Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
A GitHub user ported Half-Life to PowerPC Macs running Mac OS 9.
Half-Life is now playable on PowerPC Macs 28 years after release. The port was done by GitHub user doctashay using a fork of Xash3D FWGS, an open-source re-implementation of the GoldSrc engine. It supports G3 and G4 Macs running OS 9.0 or later, includes multiplayer and demos of Uplink, Blue Shift, and Opposing Force.
Performance depends on GPU; iMacs and iBooks with less than 8MB VRAM may struggle. The game was originally planned for Mac OS 9 by Valve in 1999 but cancelled; Valve later released it for OS X in 2013, well into the Intel era.
What commenters are saying
Commenters were largely impressed, with some noting long frustration over the cancelled original Mac port. Several debated the technical pedigree of Xash3D: one cited claims it is based on leaked or decompiled code and violates Valve's HLSDK EULA, while the engine is listed as open source. A joke about porting to Apple Silicon was met with mixed reception, leading to meta-commentary about HN's humor culture.
A user linked a Wine-based solution for running Windows Steam games on Apple Silicon, and others noted the irony that older games like SimCity 4 have native Apple Silicon support while major releases do not.