With all the news articles today about the launch of Mac OS X twenty years ago (March 24, 2001), I realized that some of the people in this forum have been hanging around since then. Figured I'd send out a quick note and see who all is still lurking around.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Still lurking, no longer running emus, staying safe at home.

Still running a PowerMac G5 too.

Hope everyone else is fine!

Likewise still lurking and all fine here (and now just days from submitting my new book to the publisher for copyediting, layout/design, and all the other pre-publication bits and and bobs).

Amazing to think it's been almost 20 years since I stopped lurking anonymously and registered an account here.

I'm still here.

My focus for this last while has been on my Retro Game Collection – currently standing at 27 titles. I've got three more in development which I plan to be the end of the line, though in fairness I said the same thing at both ten and twenty, so who knows?

The current focus is on making the iOS ports better, and I'm making decent headway with that. Roughly half of the games now support wireless controllers, so if you've got a DualShock 4 (or Xbox Elite Series 2) kicking around you can turn your iPad into a perfectly respectable procrastination device.

Based on the current sales numbers I'm on course to break even in 2022, though I'd love to bring that forward, so any support from people reading this would be very much appreciated.

Still here too

Still here

Richard Bannister wrote:


Good to know the sales are going well... it's a really good set of games and they've all been developed very faithfully to the retro classic vibe. Brings me back to an era where I pretty much exclusively played games on my mum's Mac Plus and a Sega Master System.

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I'm still around. This is one of a few forums that I still frequent. There's something about forums that you can't get on Reddit/Facebook (slower pace, less 'I HAVE TO REACT TO THIS ONE!!' style communication).

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Current gaming interests?
In terms of retro gaming, my most recent interest has been Sega consoles (see imgur.com/a/3oCWsco for my Game Gear drawer... I've also introduced my son to the GG, so we've been slowly working our way through our library).

You may notice there's also a Wonderswan and a GBC in there (the SMS carts are for my GG as there's an adaptor). They're supposed to be in my other (smaller) drawer that contains Wonderswan, Neo Geo Pocket and Gameboy gear. Of those (i.e. excluding my GG), the NGPC is probably my favourite handheld for gaming as it's got Metal Slug, Cotton and a bunch of really cool fighters.

On my Mac (a 2018 Mac Mini with a Vega 64 in an eGPU case), I mostly use Mednafen (compiled with only its Saturn core), Redream (a decent Dreamcast emu) and CrossOver (mostly for running retro PC games). However, this week a ~10kg box arrived from Japan containing a Saturn, a Dreamcast and a heap of games/accessories (all kindly held by a friend over there as I've collected them over a ~18 month period through various auction sites). Restoring/modding them will be my next project. Still a big fan of emulation, but these two in particular have some quirks that haven't quite been emulated (e.g. the DC has its VMUs, which you can't hook-up via USB for gaming... also for both, rhythm game timing seems to be off by just enough that it's really annoying).

20 years... no, I haven't grown up one bit

If you want to improve your GG experience, you can replace the screen through a kit, though currently seems to be sold out...

www.retromodding.com/products/mcwills-se...ame-gear-lcd-upgrade

Or output to TV, or even use a genesis controller.

www.retrorgb.com/gamegearrgb.html

menace690 wrote:


Thanks - yes a few of my GGs have screen mods. I think the McWill has been the champion (pretty much the only one) for a while. However, over the last ~12 months quite a few new players have entered the market.

Three screen mods that I have right now are:
- BennVenn's IPS option... more pixels and less fuzz when compared with TFT, so I think this is my favourite for now. Also, the seller's Australian (lives pretty close to me), which is sorta cool because I don't see a lot of mods coming out of Australia (also means I save on shipping...etc).
- GGLCD... an odd one that's only sold in Japan but I got my hands on it. It supports IPS screens now (although mine's TFT and IPS support requires a firmware update), so I think it's a competitive option. I guess I'm proud of this one because it was a lot of work to source it and the manual requires some Japanese skills.
- RetroKai does a screen mod. However, they also do just an LED backlight for the original screen. I've installed quite a few of these and they're neat because you can use the original screen at its intended resolution...etc, just with a better lighting source (which uses less battery power too).

Still here too Still emulating and hacking old hardware to keep running.

I'm still around too. Mostly do the Windows thing for my Steam library since 99% of what I have has no Mac version, and the few that do refuse to recognize my controller at all, as it appears that they don't know how to do SDL on the Mac side properly.

The M1 macs are nice, but with Apple continuing to tighten the screws on the user I suspect my macOS days are numbered. Hell, even Blizzard won't be releasing any future Mac compatible games, only maintaining the few that are, and only for as long as they don't break entirely on their own or by Apple's shenanigans.