 115,000 words from the 1st edition — covering a variety of additional game and developer stories, including the tales behind Snood, Chaos Overlords, The Dungeon of Doom, and more. It also revises and updates the design, based on reader feedback, to provide a better reading experience.

Book specifications

* 480 pages. 158mm × 230mm.
* Edge-to-edge high quality lithographic print. Hardback.
* Sewn binding for enduring quality and the ability to lay flat for ideal double-page image viewing.
* Coloured page edges. Shrink-wrapped.
* English Language

Includes contributions from:

Robyn and Rand Miller, Patrick Buckland, John Calhoun (Glider), Andrew Welch, Ben Spees, Matt Burch, Ian and Colin Lynch Smith, Steven Tze, Mark Stephen Pierce, Jonathan Gay, Bill Appleton, Steve Capps, Charlie Jackson, Peter Cohen, Trey Smith, Dave Marsh, Joe Williams, Brian Greenstone, Craig Erickson, Rick Holzgrafe, Chris De Salvo, Ray Dunakin, Cliff Johnson, Glenda Adams, Rebecca Heineman, Eric Klein, Marc Vose, Yoot Saito, Alex Seropian (Bungie).

Games featured include:

3 In Three / 3D Hearts Deluxe / 3D Klondike / 3D Tic Tac Toe / A Mess O’ Trouble / A-10 Attack / Airborne! / Airburst / Alice aka Through the Looking Glass / Amazing! / Another Fine Mess / Another World / Apache Strike / Apeiron / Aquazone / Arcomage / Ares / Armor Alley / Artillery / Asteroids / At The Carnival / Avara / Baker’s Dozen / Balance of Power / Baron: The Real Estate Simulation / Barrack / battle-girl / Battlezone / Beyond Dark Castle / Big Bang Board Games / Big Bang Chess / Billy Frontier / Bloodsuckers / Bolo / Bomber / Boogaloopers / Bosconian / Brickles / Bubble Trouble / Bugdom / Bugdom 2 / Burning Monkey Solitaire / Burning Monkey Solitaire 2: Monty Zuma’s Revenge / Bus’d Out / Cairo ShootOut! / Cap’n Magneto / Centaurian / Chaos Overlords / ChipWits / Chiral / Choplifter / Clan Lord / Classic Cribbage / Classic Gin Rummy / Color Dark Castle / Continuum / Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel / Creepy Castle / Cricket / Cro-Mag Rally / CrossCards / Crystal Caliburn / Crystal Crazy / Crystal Quest / Crystal Raider / Cythera / Daleks / Dark Castle / Deep Angst / Déjà Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas / Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True / Derrat Sorcerum / Descent / Despair / Diamonds 3D / Dogfight City / Drakmyth Castle / Duke Nukem 3D / Enchanted Scepters / Enigma / Enigmo / Eric’s Cascade / Eric’s Solitaire Sampler / Eric’s Ultimate Solitaire / Escape Velocity / Escape Velocity: Override / EV Nova / Exile: Escape From The Pit / F/A-18 Hornet / F/A-18 Hornet 2.0 / F/A-18 Hornet 3.0 / F/A-18 Korea / Falcon: The F-16 Simulator / Ferazel’s Wand / Firefall Arcade / Flight Unlimited / Fokker Triplane Simulator / Forty Thieves / Frankie’s Dungeon / GATO / Glider / Glider 4.0 / Glider PRO / Glypha / Gnop! / Grand Slam: World Class Tennis / Gravitar / Grid Wars / Gridz / Ground Zero / Half-Life / Halo: Combat Evolved / HangMan / Harry the Handsome Executive / Hearts Deluxe / Hellcats Over The Pacific / If Monks Had Macs / Ingemar’s Skiing Game / Inigo Gets Out / iPuppet Presents: Colin’s Classic Cards / Ishidō: The Way of Stones / Jared: Butcher of Song / Jump Raven / KGA Golf / Kill Monty / KTA Tennis / Legacy / Letterforms & Illusion / Links Pro / Little Brick Out / Little Pythagoras / Lunatic Fringe / Lunicus / M4 Tank Simulator / Mac Spudd! / Mac Tuberling / MacBugs! / MacCricket / MacGolf / Macintosh Football Manager / MacJesus / MacSki / Madden NFL 2000 / Maelstrom / Make Millions / Marathon / Marathon 2: Durandal / Marathon Infinity / Maze / Maze War / MazeWars / MazeWars+ / MicroLeague Baseball / Microsoft Flight Simulator / Mighty Mike aka Power Pete / Mike’s House / Millionaire: The Stock Market Simulation / Minotaur: The Labyrinth of Crete / Montana Solitaire / Mormonoids From The Deep / Myst / Myst III: Exile / Myth II: Soulblighter / Myth: The Fallen Lords / Nanosaur / Nanosaur 2: Hatchling / NetherWorld / NetTrek / Nightfall / Oni / Operation Desert Storm / Orbiter / Otto Matic / P’tong / P51 Mustang Flight Simulator / Pararena / Pararena 2.0 / Pathways Into Darkness / Pax Imperia / PGA Tour Golf / PGA Tour Golf II / Phraze Craze Plus / Pillars of Garendall / Psychotic: The Escape / PT-109 / Quarterstaff / Racing Days / Radical Castle / Ray’s Maze / Realmz / Reversi: The Eclipse / Riven: The Sequel to Myst / Rogue / Scarab of Ra / Seaman / Senseless Violence 1: The Survival of the Foetus / Sentinels of Ceth / Shadowgate / Shanghai / Shufflepuck / Shufflepuck Café / Sid Meier’s Civilization II Gold Edition / SimCity / SimStapler / SimTower: The Vertical Empire / SketchFighter 4000 Alpha / Sky Shadow / Skyfighters 1945 / Snood / Solarian II / Soldiers of the Sun / Solitaire Royale / Solitaire Till Dawn / Spaceship Warlock / Spaceward Ho! / Spaceway 2000 / Spades Deluxe / Spectre / Spelunx and the Caves of Mr Seudo / Spin Doctor / SPLAT’ERS / Squire: The Financial Planning Simulation / Stella Obscura / Strategic Conquest / Strategic Conquest 3.0 / StuntCopter / Sub Battle Simulator / Sultan’s Palace / Super Marathon / Super Maze Wars / Supertris / Swoop / TaskMaker / Tetris / Tetris Max / The Colony / The Dungeon of Doom / The Dungeon Revealed / The Fishin’ Hole / The Fool and his Money / The Fool’s Errand / The Hotel Caper, or The Rescue of Daring Drake / The Journeyman Project / The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time / The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time / The Journeyman Project TURBO / The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime / The King of Chicago / The Manhole / The Missions of Starship Reliant / The Odyssey / The Playroom / The Quest / The Settlers III / The Tower / Titanic: Adventure out of Time / Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six / Tomb Raider Gold / Tomb Raider II / Toxic Ravine / ToySight / Transylvania / TRISTAN / Trust and Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot / Tunin’ Glue / Twisted! / Tycoon: The Commodity Market Simulation / Un-Breakout / Uninvited / URU: Ages Beyond Myst / Wacky Wheel / Weekend Warrior / WingNuts: Temporal Navigator / Wolfenstein 3D / World Builder / World War II Skyfighters / Xenocide / Yogurt Commercial / Yoot Tower / Zero Gravity