Mac Source Ports features native app builds of source ports of your favorite games for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, signed and notarized whenever possible.
Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 9, 1997
Source Code Release Date: December 22, 2001
Quake II is a first-person shooter, the second in the Quake series. Yamagi Quake2 is the most mature and advanced port actively being maintained.
Developer: id Software
Release Date: June 22, 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 21, 1999
Quake is a first-person shooter, the first in the Quake series. The vkQuake port was derived from the QuakeSpasm Spiked port and uses Vulkan on macOS by way of MoltenVK.
Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: October 1, 1996
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
Heroes of Might and Magic II is a 4X turn-based strategy game. Ranked once by PC Gamer as the sixth-best game of all time it features resource building, new factions, skills, and a single-player campaign.
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Release Date: September 28, 1999
Source Code Release Date: September 2003
I have some games on this site with lots of fans, but I feel like Homeworld has a particularly special cultlike following. Released in 1999 (aka The Best Year For Gaming, Ever) it is a RTS game set in a 3-D space, a novel concept for the time and one that's hard to match even to this day. It spawned a sequel and a pair of spinoff games, and a third game in the main series has been in the works for several years and should be delivered in 2024.
Relic released the source code for the original game in 2003 under the now defunct Relic Developer Network and it's been the basis of several source ports with a history more complicated than Dune lore.
NOTE: In 2013, Gearbox releaed the Homeworld Remastered Collection which featured enhanced versions of the first two mainline games as well as the original, and these are likely the only versions being sold today. If you use the data from these versions you will want to use the files from the "Homeworld1Classic" folder in the instructions below.
Developer: Stainless Games
Release Date: June 13, 1997
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
An example of controversy for controversy's sake, Carmageddon basically took what people wanted to do in other racing games - crash into other cars and run over pedestrians - and turned it into the primary gameplay loop. They took the macabre joke about getting points for hitting people in your car and made it a gameplay mechanic. The game was successful both from a critical and commercial perspective, as well as its goal as a controversy magnet.
The dethrace project is a source port where in lieu of source code they're reverse engineering it, and according to their Twitter account they're approximately 70% of the way there. The game is very playable but may crash in some places, so I'm introducing a new tag: Early Access. This probably could use a better name but I'm using it to convey the notion that the project doesn't consider itself completely finished (though there are reports of people making it through the entire game), but it's still pretty awesome so I figured if nothing else it's worth putting up a quick build.
Developer: Chris Sawyer
Release Date: October 15, 2002
Source Code Release Date: Not released
Another game from the mind of Chris Sawyer, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 shares the same pixel art style and hardcore interface as his other games.
Developer: Pumpkin Studios
Release Date: April 10, 1999
Source Code Release Date: December 6, 2004
Warzone 2100 is a post-apocalyptic real-time strategy game from 1999 whose source was released in 2004 and whose content was released as freeware in 2008.
Although my aim is to host signed and notarized game bundles on Mac Source Ports, the Warzone 2100 Project has done incredible work on this port and has logistical reasons for not being notarized yet. While they work through that process, I decided it was worth making an exception to the site's policy so that Apple Silicon gamers looking for a full, free and polished RTS would be able to find it.
Because the app bundle is not notarized, on first run you may run into issues. The shortest answer is to right-click on the app bundle (wz2100.app) and select Open. The long answer is here.
Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: March 3, 1999
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
Heroes of Might and Magic III is another 4X turn-based strategy game and is one of the best games in the series.
Although my aim is to host signed and notarized game bundles on Mac Source Ports, the VCMI project recently added Apple Silicon support and is sufficiently complex that at this time I'm going to link to their work. We may host a notarized version in the future.
Because the app bundle is not notarized, on first run you may run into issues. The shortest answer is to right-click on the app bundle (VCMI.app) and select Open. The long answer is here.
Developer: Infocom
Release Date: 1977
Source Code Release Date: Not released
True story: I'm old enough to have experienced the concept of buying Commodore 64 software in toy stores as a kid. I'll never forget, it had to have been at the tail end of the C64's lifecycle and I'm going through this bargain bin and finding nothing interesting, and then I stumbled across Zork I, in what had to be one of the slim case budget re-releases. I had no idea what it was other than I had read the name in Family Computing magazine.
I go home, fire it up, it takes forver to load... and then only when I'm sitting at a text prompt does it hit me that this is a game without graphics. No wonder there were no screenshots. I'm pretty disappointed. I'm also bored and have nothing better to do so I start playing it.
What follows is legit one of the best gaming experiences of my life. There's a reason this game is famous - provided you're willing to give it a shot the premise, writing, puzzles and exploration concepts will lure you in, and the anachronistic hodgepodge of elements makes for an eclectic universe. You descend downwards into the ruins of the Great Underground Empire, now an abandoned world.
The backstory has been told at length elsewhere but the short version is that some computer scientists at MIT made a text adventure game called Dungeon to run on their mainframe and got the idea to make a company to sell versions of it for home computers. It proved to be too big to fit on the computers of the era so they split it up into a trilogy of games called Zork. The company was named Infocom and they are beyond legendary in retro gaming archaeology circles.
The technology the games ran with has been reverse engineered so well that an entire community has spawned programming languages and toolkits to make new games with it and there's hundreds of text advantures as a result, including an annual contest that's been running for decades now.
So unlike most games on this site there are literally dozens of options to play these games, and the current best in breed for the Mac is called Splatterlight.
Developer: Infocom
Release Date: 1980
Source Code Release Date: Not released
So as mentioned, the original gamed Dungeon was split into three games, so the second game picks up pretty much where the first game left off, diving deeper into the intricate underground realm of the Great Underground Empire as you navigate through mystifying chambers and encounter enigmatic characters. Unravel the secrets of the all-powerful Wizard of Frobozz, solving perplexing puzzles and overcoming perilous obstacles along the way.
Developer: Tom Kidd / Mac Source Ports
Release Date: February 23, 2022
Extractor is an app from Mac Source Ports that extracts files from GOG Windows-based installers. Think of it as a GUI version of innoextract.
Right now, Extractor does exactly two things: lists the files in an installer, and extracts the files from an installer. We hope to expand it in the future but for now it's a simple application.
Developer: Hard Light Productions
Release Date: February 11, 2024
Knossos.NET is a utility that aids in downloading and configuring the FreeSpace 2 Open Source Project, aids in configuring the content from a GOG installer or other location, and can even help with mod management and multiplayer support. Check it out if you want to play FreeSpace 2 with as little hassle as possible.