Richard MossJun 7, 2023
Given the news that @croqueteer has released the source code to his landmark 1988 adventure/FPS hybrid The Colony (https://github.com/Croquetx/thecolony), I thought I'd dig out and repost the #macicons entry I wrote about it:

I still find myself drawn into the Colony icon every time I look at it. @croqueteer had a tough job with it — how do you translate the magic of the game's real-time wireframe 3D graphics into a static 32x32 pixel grid? — but I think it strikes a perfect balance between the clean/clear lines that every good icon needs (for legibility) and enticing imagery to attract your interest in playing the game. And like every good game icon, it's instantly recognisable to anyone who's played the game (and seen the cool ray-casting 3D as well as the creepy giant eyeball alien).
GitHub - Croquetx/thecolony: First realtime 3D adventure/shooter

First realtime 3D adventure/shooter. Contribute to Croquetx/thecolony development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Richard MossFeb 16, 2023
That foreboding castle could only mean one thing: Dark Castle is next up in my #macicons series. While it was impossible to make a miniature version of the game's iconic title screen (because that relied on animation and sound for its frightening thunderclap), what I always thought cool is that if you click on the icon and then click off it you kind of get the same sense of a lightning flash.

Old-school Mac (and maybe some Amiga and Apple IIgs) people will know what a special game this was in its original form, and how incredible its 1-bit dithered graphics were for the time. The rest of you, get informed (but stay away from the console ports; instead, read my Mac gaming book or find some videos and retrospective articles by people who knew the game back when it was new).
Richard MossFeb 9, 2023
Next up in my #macicons series, let's look at Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True (1985). It was arguably (though perhas not technically) the first point-and-click adventure game and the first title in the #macventure series (that includes the more popular Shadowgate).

ICOM's concept was to make a game version of a 1960s pulp novel, with gritty characters and noir vibes and a cynical, dry-humoured narrator. I think the icon nails that perfectly.
Richard MossFeb 2, 2023
Returning to my #macicons tribute posts, here's MacGolf, first released for black-and-white Macs in 1985. This was one of the earliest golf games to employ the behind-the-golfer perspective that became standard for the genre, and the icon does a remarkable job of both saying "hey I'm a golf game" and showing what the game looks like when you play it. The icon was later colourised for a re-release with colour graphics in-game.

As best as I can guesstimate from my Mac gaming history research, MacGolf was *probably* the best-selling Mac game of the 1980s other than Flight Simulator (which may or may not count as a game).
Richard MossDec 28, 2022
The original SimCity has a cool icon. It seems totally natural and logical when you look at it — a minimalistic silhouette of a city — but it couldn't have been easy translating all of that into 32x32 pixels while taking care to ensure there's something representative of all the game's key elements: residential, commercial, and industrial zones, plus the ever-present helicopter. #macicons
Richard MossDec 22, 2022
I still find myself drawn into the Colony icon every time I look at it. @croqueteer had a tough job with it — how do you translate the magic of the game's real-time wireframe 3D graphics into a static 32x32 pixel grid? — but I think it strikes a perfect balance between the clean/clear lines that every good icon needs (for legibility) and enticing imagery to attract your interest in playing the game. And like every good game icon, it's instantly recognisable to anyone who's played the game (and seen the cool ray-casting 3D as well as the creepy giant eyeball alien). #macicons
Richard MossDec 17, 2022
Let's look at another Classic-era black-and-white Mac game icon. This one's from Bill Appleton's World Builder game-making tool (made in 1984, released in '85), which let you create your own adventure/RPG hybrids (or pure point-and-click adventures, if you had the patience to create all the hotspots). He himself made the commercial game Enchanted Scepters with it, but there were several popular shareware titles by other authors.

Anyway, what I love here is how the icon takes the design language of the Mac's own UI — that a hand with a pen or brush indicates an app used for creativity — and extends it to a third-party application meant for making media-rich Mac games. And the fact that it looks like the hand is marking out the world just perfectly fits both the name and the function of the software — the World Builder is used to build virtual worlds. I think it's a neat collision of ideas. #macicons
Show threadRichard MossDec 16, 2022
But I recently yesterday that I've never actually talked about Classic-era Mac icons on social media before, so I wanted to pay tribute to my favourite black-and-white Mac game icons. I'll take a leaf out of @winicons' book and show them at three sizes — given their tiny size, let's go original 32x32, 4x size at 128x128, and 6x size at 512x512. Let's start with my favourite Mac game, Glider, then I'll do one more a bit later today and others through the rest of December. Will use #macicons as a tag.

Glider was often called the quintessential Mac game, and for good reason — it hard charm, whimsy, quirkiness, and a friendly, open sense of discoverability about it. And creator John Calhoun managed to squeeze it down to 32 pixels by taking his paper plane sprite, a heating vent (used in the game to provide lift, so that the plane can return to the top of the screen for a fresh descent), and some dots to visualise the air currents — everything you need to know about how the game works. Plus it looks fantastic.