• Windows Games On Mac
• Games On Mac Free
• Games On Mac From 90s Movies
• Games On Mac From 90s Computer
• Classic Mac Games 90s
• Best Games For Mac

Programs like DOSBox allow you to play pre-Windows games on both PC and Mac. Expecting a game to be updated for decades because you paid some money back in the 90s is. The best Mac games of all time. We asked John Siracusa of Ars Technica to give his list of the five greatest Mac games. A “Mac game” is a game that’s some combination of first, best,. GamesNostalgia is a fan made website entirely dedicated to retro games, abandonware, MS-DOS and Amiga games, freeware and old school classic titles. Download the games, already packed with emulator, ready to play on your PC or Mac.

Real talk: I think learning is always fun. (Yes, I am absolutely a Ravenclaw. Why do you ask?) But when it’s a literal game? Then it’s even better, especially when you’re a kid. This is probably why there were so dang many fantastic educational '90s computer games — the rise of home computing (and, by extension, the rise of computing in the classroom) during the 1990s opened up a whole world of possibilities, including tons of ways to make learning a blast for the up-and-coming generations. And you know what? These games are still fun. And yes, I say that as a fully grown adult; don't knock going back and replaying the games you loved when you were 10 until you've tried it. Seriously.

• 23 Arcade Games You Definitely Played Growing Up In The '90s. This game was a staple of the '90s arcade scene. There were many a fighting games at the arcade, but this one had some.
• The Macintosh Software Library provides more than 40 glorious programs from the 1980s and '90s, from Microsoft Multiplan to Frogger.But while most folks will relish running vintage games.
• Play the best free games, deluxe downloads, puzzle games, word and trivia games, multiplayer card and board games, action and arcade games, poker and casino games, pop culture games and more. MSN Games has it all.
• 25 ‘90s Computer Games You Totally Forgot About Playing. Some of those graphics were truly fugly. At the time, this game's graphics were incredible and it was a blast, featuring first-person.

As is often the case with the things we remember from the '90s, a lot of the games those of us who grew up during the decade filled our days with were originally developed and released long before the ‘90s. That's perhaps the reason '80s babies also have a certain degree of fondness for them; many of them actually dated back to the decade in which we were born. Some were part of long-running series, while still more of them received a number of remakes and reboots as technology improved. Though the graphics may be laughable now, just remember — once upon a time, they were the pinnacle of technological achievement.

So, in the spirit of nostalgia, here are 15 computer games from the ‘90s that made learning incredibly fun. Most of them are available to play on the internet now, so in these cases, I’ve also included links to where they can be found — frequently either an app store or the Internet Archive’s glorious collection of browser-based, emulated DOS games.

Have fun, kids!

1. Number Munchers and Word Munchers

The Munchers series was created by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium — or, under a name with which you might be more familiar, MECC. I don’t know about you, but I have vivid memories of seeing those four letters scrawled across a huge number of the educational games I played at school; the company dated back to 1973 and was also responsible for games like the business simulator Lemonade Stand and the storytelling game Storybook Weaver.

The Munchers series' conceit was simple: They taught kids the basics of math and grammar. Number Munchers was originally released in 1990 for the Apple II, while Word Munchers had arrived a few years earlier in 1985. Gameplay-wise, both series functioned kind of like a turn-based version of Pacman; the object WAS to “eat” all of the numbers or words that correspond to the instructions on the screen (multiples of five, etc.) without getting caught by a Troggle.

What exactly are Troggles? No idea, but they're insatiable.

2. Math Blaster!

The original Math Blaster! was released in 1983 by the now-defunct developer Davidson & Associates, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s rolled around that the series really hit its stride. Between 1990 and 1999, a whopping 20 games were released in the Blaster Learning System — and somewhat astonishingly, a few more follow-ups trickled out between 2000 and 2008. Math wasn't the only subject addressed by the series; Reading Blaster!, for example,taught language arts. A Science Blaster! Jr. was also released at one point, but due to lack of popularity, it was the only entry in the series to tackle science-based topics.

Math Blaster! is available to play online now; additionally, a bunch of ports of the math-teaching game arrived as Android apps in October of 2013, so the series appears to be alive and well (if somewhat frozen in time).

3. Scooter’s Magic Castle

Like many early computer games, Scooter’s Magic Castle consisted of a relatively large environment full of what we now call mini-games. Released under Electronic Arts’ EA*Kids umbrella in 1993, the game involved players either assuming the role of or simply helping out an elf-like creature wearing a blue tunic, red sneakers, and a red baseball cap turned backwards (the '90s!) as they worked their way through a variety of activities. These activities were designed to teach everything from problem-solving to typing; you could even make terrible MIDI music by jumping up and down a set of colorful stairs.

Scooter's Magic Castle also has a super earworm-y theme song, so if you now have it stuck in your head for the rest of the day… sorry. My bad.

4. The Carmen Sandiego Series

No list of educational ‘90s computer games would be complete without an appearance by this mysterious, trench-coated criminal mastermind. The four major entries in the series — Where in the World, Where in the U.S.A., Where in Europe, and Where in Time — were all first released by Broderbund between 1985 and 1989; the deluxe versions of Where in the World and Where in the U.S.A., however, came along in 1992 and 1993, and as a result, it’s those versions that most ’90s kids remember so fondly. There was no better way to learn geography — and hey, Where in the World deluxe is playable at the Internet Archive, so it looks like I just figured out what I’m doing with myself this weekend.

Fun fact: A Facebook version of Where in the World was available to play in 2011; I’m not sure how I missed it, but it stuck around until 2012.

5. Kindercomp

I’m really dating myself here, but Kindercomp is probably the first computer game I remember playing. Initially released in 1983 by Spinnaker Software Corporation, it was exactly the kind of game that appealed to very young children: It consisted of six mini-games that taught kids their way around a keyboard by having them draw pictures, match pairs, and other simple activities. The one I remember is the 1984 version, but the Internet Archive has a whole bunch of ‘em available, so knock yourselves out. If you have a kid in your life who's around 3 years old, it might be a fun time to play with them!

6. Mario Teaches Typing

As a child in a house full of gamers, naturally I adored Mario Teaches Typing, which first hit the scene in the early '90s. One of a number of educational Mario games released between 1988 and 1996, it put the pixelated plumber to good work teaching us how to type. Hitting the correct key would prompt Mario to hit blocks, jump on Koopa Troopas, and more. Nintendo had almost no hand in the development of these games (a far cry from the tight hold the company tends to keep on the reigns of its properties nowadays), but they proved popular all the same.

I’ll be honest, though: I actually learned how to type by frequenting chat rooms. As a result, I can type an impressive number of words per minute; however, I definitely don’t use the “correct” fingers. Ah well. Whatever works, right?

7. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Mario was second perhaps only to Mavis Beacon in the world of beloved typing programs — and what’s more, it’s still around: The first version debuted in 1987, and it has remained in production, continuing to get new and improved updates, pretty much ever since. You can download it for free right now if you like.

Windows Games On Mac

I was, by the way, absolutely devastated to learn recently that Mavis Beacon isn’t a real person. She was invented to give a face to the program in an era when human people weren't regularly associated with computer and video games (everything is a lie). 1985's The Chessmaster 2000had shown how effective putting a real person on the cover of a computer game could be; the wizard on the box was played by actor Will Hare, reported Vice in 2015. Mavis became the next incarnation of this strategy, as depicted by Renee L'Esperance.

8. 3D Dinosaur Adventure

Launched by Knowledge Adventure in 1993, 3D Dinosaur Adventure was little more than a glorified encyclopedia specializing in what we knew about dinosaurs at the time (much of which has since been determined to have been terribly, terribly wrong, even if the brontosaurus did make a triumphant comeback in 2015). That didn’t matter, though, because dinosaurs.

Also contained within 3D Dinosaur Adventure was a mini-game called 'Save The Dinosaurs' — which, to be perfectly honest, was downright terrifying. It required players to make their way through a series of maze-like hallways to find and rescue 15 types of dinosaurs before time ran out — and by 'before time ran out,' I mean 'before the comet that wiped out all of the dinosaurs crashed into the Earth, while you and the dinos were still on the planet.'

No pressure.

9. Odell Lake

Like the Munchers series, Odell Lake was created by MECC and therefore a fixture for many an elementary school computer lab. It debuted in the early 1980s, but it stuck around for long after that; it’s why so many of us ‘90s kids remember playing it when we were young.

In all honesty, it wasn’t really that exciting — all you did was swim around as a fish, trying to figure out whether you should eat, ignore, or run away from every other fish you encountered. I’m also not totally clear on why this was classified as an educational activity; Giant Bomb suggests it taught kids about food chains and predator/prey relationships, but I.. clearly did not get that takeaway from it. But hey, I suppose survival skills are important, too, right?

Odell Lake is a real place, by the way; it’s in Oregon. Just, y’know, FYI.

10. Reader Rabbit

You know the old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? That’s pretty much the Reader Rabbit series in a proverbial nutshell: It’s so effective at teaching kids to read and write that it’s survived all the way since the first game launched in 1984. There's a huge list of Reader Rabbit titles scattered throughout educational computing history; at the series' height in the late '90s, six to seven titles in the line were being released each year. The output has since tapered off, of course, but the remarkable thing is that it's still around.

The last major PC release for a Reader Rabbit game was in 2010, but a number of titles have debuted since then as iOS apps. Many of the games are also, of course, available to play online courtesy of the Internet Archive.

11. Mixed-Up Mother Goose

Mixed-Up Mother Goose didn't have a ton of replay value; the point was to sort out all of the nursery rhymes that had gotten 'mixed up' and put them back in order, so after you did that once, your work there was done. However, the world in which the game existed was so delightful that I played it over and over again as a small child. Released by Sierra in 1987, with a handful of remakes appearing at regular intervals throughout the ‘90s, it was a point-and click adventure game that encourage problem-solving; it also gets bonus points for having tons of relatively diverse avatar options — something which was even rarer back then than it is now. (And, y'know, it's still a problem decades later, so that's.. really saying something.)

12. Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain

I’ll be honest: I actually have no recollection of playing 1990’s Treasure Mountain, Treasure Cove, or any of the other Treasure titles in this series. Many other people seem to remember these games fondly, though, so I think they deserve an inclusion here. Like many educational games, 1990's Treasure Mountain — a creation of The Learning Company, like the Reader Rabbit series — involved solving riddles that led you to keys that unlocked each successive level. You also collected treasure as you went, returning it to the chest at the top of the titular mountain once you got there. A prize was awarded for depositing the treasure back into the chest.

Treasure Mountain and Treasure Cove both focused on general reading comprehension and basic math skills; however, other entries in the Super Solvers series tackled more specialized skill sets, including deductive reasoning and logic.

13. The Dr. Brain Series

Admittedly, I never played the fourth game in Sierra On-Line's long-running Dr. Brain series, and I wasn’t a big fan of the third — but the first two? Classic. The Castle of Dr. Brain, released in 1991, and the follow-up, 1992’s The Island of Dr. Brain, were a step up from a lot of the other puzzle-solving games out there; they were geared towards slightly older kids, so there was more to each puzzle than simply picking a matching shape or selecting the next number in a sequence. We’re talking intense logic puzzles that might stump even some adults.

Games On Mac Free

Sierra merged with another educational game company, Bright Star Technology, following the release of The Island of Dr. Brain; the franchise was then handed over to a team from Bright Star, which might explain why 1995's The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain and 1996's The Time Warp of Dr. Brain were so different from the first two entries in the series.

14. Eagle Eye Mysteries

Like Scooter’s Magic Castle,1993’s Eagle Eye Mysteries and 1994’s Eagle Eyes Mysteries in London came to us courtesy of the now sadly defunct EA* Kids division of Electronic Arts. Unlike Scooter’s Magic Castle, though, they were meant for an older crowd. The games followed siblings Jake and Jennifer Eagle as they solved mysteries throughout first their hometown, then in London not — unlike a modernized, digital version of Encyclopedia Brown. If you were a pint-sized fan of whodunnits, this was the game for you; it helped you learn how to piece together different pieces of information until a complete picture emerged. A valuable skill to have, I feel.

15. Oregon Trail

Ah, yes: Oregon Trail, the game responsible for countless deaths by dysentery, many drownings of oxen who tried and failed to ford the river, and a plethora of memes. For anyone who grew up playing it, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Speaking of people who grew up playing it, perhaps unexpectedly large swathe of the population falls into this category. Originally developed in 1971 and launched by MECC in 1974, roughly 20 versions of the game have been released since then — the most of which, believed it or not, arrived in 2018 as a handheld game similar to the Tiger Electronics games a lot of '80s kids grew up playing. Ostensibly, it taught kids what it was like to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon in 1848; practically speaking, though, it mostly taught us about frustration.

Also: Never ford the river. Always caulk your wagon and float it.

Your oxen will thank you.

This article was originally published on

Flight simulators and aircraft combat games serve a solid niche for those of us that like to take to the skies when we're not doing other things with our computers. Here's a roundup of the top ones you can download today, with prices from free to reasonable and the focus from arcade-style action to ultra-realistic flight sim. They're not only great games, they're some of the best Mac games you can find.

X-Plane is without peer on the Mac. Calling X-Plane a game isn't just wrong, but it's insulting: X-Plane is the definitive flight simulator for the platform. Intricately detailed, it's also incredibly scalable - X-Plane runs on mobile, oz77n home Macs and PCs, and also operates as a detailed professional-grade aviation simulator.

More than 30 aircraft are available in the default installation: You can fly everything from a single-engine Cessna 172 — the most popular airplane in the world — to a B-2 bomber. The app models fixed and rotary wing aircraft both, along with tons of atmospheric conditions that affect flight. It even simulates what'd be like to fly the Space Shuttle. More than 1,400 additional aircraft models can be downloaded online. And you can fly almost anywhere: Land at more than 33,000 airports worldwide, touch down on an aircraft carrier and more.

A free demo is available, so don't let the price tag scare you off. Given the incredible level of detail and the huge ecosystem that supports X-Plane, it's well worth the money if you take your flight simulation seriously.

• $59.99 - Download now

FlightGear

An open source flight simulator, FlightGear is a bit more do-it-yourself than some of the other apps in this list, but it's still remarkable and definitely worth checking out. Best puzzle games on mac. You download the central app, airplane models and scenery separately. Hundreds of aircraft models are available for download.

Games On Mac From 90s Movies

FlightGear's rough open source edges show, but if you're a developer or a code tinkerer, there's fun to be had here. And for everyone else, plenty of fun airplanes to fly and scenery to explore.

• Free - Download now

WarBirds

Total Sims' WarBirds flight combat game has going since 1995. Take to the skies behind the yoke of dozens of legendary World War II-era aircraft. Single player mode consists of 20 training modules, 12 instant missions, and five different Free Flight modes. What's more, you can play offline for free, for as long as you want.

But the real meat of this game is in online play, which does incur a monthly fee to continue to play. You go on raids with squadrons of other real-world players as you reenact many famous battles of World War II. Total Sims is a bit funky with their Mac support; their FAQs reference Apple's GameSprocket technology, which went out the door when Classic Mac OS gave way to OS X more than a decade ago. But it goes to show just how long WarBirds has been on the platform, too.

• $13.95 (monthly, free offline play) - Download now

Falcon 4.0: Allied Force

Graphic Simulations has been making flight sims for the Macintosh since the early 1990s. Falcon 4.0: Allied Force is the latest iteration of its classic F-16 Falcon flight simulator, taking you to the Balkans and the Korean peninsula for realistic combat missions.

Arm your aircraft with realistic weapons and ordnance, then fly missions deep into hostile territory with a dynamic campaign engine that changes things every time you play.

• $9.99 - Download now

Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders

Atypical Games' entry is an absolute must if you want to dogfight World War II style. The game features terrific graphics and easy to understand gameplay. There are single-player missions here but where the game really shines is in multiplayer dogfighting combat, which has been the series' strength. A variety of different online game modes test your skill, like Capture The Flag and Last Man Standing.

Sky Gamblers supports iCloud and Game Center - any progress you make in game can be saved to the cloud. It also supports a joystick or gamepad, which is a must for any flight sim, as far as I'm concerned. $5 gets you plenty of game play, but there are in app purchases that let you unlock new customization features and new airplane models.

• $4.99 - Download now

F/18 Carrier Landing II Pro

It's obviously a port of a game that originated on iOS, but it's lots of fun regardless. Take off and land from aircraft carriers and airstrips in some of the most legendary combat aircraft flying: the F-A/18 Super Hornet, F-14 Super Tomcat, F-16 Fighting Falcon and MiG-29K are all represented, along with the Harrier, F35B Lightning II and more.

RORTOS calls itself maker of the most advanced flight sims for mobile, and they're pretty snazzy on the Mac too. More than thirty missions along with a half-dozen training missions and free flight so you can buzz around on your own with no agenda.

• $5.99 - Download now

Games On Mac From 90s Computer

Heads up, virtual pilots — what'd I leave out?

This is my list of favorites right now, but I'm sure I've left some off that you love too. Feel free to let me know in the comments!

Classic Mac Games 90s

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

Best Games For Mac

Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.