Interesting timing. Nintendo just shutdown Mariokart Tour on mobile. I went back to my Nintendo Wii which was already modded, and updated it to the latest modded hacks and I was amazed to see more software, stability, and even online gaming brought back!
Hopefully their port of Mac OS gets put in the Open Shop Channel!
Games still came on disk so there wasn’t the madness of endless buggy updates (disks had one opportunity to be bug free so quality was at a higher standard) and internet connectivity was not guaranteed, so there was no way for micro transactions.
However, internet connectivity was available, so things like optional online play were still possible, as well as some basic user generated content.
Wouldn’t this criteria make PS2 and Xbox “peak gaming” also? I remember playing CoD online on PS2 and many praising Xbox for its online features.
Once PS3 and Xbox 360 came in picture, things changed slightly since they relied more heavily on their network services… albeit, PSN back then was free for online gameplay. These were on the same generation as Wii, but Wii was a winner for casual playing.
Dreamcast came with a modem and an optional Ethernet adapter 8 years earlier. The GD-ROM was too clever by half. But perhaps it was the prototype of peak game consoles. I have a soft spot because the home brew scene on that started a full quarter century ago.
I'll forgive you for thinking Wii was the peak because people are obviously biased based on the time they grew up. For me it was the SNES/Genesis era. Or arguably PlayStation 1.
For me it's the (New) 3DS. It's about the peak for handheld gaming. It can run GB, GBC, NES, SNES very well, GBA can run natively and obviously DS/3DS. You can run pretty much any Zelda game up to the GameCube on it with the official ports of Ocarina/Majora. The emulation community also has some promising demos of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but who knows about that. I have a Switch and it's frustrating seeing games that Nintendo haven't released for it (like WW and Pokopia), but maybe after a decade I'll get a Switch 2 OLED whenever that comes out.
not every console stays connected to my tv... and wii stayed. wii sports is still fun and get everyone moving during a rainy day which is quite an achievement all by itself
The GPU would also be a problem. I don't think the Wii/Gamecube's GPU block really corresponds to any ATI/AMD card.
What you could probably do is take a Wii emulator like Dolphin and virtualize the CPU. Basically combine Dolphin and KVM_PR, getting ~native CPU performance while still needing to do 3D translation and simulate the IOS side of the Wii.
(Wii games run with the CPU in the supervisor state IIRC, so you can't just run them as processes under an OS, you'd either need a proper hypervisor or to catch traps caused by running supervisor instructions in "problem state", a la KVM_PR.)
Yeah I think you are right, I should say that some of that code was ported and still survives today in 26 uses some of the same APIs and naming, but isn’t necessarily the same code from classic Mac OS. One example is RegisterEventHotKey.
I seem to recall years ago reading that the Cocoa (the NeXTstep derived API) menu code called into the Carbon (the classic Mac OS derived API) code to run stuff. But that was around Snow Leopard IIRC. That sort of stuff might still be around?
The Carbon API itself lasted until 10.15 (Catalina / 2019) for 32 bit apps, so there's presumably at least some classic Mac OS derived code in there until then.
Pretty sure the menu bar was Carbon in Snow Leopard, which was the same release that discontinued Classic. Lots of Cocoa widgets called into HIToolbox under the hood. QuickTime wasn't fundamentally changed. And iTunes of course was Carbon code for a very, very long time.
But in the early days, a lot of UI and OS frameworks were based on Carbon stuff ported from Classic MacOS with Cocoa wrappers on them.
One sibling mentioned the menus. Another sibling mentioned the Security framework. The SDK for macOS Golden Gate still ships with headers dating back to MacOS 8.6 (although they are mostly deprecated now) https://kalleboo.com/linked/macos86security_vs_macosgoldenga...
If I can play Specter or Shuffle board air hokey, the BW boulder dash clone, Marathon, I'm game. Can I? You just cost me some, now a search for a Mac classic. The emulators don't do it for me.
oh geez.. I was not thinking about it, but if this piece of hardware runs PowerPC Mac.. then Amiga OS 4.x or MorphOS and Amiga baby... PowerMac is for sissies when you compare this opportunity!
Interesting timing. Nintendo just shutdown Mariokart Tour on mobile. I went back to my Nintendo Wii which was already modded, and updated it to the latest modded hacks and I was amazed to see more software, stability, and even online gaming brought back!
Hopefully their port of Mac OS gets put in the Open Shop Channel!
Open Shop Channel: https://oscwii.org WiiLink for online gaming: https://wiilink.ca
The Wii was truly the peak of gaming consoles.
Games still came on disk so there wasn’t the madness of endless buggy updates (disks had one opportunity to be bug free so quality was at a higher standard) and internet connectivity was not guaranteed, so there was no way for micro transactions.
However, internet connectivity was available, so things like optional online play were still possible, as well as some basic user generated content.
Wouldn’t this criteria make PS2 and Xbox “peak gaming” also? I remember playing CoD online on PS2 and many praising Xbox for its online features.
Once PS3 and Xbox 360 came in picture, things changed slightly since they relied more heavily on their network services… albeit, PSN back then was free for online gameplay. These were on the same generation as Wii, but Wii was a winner for casual playing.
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Dreamcast came with a modem and an optional Ethernet adapter 8 years earlier. The GD-ROM was too clever by half. But perhaps it was the prototype of peak game consoles. I have a soft spot because the home brew scene on that started a full quarter century ago.
> The Wii was truly the peak of gaming consoles.
everyone says that about their childhood :)
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I'll forgive you for thinking Wii was the peak because people are obviously biased based on the time they grew up. For me it was the SNES/Genesis era. Or arguably PlayStation 1.
For me it's the (New) 3DS. It's about the peak for handheld gaming. It can run GB, GBC, NES, SNES very well, GBA can run natively and obviously DS/3DS. You can run pretty much any Zelda game up to the GameCube on it with the official ports of Ocarina/Majora. The emulation community also has some promising demos of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but who knows about that. I have a Switch and it's frustrating seeing games that Nintendo haven't released for it (like WW and Pokopia), but maybe after a decade I'll get a Switch 2 OLED whenever that comes out.
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The motion controls make it age really poorly imo (motion controls aren't bad, but forced motion controls to do anything is)
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Agree to disagree on the Wii. It was fun, but the poor thing got a lot of dust in our households. A bit too gimmicky for us. Doubly so for the Wii U.
not every console stays connected to my tv... and wii stayed. wii sports is still fun and get everyone moving during a rainy day which is quite an achievement all by itself
The Wii was the first era where game discs came with console firmware updates that were silently installed and could lock you out owning your device.
> so quality was at a higher standard
sonic_boom.jpeg.gif
I don't disagree, but the wii remote market was/is the absolute worst console device market.
I've played more MK Wii custom tracks, on split-screen multiplayer, than pretty much any other multiplayer game for the past few years.
The custom mkwii wiki has 17,000 articles https://www.mkwiiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
> Nintendo just shutdown Mariokart Tour on mobile.
Eek my son is not gonna be happy about that
Same guy who made NT for Macintosh https://github.com/Wack0/Macintosh and GC/Wii https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes if you're unaware.
Is it possible to go the other way? Make a PowerMac into a Nintendo Wii?
Not exactly what you're asking about, but related and from the same time period. The original Xbox 360 dev kit was a PowerMac G5.
https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha_Xenon_Development_Kit
Soooo... can you make a Wii out of an Xbox 360? :D
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The Nintendo Wii notably has two processors that run different operating systems, so you might need some emulation or hardware modifications to do so
The GPU would also be a problem. I don't think the Wii/Gamecube's GPU block really corresponds to any ATI/AMD card.
What you could probably do is take a Wii emulator like Dolphin and virtualize the CPU. Basically combine Dolphin and KVM_PR, getting ~native CPU performance while still needing to do 3D translation and simulate the IOS side of the Wii.
(Wii games run with the CPU in the supervisor state IIRC, so you can't just run them as processes under an OS, you'd either need a proper hypervisor or to catch traps caused by running supervisor instructions in "problem state", a la KVM_PR.)
but why? :)
There's no point.
Apart from exporting experience to future endeavours with more "point".
And "fun", relevant as other are insisting noticing, is another thing you build and will return in the future.
The author literally said that he did it for fun and to learn, at the beginning of the post
Doing things that are fun is the point
Wii turns 20 on 19th November 2026.
> This got me acquainted with the classic Mac OS,
> and I fell in love with the jank as it were (hacks
> upon hacks upon hacks going back to the 1980s is
> something I’d definitely describe as “jank”).
Modern macOS still has classic Mac OS code in it dating as far back, and has added Objective C and Swift abstractions on top.
Does it? I am pretty sure the entire Carbon stack is retired now.
Yeah I think you are right, I should say that some of that code was ported and still survives today in 26 uses some of the same APIs and naming, but isn’t necessarily the same code from classic Mac OS. One example is RegisterEventHotKey.
That surprises me; I assumed they dropped the last pre-Darwin code when they discontinued the classic environment. What remains that's that old?
I seem to recall years ago reading that the Cocoa (the NeXTstep derived API) menu code called into the Carbon (the classic Mac OS derived API) code to run stuff. But that was around Snow Leopard IIRC. That sort of stuff might still be around?
The Carbon API itself lasted until 10.15 (Catalina / 2019) for 32 bit apps, so there's presumably at least some classic Mac OS derived code in there until then.
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Pretty sure the menu bar was Carbon in Snow Leopard, which was the same release that discontinued Classic. Lots of Cocoa widgets called into HIToolbox under the hood. QuickTime wasn't fundamentally changed. And iTunes of course was Carbon code for a very, very long time.
Most of the Security framework still dates from OS 9.
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Yes but mostly not. Modern MacOS is based off of NeXTSTEP OS from the NeXT acquisition, not classic.
But in the early days, a lot of UI and OS frameworks were based on Carbon stuff ported from Classic MacOS with Cocoa wrappers on them.
One sibling mentioned the menus. Another sibling mentioned the Security framework. The SDK for macOS Golden Gate still ships with headers dating back to MacOS 8.6 (although they are mostly deprecated now) https://kalleboo.com/linked/macos86security_vs_macosgoldenga...
If I can play Specter or Shuffle board air hokey, the BW boulder dash clone, Marathon, I'm game. Can I? You just cost me some, now a search for a Mac classic. The emulators don't do it for me.
this reminds me of how the original xbox 360 dev kits were actually just powermac G5s. the mid-2000s were a wild time for cross-platform hardware.
oh geez.. I was not thinking about it, but if this piece of hardware runs PowerPC Mac.. then Amiga OS 4.x or MorphOS and Amiga baby... PowerMac is for sissies when you compare this opportunity!
Nintendo Wii have made for neat zero knowledge Nostr relays, mesh-net (CJDNS) routers, and other makeshift "underground" infrastructure.
USB hubs, USB SATA adapters and USB Ethernet interfaces for the win.
For me, the finest PowerMac is the one that explored Mars: https://vechai.org/mars-rover-perseverance-runs-on-a-1998-im...
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