emulate a mac using…a mac?

I was wondering idly yesterday about whether a version of the original first person shooter (yes, I realize it wasn’t the first but it was the first successful one), Wolfenstein 3D had ever been ported to the mac. It turns out that two years after the pc version, in 1994, a mac version was released. This version actually was not a port but was substantially different as detailed here.

I managed to dig up a copy but of course being released in 1994, it was a mac classic app and won’t run on os x. The obvious solution is to run a mac emulator. Enter my old friend, Basilisk II. I dug out an old cd from 2001 with all the files I’d used with basilisk on windows. I had the necessary mac rom, the 19 diskette installer for System 7.5 and a startup disk image.

It took way longer to get things working than it should have. Rather than actually reading instructions, I thought I should just be able to figure it out. I mean come on…I did this once 9 years ago! Eventually, using an interim disk image on which I installed StuffIt Expander and copied the 19 diskette set, I managed to extract the system installer in a usable state:

Actually getting the game to install was yet another trial. The disk images I downloaded could not be opened by the emulated mac. Again, had I read the instructions, I could have saved myself some trouble. I ended up creating a dmg with the files using the os x disk utility but formatted in Mac Standard format. Finally, I was able to successfully install it.

By default, basilisk was running in a window and defaulting to a fairly high colour depth. Since the game was meant to run in 256 colours, this was causing problems. I found that running in fullscreen mode at 256 colours worked…but not in a window.

Was it worth the effort? Well now I appreciate the differences between the two games. Although the mac version is slightly less pixelated than the original, the 2D sprites look really cheap…especially when the dogs run towards you. The sound is pretty bad but I think this is due to a bug in how sound is implemented in the version of basilisk I’m running. Plus it’s exacerbated by the wind’s crappy speakers. Here are a few screenshots…I can’t take screenshots in fullscreen mode so these are just a few windows of what you can see before the game stops working entirely when running in windowed mode (click thumbnails to enlarge). Next, I may take a look at running the pc version using DOSBox for comparison purposes.