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With the possible exception of watching Larry Flynt exchange handshakes at a GOP fund-raiser, it was hard to imagine a more shocking spectacle than the one witnessed at last month's Macworld convention in San Francisco: id software's John Carmack, the programming luminary behind Doom and Quake -- and Mac-heads' greatest nemesis not named Gates -- was giving the first-ever public demo of the must-have CD-ROM of the year, Quake 3: Arena...on a Macintosh. The stunt drew roaring applause, even scattered ''We are not worthy!'' salutes, from the congregation.
There's been little for Mac gamers to cheer about in the '90s: One of the first consequences of Apple's nose-diving mid-decade market share was the mass exodus of many computer-game publishers to greener, Windows-compatible pastures. But with the new iMac outselling all other computers, Macs are sexy again, and 1999's game roster is shaping up to be the best ever, with a bumper crop of productivity killers that includes Age of Empires, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Sim City 3000, Starcraft, and a LucasArts title based on Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. Better yet, the game that may outsell 'em all -- Quake 3: Arena -- will buck the trend of time-delayed Mac versions and come out at the same time as the PC CD-ROM. Add to that some controversial software that enables you to run PlayStation games on the Mac, and the Apple corps is no longer the laughingstock of the joystick crowd.
At least one game company is less than enthused: Sony has filed an intellectual-property lawsuit against Connectix, whose Virtual Game Station will, when installed on a Mac G3 or iMac, recognize and play a large number of PlayStation games. Such current best-sellers as Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped and Metal Gear Solid run surprisingly bug-free with the software, though others don't run at all (Tekken 3), and all look a little strange due to the differences between the resolutions of televisions and computer monitors.
Still, Apple has a long way to go, says Tuncer Deniz, editor of Inside Mac Games. ''They haven't won over some of the big game publishers like Electronic Arts and Sierra,'' which have yet to port over their biggest PC hits, observes Deniz. ''Apple needs to work on major genres -- not one sports game is available for the Mac.'' In a relatively new trend, however, smaller Mac-only publishers are adapting popular PC games whose owners have neither the manpower nor the budget to do the job themselves. Aspyr Media has benefited from this arrangement by porting over versions of Eidos' Tomb Raider, and MacSoft has translated hot sellers like Deer Hunter and Unreal from parent company GT Interactive to become the most prolific game publisher for the Mac.
Lest anyone forget, PC gamers still outnumber the upstarts a zillion to one. But momentum is with the Mac in '99: All of the hits worth playing are en route to the platform, and powerful new machines like the radically styled G3 have more graphics muscle than PCs to run them. So how do you like them Apples, Mr. Gates?
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