Bootlegs, knock offs, and other stuff I played on the Mac in the 90s

[It's Thinking 2]

 

[Don Patch]

I love this.
I have this wild wonderful fascination with bootleg knockoff stuff. Just tickles me so!
You ever check out a site called Handheld Underground? It's all about weird bootlegs for handhelds/gameboy.

 

[It's Thinking 2]

I love this.
I have this wild wonderful fascination with bootleg knockoff stuff. Just tickles me so!
You ever check out a site called Handheld Underground? It's all about weird bootlegs for handhelds/gameboy.

Nah never heard of it! Sweet!

 

[Gorse]

Brother, I know all about playing shit old games on underpowered Macintosh computers.

Growing up, I only had a scant few games for my ol' PowerMac (inherited from my father, with zero ability to connect to the Internet), but I played each of them endlessly, and they've all burned straight into my neural circuitry. THEY WERE:

• The English port of May Club, which I fully documented here. (In those posts, I forgot to mention that later versions of the PowerMac could play some DOS games intended for Windows, which is how I was able to run this thing in the first place.) I had this game in my possession from age 3 or 4 – I still have zero idea how my dad would have got hold of it – and played through the Keiko storyline roughly seven trillion times. Funnily, I don't really recall ever caring about any of the other girls, so they can all F off!!!

• This Pokemon CD-ROM featuring Psyduck, which I owned

long, long before I knew what Pokemon was. It contained just a single slide puzzle that formed a screencap of Psyduck from the first season of the anime series, while an instrumental version of the Pokerap played in the background. When you completed the puzzle, you could print the image, so I did, and had a grainy, black-and-white image of Psyduck in my bedroom's desk for roughly 15 years. The CD-ROM itself looked exactly like it did to the right – that shape was the most entertaining thing about the entire package.

• Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head to Your Feet. Hoo boy, is that boxart ever a time warp! This is a great little adventure game from Humungous Entertainment (Putt-Putt, Sly Fox) that centres around our intrepid hero going into a world of food. The puzzle where you have to give an anthropomorphic egg shell a certain combination of french fries and sauce was extremely good, and, unbelievably, I once beat this game with all twenty box tops, permanently cementing my status as #MLG. I miss ol' Pajama Sam – people don't remember him as much as they do Humungous's other characters. Perhaps he'll get a reboot, one day.

• An unmarked CD-ROM containing three emulated Nintendo games: Super Mario Bros (NES), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), and Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB). This belonged to a second cousin of mine, and I'd play it with him whenever my parents visited his family's house. (Which was often, in those days.) When he went to college, he gave me this, and it was probably my favourite thing I had for my Mac. In retrospect, I'm shocked at how well these games ran – I certainly can't remember any slowdown, and I dread to think what emulators were being used. The PowerMac had zero support for any controllers, and I wouldn't have had one, anyways, so I played all games with a keyboard. Out of the three games, I preferred SMB most, but DKC1 and DKL2 have become ultra-nostalgic in their own way.

• Much, much later, an original Mac copy of Marathon, left to me by another cousin who brought it over one summer. He had intended to play it on my computer, but didn't have the time, and just left it for me when his family went back to their home in Delaware. I played it once or twice, but Marathon 1 runs the actual gameplay in a microscopic sub-window (see image), so I didn't like it and just left the disc to sit. I rediscovered Marathon in college through the excellent Aleph One remake, and loved it ever since.

ALSO, CRITICAL INFORMATION: I just realized that Pajama Sam was clearly voiced by Pamela Adlon, who also voiced Spinelli on Disney's Recess and Bobby from King of the Hill. If they ever made a crossover adventure game starring those three characters, why – I'd be quite happy about it.

 

[It's Thinking 2]

Brother, I know all about playing shit old games on underpowered Macintosh computers.

Growing up, I only had a scant few games for my ol' PowerMac (inherited from my father, with zero ability to connect to the Internet), but I played each of them endlessly, and they've all burned straight into my neural circuitry. THEY WERE:

• The English port of May Club, which I fully documented here. (In those posts, I forgot to mention that later versions of the PowerMac could play some DOS games intended for Windows, which is how I was able to run this thing in the first place.) I had this game in my possession from age 3 or 4 – I still have zero idea how my dad would have got hold of it – and played through the Keiko storyline roughly seven trillion times. Funnily, I don't really recall ever caring about any of the other girls, so they can all F off!!!

• This Pokemon CD-ROM featuring Psyduck, which I owned long, long before I knew what

Pokemon was. It contained just a single slide puzzle that formed a screencap of Psyduck from the first season of the anime series, while an instrumental version of the Pokerap played in the background. When you completed the puzzle, you could print the image, so I did, and had a grainy, black-and-white image of Psyduck in my bedroom's desk for roughly 15 years. The CD-ROM itself looked exactly like it did to the right – that shape was the most entertaining thing about the entire package.

• Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head to Your Feet. Hoo boy, is that boxart ever a time warp! This is a great little adventure game from Humungous Entertainment (Putt-Putt, Sly Fox) that centres around our intrepid hero going into a world of food. The puzzle where you have to give an anthropomorphic egg shell a certain combination of french fries and sauce was extremely good, and, unbelievably, I once beat this game with all twenty box tops, permanently cementing my status as #MLG. I miss ol' Pajama Sam – people don't remember him as much as they do Humungous's other characters. Perhaps he'll get a reboot, one day.

• An unmarked CD-ROM containing three emulated Nintendo games: Super Mario Bros (NES), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), and Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB). This belonged to a second cousin of mine, and I'd play it with him whenever my parents visited his family's house. (Which was often, in those days.) When he went to college, he gave me this, and it was probably my favourite thing I had for my Mac. In retrospect, I'm shocked at how well these games ran – I certainly can't remember any slowdown, and I dread to think what emulators were being used. The PowerMac had zero support for any controllers, and I wouldn't have had one, anyways, so I played all games with a keyboard. Out of the three games, I preferred SMB most, but DKC1 and DKL2 have become ultra-nostalgic in their own way.

• Much, much later, an original Mac copy of Marathon, left to me by another cousin who brought it over one summer. He had intended to play it on my computer, but didn't have the time, and just left it for me when his family went back to their home in Delaware. I played it once or twice, but Marathon 1 runs the actual gameplay in a microscopic sub-window (see image), so I didn't like it and just left the disc to sit. I rediscovered Marathon in college through the excellent Aleph One remake, and loved it ever since.

ALSO, CRITICAL INFORMATION: I just realized that Pajama Sam was clearly voiced by Pamela Adlon, who also voiced Spinelli on Disney's Recess and Bobby from King of the Hill. If they ever made a crossover adventure game starring those three characters, why – I'd be quite happy about it.

I got Marathon too! I miss that HUD.

 

[guppy]

In the 90s, we played demos like they were the entire game. Over and over again. I can't even get through most demos nowadays. I often wonder what was going on back then that we could get so INTO things. Were demos just that good, or were we just bored children =P!?

 

[Waffles]

Yoooo! I remember the time my dad came home with an orange CD bought at Walmart that had Godzilla on the cover and was called "Game Explosion 500".

It was full of shareware, and it included really awesome stuff like Spear of Destiny, and a Simpsons trivia game that ended in a nuclear meltdown at the power plant if you messed up too much XD It also absolutely lied and didn't include nearly as many games as it boasted, with many saying "unavailable" on the convoluted menu.

I'm pretty convinced the whole thing was just a vessel for a virus, but it must have been the dumbest virus ever, because it didn't do jack XD

And yes, many games in there were downright copies of well-known games.

 

[pl1sk1n]

I love this.
I have this wild wonderful fascination with bootleg knockoff stuff. Just tickles me so!
You ever check out a site called Handheld Underground? It's all about weird bootlegs for handhelds/gameboy.

This is epic, thank you! Reminds me of the old days in HongKong, tones of these knocking about (RIP lik sang! if you know you know).

 

[7eve70rd]

Power Pete won Best Arcade Game of the Year for 1995 from Macworld and was a runner-up for MacUser’s 1995 Best Action Game award.

I had not thought of Power Pete until just now.

 

[Don Patch]

This is epic, thank you! Reminds me of the old days in HongKong, tones of these knocking about (RIP lik sang! if you know you know).

Duuuuuuude, lik sang!!!!!

 

[pl1sk1n]

Duuuuuuude, lik sang!!!!!

INR, they where the ogs of selling mods and the like back in the 90s, sony got rid of them on a technicality regarding psus.

 

[Don Patch]

INR, they where the ogs of selling mods and the like back in the 90s, sony got rid of them on a technicality regarding psus.

They so were. Good times!
I remember that. Wasn't it that they were hocking CFW PSP's or something like that?

 

[pl1sk1n]

They so were. Good times!
I remember that. Wasn't it that they were hocking CFW PSP's or something like that?

I do not remember that, just mod chips and the like. Even controller mods, and memory card alternatives.

For me imports where the biggest sting, as i also used to get allot of my import titles from there, when it used to be slim pickings back in the day. When lik sang went, allot of the stuff which in my view helped the market, went.