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: Blizard Entertainment
Release Date: January 3, 1997
Diablo more or less invented the modern action RPG, combining addictive gameplay with roguelike elements such as randomly generated levels. You choose from one of three character classes and play as a lone hero from Tristram in the Kingdom of Khanduras who ventures into the dungeons below to fight demons, score loot, and eventually entering Hell to confront Diablo, the Lord of Terror. The formula has been duplicated multiple times over the years and the series has spawned multiple sequels.
The original game in the series, while groundbreaking, has received less attention and updates from Blizzard, but also has a unique distinction in that it's the only entry whose source has been reverse engineered. The story is sort of wild and involves an effort whose catalyst involved the discovery of a debug symbols file on the retail Japanese PlayStation 1 copy of the game. The result was the Devilution project, which recreates the original source code, and the DevilutionX project which enhances the original and allows for ports to everything from macOS to the Nintendo Switch.
Mac Source Ports is now handling an official build for the DevilutionX project. Download it below and get to hacking and slashing.
Developer: GSC Game World
Release Date: October 2, 2009
I know I've used the term "hardcore" a bit on here but this game is not only pretty hardcore, the process of running it is going to be a little involved too.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a series of survival horror FPS games set in a fictional dystopian version of Ukraine after a second Chernobyl disaster. You play as a stalker, someone who ventures into the wasteland looking for loot and encountering mutated monsters.
Combining elements of FPS games, survival horror, role playing elements and the bleak atmosphere and resource scarcity associated with Eastern European game development, the series has always had a fairly devout niche. The developer released a trilogy of games in three years, the last of which was S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. In the years since the OpenXray project has worked on a source port for modern systems.
I try not to use the "Early Access" tag on here too often but it's appropriate here since we're hosting a build with some caveats. For now it's Apple Silicon only until I can hammer out some issues with Intel builds. The game also requires additional data to be present that is not in the original game data or in the app bundle, so there is a second file of data to download and install. Please read the instructions carefully.
KNOWN ISSUE: quitting the game via CMD+Q may cause the game to crash or hang, however exiting via the menu works correctly.
Developer: Valve Software
Release Date: November 19, 1998
For the 100th game on Mac Source Ports, I wanted it to be something special. It turned out to be a quite a doozy as well.
It's not an overstatement to say Half-Life changed everything. It challenged what we thought first person shooters, narrative content, and gaming atmosphere in general were capable of. It spawned spinoffs, sequels, and launched Valve software into the massive force it is today. It says something that in a world filled with tons of games to choose from, everyone is still begging Valve to make another entry in this series to tie off the now fifteen-year cliffhanger of Half-Life 2: Episode Two.
Half-Life and the Mac have an interesting history, as well. Long before Steam was even a thought in their head, Valve announced and began work on porting the game to Mac OS 9, but it was eventually canceled. Then in 2013, Valve decided to release Steam for the Mac, the first non-Windows computer platform for it, and ported their games to Steam in the process, so now finally Half-Life was available on the Mac. However, the releases were 32-bit apps so when macOS 10.15 Catalina cut off support for 32-bit apps, Half-Life became unavailable to anyone who upgraded, and Apple Silicon Macs never had a chance to play it.
Meanwhile, a project arose called Xash3D. Since the engine for Half-Life, now retronymed GoldSrc for various reasons, was derived from Quake and Quake II, and the SDK for mods was also available, theoretically someone could reverse engineer the game with a lot of effort. The Xash3D project and the later successor project, Xash3D FWGS, appear to have done exactly that over the course of many years now. The result is a fascinating Frankenstein project meshing various id Tech engines and source ports together, the net effect of which is Half-Life can be played on everything from an Android phone to a Raspberry Pi.
In 2019, the Xash3D FWGS project dropped any official support for macOS and iOS due to Apple's deprecation of OpenGL and decision to move towards signed and notarized code (they have since restored support). As a result, I've had many people ask me to build this project so I figured I'd eventually do it and the one year anniversary of the site and the 100th game seemed appropriate to me. However the one year anniversary of the site was a month ago, but if there's an appropriate project for Valve Time to affect, it would be this one.
They're waiting for you. In the test chamber...
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D
to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS
. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.
Developer: Gearbox Software
Release Date: November 19, 1999
Half-Life: Opposing Force is the first expansion pack for Half-Life. It takes place during the events of the original game, but instead of playing as Gordon Freeman having a bad day at work you play from the perspective of one of the Marines sent into the complex. It was definitely an interesting maneuver, and one that avoided having to explain what happened after the end of the first game, they wouldn't go there until the sequel.
NOTE: the support for Opposing Force as a Xash3D FWGS mod is still in development. You may notice quirks like glitches with weapon animations. For this reason I have labeled the game as "Early Access". If you're willing to ignore the issues you can go ahead and experience the expansion pack on your Mac again.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D
to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS
. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.
Developer: Gearbox Software
Release Date: June 12, 2001
OK, so here's the deal: around 2001, Gearbox Software was contracted to port Half-Life to the Sega Dreamcast. Seeing as how they handled making the Half-Life: Opposing Force expansion, it made sense to hand the task off to them. And just to make the port even more special, Gearbox made a second expansion pack, Half-Life: Blue Shift, that would be exclusive to the Dreamcast version of the game. Whereas the first expansion followed the original game's story through the viewpoint of one of the Marines sent into the Black Mesa facility, Half-Life: Blue Shift does the same but from the perspective of Black Mesa security guard Barney.
Gamers were annoyed at the prospect of a single player expansion they couldn't run on their PC, so Valve capitulated and decided to release the expansion retail for PC gamers as well.
And then the Dreamcast port of Half-Life was canceled at the last minute. Like, almost literally the last mintue - some number of press review copies had alredy been sent out. There's a very small number of actual copies of the game.
Then when Blue Shift finally came out for the PC, many gamers were disappointed with its short length, unaware of the Dreamcast back story.
In any event, one of the mods that the Xash3D FWGS project supports is a port of Blue Shift, so I've updated the build to include it. You will need both the original game and the expansion. If you want more Half-Life, duty calls...
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D
to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS
. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.
Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 14, 1990
Not only is this literally id Software's first game, but they didn't even go by id Software yet, they went by the name Ideas from the Deep. Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons is a shareware side scroller with EGA graphics that predated sound cards. The first game in the series consisted of three episodes, and the Commander Genius source port went so far as to reverse engineer the PC speaker sound effects the game relied upon.
Note that most digital retailers market someting called the Commander Keen Complete Pack which contains the first two games' content but not the Keen Dreams spinoff or the final episode Aliens Ate My Babysitter due to the surprisingly complicated publication history of the series. Commander Genius has incomplete support for Keen Dreams, but fully supports Aliens Ate My Babysitter, should you be able to find it somewhere.
Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 15, 1991
Now going by id Software formally, Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! is a shareware sequel to the original game, consisting of two episodes. The third episode was spun off into a new game to fulfill a contractual obligation. The game features enhancements and new features such as parallax scrolling.
Note that most digital retailers market someting called the Commander Keen Complete Pack which contains the first two games' content but not the Keen Dreams spinoff or the final episode Aliens Ate My Babysitter due to the surprisingly complicated publication history of the series. Commander Genius has incomplete support for Keen Dreams, but fully supports Aliens Ate My Babysitter, should you be able to find it somewhere.
Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 1991
Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter is the final game in the Commander Keen series developed by id Software (though a Game Boy Color sequel/reboot would be developed externally in 2001). Released as a retail sequel, it contains the sixth episode of the original series (seventh if you count Keen Dreams).
Note that most digital retailers market someting called the Commander Keen Complete Pack which contains the first two games but not this final game due to the surprisingly complicated publication history of the series. Commander Genius has incomplete support for Keen Dreams, but fully supports Aliens Ate My Babysitter, should you be able to find it somewhere.
Developer: Epic Games
Release Date: November 22, 1999
Continuing our tour of why 1999 was the best year ever for gaming, we now have Unreal Tournament on Apple Silicon. This is the original 1999 version, not the sequels and not the attempted-but-abandoned 2014 effort, this is the game that went head-to-head with Quake III: Arena from an era when the multiplayer-only FPS was still a novel concept.
Similar to the Daikatana situation, Epic has not released the source code for this game (which uses what we'd now probably retronym Unreal Engine 1) but a group of individuals online entered into an agreement with them to take over maintenance and future development. They've been releasing new builds for a few years now and now the game runs natively on Apple Silicon.
So break out the Mountain Dew and party like it's 1999 again. For extra fun fire up Quake III: Arena as well and experience a rivalry that continues between old fart gamers to this very day.
NOTE: The build of 469e added a preview version of the team's new Apple Metal renderer. For more information, see the installation instructions below.
Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: March 3, 1999
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: 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.