Screwtapello

In the late 1990s, Pangea Software was a leading developer of Mac-exclusive games. Apple commissioned them to write demonstration code for the first release of the Quickdraw 3D graphics API, and their subsequent games Nanosaur, Bugdom, and Cro-Mag Rally were bundled with various generations of Apple's iMac and iBook computers.

Nearly 30 years later, Pangea kindly released the source to these games under a Creative Commons license, and Iliyas Jorio has been porting them to modern platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux) to keep the games alive.

https://jorio.itch.io/

#macintosh #retrogaming

Mar 3 at 4:13amWeb
Show threadvga256Mar 3
@Screwtapello https://mastodon.social/@blitter/116162724400941701
Show threadScrewtapelloMar 3
@vga256 Ah, sorry. I found an open tab for Nanosaur, and couldn't for the life of me remember who had told me about it, so I figured I'd toot about it just in case it wasn't from Mastodon. Turns out, it was!
Show threadvga256Mar 3
@Screwtapello the source status is very weird. hard to call it open source when only 1 person has access to it.
Show threadScrewtapelloMar 3

@vga256 Looking at the git history, it does seem that the Mighty Mike port started from an unmodified source dump:

https://github.com/jorio/MightyMike/commit/0d1b14366f4ad37b2a5eb9adcd084dff535b46f4

I'm guessing it's unmodified, because the following commits have descriptions like "Convert Pascal string literals to C-style strings" and "It links!" which suggests that it hadn't already been cleaned up in secret.

Of course, I have no idea whether that's a *complete* source dump, and even if it is, the Pippin port might have been in a branch with extra optimisations or something, a bit like how when DOOM was open-sourced, it was only the Linux port without any audio code. It'd be nice to have the complete development history of the original games, but what we have is much better than nothing.

Mighty Mike original code · jorio/MightyMike@0d1b143

Pangea Software's Mighty Mike (Power Pete) for modern systems - Mighty Mike original code · jorio/MightyMike@0d1b143

GitHub
Show threadvga256Mar 3
@Screwtapello good eye. @blitter - any idea if these early commits to Mighty Mike are in fact the original source before jorio's port work?
Show threadKeith KaisershotMar 3
@vga256 @Screwtapello I’ll have to check— I might have missed that the original code was buried in the commit history. FWIW there’s no Pippin “port” per se— the original game binaries will run on the hardware as-is.
Show threadvga256Mar 3
@Screwtapello i just checked nanosaur, and i see the original source import there too!
Show threadScrewtapelloMar 3
@vga256 Yes, although it seems the previous non-Creative Commons source release of that is still available direct from Pangea's website: https://www.pangeasoft.net/nano/nanosource.html
Pangea Software: Nanosaur Source

Show threadvga256Mar 3
@Screwtapello yup haha i just stumbled on that page too. that's fantastic.
Show threadmirthMar 3
@Screwtapello @vga256 I wonder why it's called "Mighty Mike" now, the version I have is "Power Pete"
Show threadScrewtapelloMar 3
@mirth I can't find the citation now, but when I was researching this yesterday I read that Pangea named the game Mighty Mike, but when the publisher MacPlay picked it up they were afraid of a trademark dispute with Mighty Mouse, so they required it to be renamed. When the rights reverted to Pangea, they reverted to the original name.
Show threadmirthMar 3

@Screwtapello Interesting. It's been a very long time since I ran the game, but I found a video of gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11IceWMrpzM

(edit, found a better video of the modern port, the channel also has videos of some of the other Pangea ports)

Mighty Mike / Power Pete Gameplay (4K UHD / 2160p)

YouTube
Show threadNigel WadsworthMar 3
@Screwtapello @_the_cloud Great. The QuickDraw 3D card was one of the weirdest, under-utilised cards I ever had installed in a Macintosh.
Show threadJoshMar 3
@Screwtapello
Omg these games were so good, I'm gonna have to take a look. Me and my brother used to play Cro-Mag a LOT 😃😃