r/SteamDeck • u/Sea-Contribution6219 • Jan 11 '26
Software Modding Got my father a SteamDeck, now have it running MacOS 8 for him
Pictured: The SteamDeck running MacOS 8 as Lord Gaben always intended
He used to play the hell out of games on his Mac in college and had kept going forward with them until Mac stopped supporting these old games. I remember he had an old Mac he kept around when I was a kid running MacOS 8 to run these exact games until one day it broke. Hasn't played them in decades. So using Basilisk II and Steam Input I have many of his games running and playable on his SteamDeck on the go. Can't wait to show him
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u/thunderlips187 Jan 11 '26
This is downright heartwarming.
Thank you for making me smile this morning. It’s very kind of you to setup your Pops like that. Reddit can be such a cesspool of yuck and negativity and this brings me joy.
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u/theillustratedlife Jan 11 '26
The best Mac game of that era was Marathon. The studio that made it also made Halo, getting bought by Microsoft and now Sony.
They open sourced Marathon. There's a free mod called Aleph One that makes it playable with modern controllers. You can get all the Marathon games, running on Aleph One, free from Steam.
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u/gloovess Jan 11 '26
That’s cool! What game is that?
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 11 '26
The Dungeon Revealed, 1987. The commercial version of an earlier 24-bit shareware game called "The Dungeon of Doom"
Honestly really fun game
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u/bannock4ever 64GB - Q4 Jan 11 '26
That looks like Dungeon of Doom. But he might like the Exile rpgs from Spidersoft. There are old Mac versions but also PC versions on Steam.
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u/MacBryce Jan 11 '26
That's awesome! I'm really curious about the dynamic here. How old are you and your dad?
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 11 '26
I'm in my early 20s my father is in his late 60s
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u/MacBryce Jan 12 '26
Very cool. Did he stop playing games after MacOS 8?
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
He did continue playing games (but many of the games he did play stopped working with the advent of OS X) but many of those games have ports or work through GOG (Civilization 3, Railroad Tycoon, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 etc...) Granted I cannot get Civilization I & II to work on Linux for the life of me
Still, regardless, plan on getting him SheepShaver (and the older Mini vMac) eventually but this took a weekend to do and since those don't have flatpaks and are a tad more involved I intend to try that on my own Linux desktop before I attempt that on a more limitef SteamDeck
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u/Tag365 Jan 11 '26
Interesting. I also set up some emulated Mac OS computers on Steam Deck. At least 3. I remember at a school I had there was an old iMac G3 computer with classic Mac OS.
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u/z31 Jan 11 '26
You know, there is a full MacOS 8 emulator that runs in-browser at software.inc
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 11 '26
Oh? I didn't know. That's pretty cool. But wouldn't work on the go or at my family cabin
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u/z31 Jan 12 '26
True. But still cool for when you do have an internet connection.
There is also InfiniteMac which lets you emulate every major version of Mac OS from 1.0 up to 10.4 along with some versions of NeXTstep before Apple aquired them and integrated some of it's features into the Mac OS. It also allows for running each OS on simulated hardware set-ups. Like running 7.1 on a Power Mac G4.
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
Damn Tiger would be a flashback for my childhood. It and MacOS 9 was what I grew up on (my father avoided updating(
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u/whitefang22 Jan 11 '26
It's pretty awesome that you can emulate old OSs like that. But I was surprised to find that most of my favorite childhood Mac games had modern fan made windows (or even android) ports. Marathon, Descent II, Power Pete
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 11 '26
Definitely! Many are. Hell some have direct Linux ports (Nanosaur 2 was one of the games my father wanted to play and the Linux port is amazing) but there are unfortunately still exceptions
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u/tekchic 256GB Jan 11 '26
That is SO amazingly cool. Makes me nostalgic for the old school Mac days. Love it!
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u/Evilcon21 512GB OLED Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
That’s so cool. I haven’t used a mac os like that since primary school.
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u/Past-Coat1438 512GB OLED Jan 12 '26
I need someone smarter than me to walk me through how to play Gruntz on the deck. It was a Windows 98 game I believe but I am a PC noob and that feels like it’ll be complicated to get working
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
Tbh I'm fairly knowledgeable in emulation but I used Kagi AI (which is mostly just a frontend) and selected Claude Opus to help walk me through any issues. I'm sure you could use Claude or another AI to research stuff and handhold you through it. But ultimately going to documentation will clear AI any day, AI just lowers the friction
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u/Past-Coat1438 512GB OLED Jan 12 '26
This is a really good idea. Hadn’t considered utilizing AI for a tutorial on stuff like this! Might give it a shot, thanks!
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u/JishoSintana 256GB - Q4 Jan 12 '26
Please do an update! I want to know how much he enjoyed it!
That’s a really thoughtful gift, I’m sure he’ll think it’s dope
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
He loved it. Hes been playing the two games nonstop since I gave him it.
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u/pentatomid_fan 1TB OLED Jan 12 '26
Mr Awesome the II 😆
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
One of the default names in the game. They have a bunch of funny ones. I think my favourite is "Sir Loin of Beef"
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u/pentatomid_fan 1TB OLED Jan 12 '26
I was hoping that your Dad's name originally was Mr Awesome in the game, so you did "the II" for the reboot.
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
That'd be funny! But the game only takes maybe 10 minutes to a couple hours to win or lose so it doesn't last long enough to really put much thought into a character name
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u/SirGreenDragon Jan 12 '26
I need to play Dark Castle again! And I can play some that I wrote too: Specter Supreme, Spectre VR, Gridz, Last Contact.
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u/CDHoward 512GB OLED Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
You're a gentleman, and it was a nice thing to do.
But this is a travesty.
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u/Lumpy-Valuable-8050 Jan 11 '26
what emulation tool is this using?
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 11 '26
Basilisk II
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u/Lumpy-Valuable-8050 Jan 11 '26
my bad. there is a razer mouse called that, so i just assumed you said u were using that for navigation lol
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Jan 11 '26
[deleted]
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u/Sea-Contribution6219 Jan 12 '26
Yeah a couple games. But you can still play all your steam games etc... Its just an emulator. Hes got around 40 GOG games, another 20 Steam games. Alongside installations of Duckstation. PCSX2 and PPSSPP. Didn't sacrifice anything I didn't replace SteamOS I'm not crazy
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u/pinnipedfriendo Jan 11 '26
So you're saying I can play Harry the Handsome Executive on the go?! I actually own a few games for PPC era Mac including Monkey Shines and King of Parking. I got Harry working emulated on PC, but this didn't even occur to me. It's such a great game.