Gaming on my ass-old 2009 MacBook Pro

As I've mentioned before, I use a 2009 MacBook Pro. 2.53GHz Core2Duo, with 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, and an nVidia GeForce 9400M with only 256MB of VRAM. Gaming is pretty good, as long as you play within the limits of the hardware.

Now, running Mac 10.6.8 means I'm not going to get most Mac App Store games, though Pathways Into Darkness runs quite well on it. I could upgrade to a newer OS, which would give me access to more games, but I like 10.6.8 too much to do so. So, as far as Mac games go, I look a bit further back. PPC games like Age of Empires II Gold, Star Wars: Empire at War, StarCraft, WarCraft III, and Diablo II are some of my first-to-mind entires, along with some of the early Pop Cap games like Plants vs Zombies and Peggle.

Of course, I also have access to the stuff on Macintosh Garden as well, so… Yeah. There's plenty to choose from there.

And still in the MacOS, I also have access to DOSBox (via Boxer) and Wine (via WineBottler). That means I have access to some Windows games, and a large swath of games for MS-DOS. At the moment, I have Undertale and Earth 2140 installed via WineBottler, but I've gotten a large number of GOG games running this way. You sometimes have to tweak the installs with extra prerequisites, but most 32-bit games can work.

With MS-DOS games… Uh… I have over 90 games installed via Boxer, which makes easy-to-use app bundles that can just be double-clicked to launch. The Wing Commander series, the Ultima series, Quest for Glory, Fire & Ice… The list goes on and on. Given it's one of my two favorite eras for PC games (the other being Windows 9x era games), having access to that library in such an easy-to-use and easily backed-up form is rather nice.

And speaking of not-emulation, there's also plenty of emulators for the platform as well. KiGB, Boycott Advance, and a number of others provide plenty of console and handheld emulation, from the NES and Sega Master System, up to even the DS and Wii. So yeah… That's a thing.

Moving on, there's also some source ports I can use as well. ZDoom, JFDuke3D, one for Shadow Warrior, a Quake source port, AelphOne for the Marathon series… I'm still finding them occasionally, and I'm pretty sure I can compile others to work. I love playing DOOM WADs on this thing for some reason.

And of course, there's virtual machines and Boot Camp! For those who don't know, Intel-based Macs allow you to install Windows XP and up in its own partition, fully bootable from the UEFI boot menu (hold Option while booting). I keep a Windows 7 VM on my MacBook, with a good number of games from GOG, Itch.io, and others that I've collected over the years.

I also have Parallels Desktop, which lets me run my Windows 7 install side-by-side as a VM, as well as integrating it with the Mac desktop directly. I use it to play games like Don't Starve and Stardew Valley while I'm working on other things, and it works surprisingly well on a Core2Duo. Or I can reboot and log in to play some Minecraft, or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

But it also allows for other OSes as virtual machines as well. I keep a Windows XP VM installed, and it's useful for playing Windows 9x era games that can't be played through Wine. Games like Drakan: Order of the Flame, and Triple Triad Gold, and even Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII for PC. A lot of them require a CD in a drive, or a disk image to be mounted, and that’s doable in a VM. Not so easy to do in Wine, though.

So, despite being on an older machine, I’ve got plenty to play. It’s not the most powerful of laptops, but it works for my needs.