Steve Ulrich wrote: > it does bear noting that with the advent of OS X you have a platform > with enough commercial momentum (read: a populace of users willing to > pay for good software/games) to draw good game development as well as > an excellent unix platform. <invective type="foolhardy" source="hardware snob"> While I am encouraged by, say, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Return to Castle Wolfenstein coming out on the Mac within 24 months of their release to the hordes of PC users, the Mac gaming "market" is still a tiny fraction of the PC market, and is therefore still a shambles (cf. the recent cancellation of the SFC II port). **If** TransGaming's new porting initiative (which was recently mentioned on Slashdot, but which I am not going to cite because I am hammering this mail out between tasks at work) does what it promises and drops the amount of re-engineering needed to bring a *nix/OS X port to market for a given title by a large factor, that would help. I won't become optimistic until I see publishers backing up their engineers' enthusiasm for Mac/Linux gaming with actual content on the shelves for us to purchase. As it is, being a Mac gamer is a little like being a pre-Dreamcast Sega fan: the Genesis, SegaCD, and Saturn were all arguably the most technically excellent consoles of their generation. The problem? Playing Space Harrier and Golden Axe on a $200 SegaCD because the 'Classic 8-bit Hits' collection is the best title out for the platform is *not* a wise use of precious monetary resources. As much as I love Macs, I have been burned too many times by the changeable minds of game publishers to really believe in the Mac as a gamer's platform. When I bought my G3, Half-Life was "definitely" going to be ported, the Tribes port was "on the way" (with a "simultaneous release" of Tribes2 for Mac and PC planned!), Starcraft was "coming right along" (that one did finally come out, two years ago IIRC), etc., etc. Being a Mac fan *and* a gamer is a long, hard road that ends, methinks, in owning an x86 box for gaming. </invective> Chris Johnson Bidler