My Apple iBook G4 - games
Contents
This is the third part of the “My Apple iBook G4” series of articles, and it’s all about the video games you can run on your iBook G4, under Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard.
Well, it’s pretty simple: if you’re into retro games, think 1995-2009, there is a big chance that it will work on an Apple iBook G4 laptop. Its GPU is an ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 @ 200MHz with 32 MB of SDRAM @ 230MHz and the CPU is a PowerPC G4 @ 1.2 GHz, with 64KB L1 and 512KB L2 cache, 133MHz FSB. And 1.256 GB RAM @ 266MHz (not one thousand GB, 1GB + 256MB).
I tested some of my favorite games and it seems as if everything works just great with very good performance, but then again I don’t really play games newer than 2010, Oxygen Not Included is the only new video game I currently play.
Just don’t expect to play FarCry or Cyberpunk 2077 on this 21-years old laptop because … well … it just won’t work. And keep in mind that games need to be ported (or available at launch) for the PowerPC architecture.
A small list of games that work on this laptop:
- Age of Empires II
- Age of Empires III
- Call of Duty
- Call of Duty 2
- Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
- Diablo
- Diablo Hellfire
- Diablo 2
- Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction
- Doom 3
- Dungeon Siege
- Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna
- Fallout
- Fallout II
- Football Manager 2008
- Halo
- Heroes of Might and Magic IV
- Homeworld
- Homeworld 2
- Icewind Dale
- Knights and Merchants
- Lemonade Tycoon
- Machinarium
- Max Payne
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
- Minecraft PPC Edition
- Myth: The Fallen Lords
- Neverwinter Nights
- Oni
- Quake
- Quake II
- Quake III Arena
- Quake 4
- Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
- Sid Meier’s Alien Crossfire
- Sid Meier’s Civilization III
- Sid Meier’s Civilization IV
- Simcity 4
- Starcraft
- Starcraft Brood War
- The Sims
- The Sims 2
- Tropico 2
- Unreal
- Unreal Tournament 2003
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- Uplink: Hacker Elite
- Warcraft III - Reign of Chaos
- Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne
- World of Warcraft
- World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade
- World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King
- … and many, many more.
And next are the video games I have personally tested.
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
| Release year | 1999, by Firaxis Games |
| Type | 4X strategy (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) |
| Games | Both original game and its expansion, Alien Crossfire. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
| Notes | If you play windowed, some animations won’t show (attack ones for example). |
Diablo
| Release year | 1997, by Blizzard North |
| Type | action role-playing |
| Games | Both original game and its expansion, Hellfire. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Diablo II
| Release year | 2000 original game, 2001 Lord of Destruction expansion, by Blizzard North |
| Type | action role-playing |
| Games | Both original game and its expansion, Lord of Destruction. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
StarCraft
| Release year | 1997, by Blizzard North |
| Type | real-time strategy |
| Games | Both original game and its expansion, Brood War. |
| Windowed | ✓ (640x480 only) |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Homeworld
| Release year | 1999, by Relic Entertainment |
| Type | real-time strategy |
| Games | Original game. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Homeworld 2
| Release year | 2003, by Relic Entertainment |
| Type | real-time strategy |
| Games | Original game. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Heroes of Might and Magic IV
| Release year | 2002, by New World Computing |
| Type | turn-based strategy |
| Games | Original game. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Quake II
| Release year | 1997, by id Software |
| Type | first-person shooter |
| Games | Original game and its expansions: Ground Zero and Reckoning. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
| Notes | OpenGL works too, I just forgot about it when taking the screenshot. |
The Sims
| Release year | 2000, by Maxis |
| Type | life simulation |
| Games | Original game and its expansions: Livin’ Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed, Superstar, and Makin’ Magic. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Age of Empires II
| Release year | 1999, by Ensemble Studios |
| Type | real-time strategy |
| Games | Original game and its expansion, The Conquerors. |
| Windowed | ✗ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Sid Meier’s Civilization III
| Release year | 2006, by Firaxis Games |
| Type | 4X strategy (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) |
| Games | Original game and its expansions, Play the World and Conquest. |
| Windowed | ✗ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Warcraft III
| Release year | 2002, by Blizzard Entertainment |
| Type | real-time strategy |
| Games | Both original game and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
Football Manager 2008
| Release year | 2007, by Sports Interactive |
| Type | football management simulation |
| Games | Original game. |
| Windowed | ✓ |
| Fullscreen | ✓ |
| Download | on MacintoshGarden |
And many, many more.
A series is usually a collection of multiple website posts about the same subject and dependent of each others. This article is from the Apple iBook G4 series:
