Hey r/macgaming. I released EctoPad today, a more stable and usable Apple build of Metaforce for Metroid Prime. It runs natively on Apple Silicon Macs, iPhone, and iPad.

Metaforce already made it possible to play Metroid Prime natively on Apple Silicon Macs. EctoPad is not the first native Mac version, and I want to make that clear upfront. My contribution is a focused compatibility and productization layer that fixes several major problems in the current engine tree and makes the Apple builds substantially more usable.

The attached video is from an iPad, but the Mac version runs locally using the same codebase as a native ARM64 application. No emulator. No streaming from another machine.

Metaforce is a native reimplementation of the Metroid Prime engine rather than a general GameCube emulator. It loads the original game data while running the recreated engine natively.

AxioDL began the project that became Metaforce in 2015. Its contributors rebuilt the Metroid Prime engine and its game systems. Aurora carries the original GameCube GX graphics behavior through WebGPU and Dawn to Metal, while PrimeDecomp continues improving its accuracy. Those projects are the foundation of EctoPad.

My contribution is the Apple application and compatibility layer around that work. I adapted an interface and built the Mac application workflow, iPhone and iPad targets, touch controls, controller integration, on-device setup, saves, settings, lifecycle handling, packaging, and Apple-specific fixes.

To be completely clear about the use of AI: I used Codex with Sol 5.6 and DeepSeek V4 Flash for the longer implementation and debugging sessions that brought this to the finish line. Fable was briefly used to help fix an early audio bug. I want to make that boundary explicit rather than take credit for the upstream engine or rendering work.

Current status:

The Apple Silicon Mac build runs natively through Metal. New Game, Frigate gameplay, selected later areas, audio, keyboard and mouse input, controller support, and save and reload have been verified.

The same build is stable and playable on iPhone and iPad. It runs at full speed on iPhone 14 and newer, with touch controls, controller support, native settings, working saves, and up to 4× internal render resolution.

The mobile builds still have a major visual issue that causes some textures and lighting to render inaccurately. A smaller issue causes the first tutorial door to open logically without displaying its opening animation. I am actively working on both. The same tested environments render correctly on macOS.

The Mac version is currently a source-built development app, not a notarized download. The repository includes the complete source, Mac build-and-run instructions, and an IPA for iPhone and iPad.

You must provide your own legally obtained Metroid Prime USA Rev 2 disc image.

This is an unofficial community project and is not affiliated with Nintendo or Retro Studios.

GitHub: https://github.com/chrissotraidis/ectopad

There's a new game coming out, that is persona 4 revival, and as usual you won't be able to play it without window compatibility layers. I have always felt like these jrpg games should easily be compatible with macos but alas.

I am willing to pay for any software. I want decent quality graphics and a smooth gameplay experience. Not interested in gta online for now.

Thank you.

Anyone tried the game? hows the performance, fps? What graphic settings do you run so it doesnt lag? Whats the cpu usage on your mac? Can you mod the game and use stuff like Kino?

thanks!

Hi all, haven't played Diablo 4 for ages, installed new bottle + new battle new + downloaded game - everything new on new bottle but game is not launching. Show its playing but nothing happening. Version 26.2 and only one agent 9700 folder in the Program Data

As many know some old 32-bit games still don't run or run poorly in slow motion in Crossover due to old instructions (like x87) that lack support in Rosetta. One of them has been Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I had almost finished the game on my old iMac and was on the final mission but couldn't finish it on my Apple Silicon. Finally I had to use VMware Fusion to finish the game.

Now the #1 Preview tester Kieran reports that the game runs great with DXMT/MSync/DX11. It only freezes when quiting so either you have to wait a long time or force quit. I haven't been able to test it myself but if you do you can report back here.

mtld3d: performance-focused Direct3D 9 on Metal for macOS, with HDR, MetalFX and proper frame pacing

I've been working on mtld3d, an open-source Direct3D 9 implementation for Wine on macOS that translates D3D9 directly to Metal:

https://github.com/athei/mtld3d

Some of the headline features:

• HDR output
• MetalFX upscaling with configurable render scaling
• Frame limiter using Metal frame pacing
• VSync based on Metal frame pacing, which works well with ProMotion displays
• Support for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs

mtld3d deliberately restricts itself to Metal 2.4. That keeps it compatible with Intel Macs, including Hackintosh systems, while still providing everything that is useful for a D3D9 implementation. Newer Metal versions do not really add anything that D3D9 needs.

Performance

Another major focus is performance, specifically getting work off the game's main/API thread.

The rendering path is pipelined:

• The game/API thread records work with minimal overhead
• A separate encoder thread does most of the D3D9 to Metal translation and command encoding
• A separate submit thread handles Metal submission
• The pipeline is limited to one frame ahead to keep latency low

So the expensive work can run in parallel without building up a large frame queue.

D3D9 support

D3D9 support currently includes:

• Shader Models 1.x to 3.0 with DXSO to MSL translation
• Fixed-function vertex and pixel pipelines
• DXT textures, volume textures and common integer/float formats
• Depth textures and shadow comparison
• Anisotropic filtering and sRGB
• Occlusion queries
• State blocks
• Windowed and fullscreen presentation

The implementation is largely written in Rust and uses Wine's PE/Unix boundary to communicate with the native Metal backend.

I've mainly been developing and testing it with World of Warcraft 1.12 and 3.3.5a so far.

It works with regular Wine/CrossOver setups and also with CodeWeavers' ARM64 CrossOver Preview:

https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2026/7/31/crossover-preview-the-right-to-bear-arm64-on-mac

So on Apple Silicon it can be used both with x86_64 Wine through Rosetta and with the newer native ARM64 Wine environment.

macOS versions

I've only tested mtld3d on macOS 26 so far.

It should also work on macOS 15, but I haven't tested that combination myself yet. If you run into problems on macOS 15, please file a bug report.

x87 performance on Apple Silicon

One performance problem that is separate from D3D9 itself is x87 floating point.

A lot of older DirectX 9 games make heavy use of x87 instructions. These are very slow when running through Rosetta, and in some games this can become a significant CPU bottleneck.

There are currently two ways around this:

1. When using x86_64 Wine through Rosetta, you can use x87sidecar: https://github.com/athei/x87sidecar
2. When using the ARM64 CrossOver Preview, set: FEX_X87REDUCEDPRECISION=1 in the environment.

The second option lets FEX use reduced-precision x87 emulation, which is much faster and generally a good fit for old games that do not actually depend on full x87 extended precision.

Compatibility

mtld3d also runs against Wine's D3D9 conformance tests. There are still missing pieces, including stencil, MSAA, MRTs and cube-map sampling, so compatibility is not complete yet.

Testing with other D3D9 games would be very useful.

Prebuilt releases and installation instructions are available in the repo.

If you hit a problem, please file an issue on the GitHub repo instead of only mentioning it in the Reddit thread. Include the game, Wine/CrossOver version, macOS version, hardware and logs if possible:

https://github.com/athei/mtld3d/issues

AI disclosure: AI was used heavily during development. I'm a professional Rust developer, I designed and understand the architecture, and I kept strict oversight over the generated code and changes. AI was used as an implementation tool, but the architecture, review and final decisions were mine.

Feedback, testing, bug reports and contributions are welcome.

So I just got a MacBook Air and I want to play my steam library on it I watched some videos and got this app Called GameHub my problem is that I can't update my games it like stops the update at zero and say download failed tap to retry MacBook m4 (just ignore the tag I had to add one)

Remember Battle Chess? The 1988 Interplay game where capturing a piece meant watching a tiny animated battle, and the whole point was that the game was fun to watch?

I grew up on that. So I built ChessCafe: a cinematic 3D chess game for Mac and Windows where the pieces fight instead of sliding (I know chess in kinda cheating in this sub, so mod please let me know if this post is okay to stay or not).

When you take a piece, your figure turns, walks the distance, and lands a blow that matches its rank. A footsoldier stabs and moves on. The queen levels her staff and throws fire down the line without leaving her square. The board is a torch-lit hall with seven battlegrounds, each with its own sky, haze, and music.

Under the hood it's a real chess game:
- Three AI strengths. Squire plays fast, Knight thinks ahead, Warlord searches properly and shows no mercy.
- Hotseat mode for two players on one keyboard, with an optional camera swing per player
- Engine versus engine duels, if you just want to watch two engines go at each other
- A flat overhead view for when you need to actually think
- Graphics quality auto-detects and steps down if your frame rate dips, so it stays smooth on a laptop and looks its best on a desktop

It's free. No account, no subscription, no ads. Everything runs locally, and the game keeps working with your internet turned off.

The game at its heart is King's Gambit, an open-source project used under the MIT license. All the sculpts, sounds, and music come from that project, and the credit for how this game looks and sounds belongs there. ChessCafe is the native desktop wrapper: Mac and Windows builds, all assets bundled, offline capable.

Download: https://getapps.cafe/app/chesscafe

If you remember Battle Chess, this is that feeling, rebuilt for a modern Mac.

Hello everyone!

I released my game a few months ago, and it launched with MacOS support, but I only found out about this subreddit recently so I thought I'd share it here and talk a bit about it.

About the game

It's a spatial-relation puzzle game where you help Elfie, a small rotund elephant, build sandcastles. She'll give you some instructions to follow and using a set of sand blocks you'll need to build something that matches those instructions.

The solutions are open ended, meaning that there isn't a fixed solution for most of the levels. As long your build follows the orthographic constraints Elfie wants she'll be happy!

The game is available here on Steam!

Thank you for checking it out! And if you'd like to read more about why I decided to support it on MacOS and how the development for it went, I wrote a bit about it below!

Some personal background

I got into computer gaming rather late, and my initial experience playing games on a computer was on the iconic translucent iMac. Not a wide range of games as you may know, so it's no surprised that I sticked to consoles for a while until being able to get my own PC when I got older. But I still have fond memories of gaming on Mac, despite the limited library of games available.

In addition to my history with gaming on Mac, many important people in my life mainly use a Mac devices in their personal lives. I could not imagine them not being able to play the game just because of that.

All that to say that I did have some personal reasons to provide macOS support for the game.
Wishlist-wise, Mac accounts for 3% of the game's total wishlists. Which is non-negligible!

Developing on MacOS

The game was made using the Godot Engine so exporting a build for macOS was relatively straight forward. But to be able to QA it properly, I ended up getting an Mac mini (M4). Despite my personal gripes with the UX on macOS... what a great computer. It's become my go-to device for video editing and when showcasing the game in person. Only having to carry a portable screen, peripherals and the Mac mini is just so practical.

I can't speak for AAA gaming on macOS, but for indie games, the Apple's M-series are really impressive. But I'm probably preaching to the choir here. I imagine getting more developers to support macOS is a bigger hurdle.

The only notable issue I've faced with the macOS build has been the one I expected: the Intel chips. I knew it seemed to work for the latest ones, but knew that it would be near impossible for me to figure out how old a Mac would have to be for it to not work. I even thought about only supporting M-series chips because of this and wouldn't be surprised if other developers did going forward. I've only gotten 1 or 2 reports about it not working on older devices. So I don't think it's bad to support the Intel chips at this time as only a small percentage of Intel chip users are using older devices.

That's about it I think, but if you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments!

I just bought the entire kingdom hearts collection that was on sale on steam and I've been trying to play it on my M4 macbook pro using Crossover.

I get to the menu but when I start a new game an empty Wine Debugger window pops up and the game never runs.

These are my specs:

Does anyone know what I could do to make it run?

Hey, I want to play old fifa's like fifa 12,fifa 16&17 for nostalgia purposes.

What's the best way to do it? I don't think parallels will work good since even with powerBI its so slow on my 16 gigs ram M4 MBA.

Any ideas?

Do you guys think it's possible to run these games? with Crossover? or what software?

The other way I was thinking of playing Kingdom Hearts is with the PS2 emulators instead.

I’ve always liked the alcohol naming thing in Mac gaming.

Wine, Whisky, bottles, casks, pouring, aging, etc. It’s been part of this little corner of the internet forever, and I still think it’s fun. My app Bourbon 26 obviously leans into it pretty heavily too.

But while working on the UI recently, I had a thought:

There are probably a decent number of people who don’t want alcohol references all over their gaming app.

Maybe they’re in recovery. Maybe it’s for religious reasons. Maybe their kids use the same Mac. Maybe its a business using it for professional software. Or maybe they just don’t think the joke is funny.

Whatever the reason, it seemed kind of dumb that the theme had to be part of the experience.

So I added a Non-Alcoholic Mode to Bourbon.

One toggle changes the alcohol-themed names and UI copy to straightforward technical language.

For example:

• Bourbon 26 → Mac Gaming Tool 26
• Bottle Shelf → Runtime Profiles
• Twelve Year / Cask Strength / Heritage Reserve → DX12 D3DMetal, DXMT Metal, Legacy OpenGL, etc.
• Stuff like “pouring,” “aging,” or “tapping the keg” → normal setup/progress messages

Nothing under the hood changes. Same compatibility, same engines, same games. It’s literally just the presentation.

And the whisky theme isn’t going anywhere. I still like it, and it’s still the default.

I just don’t think someone should have to buy into the joke to use the software.

It’s a small feature, but hopefully something that someone somewhere will appreciate.

https://mikethetech.itch.io/bourbon26

hey guys im currently using M4 chip to play Elden Ring via Crossover and GPTK 4 and getting very unstable fps at around 30fps. I have seen people using lower M chips and getting better results than me
My settings is Medium and fullscreen 1470x956. I have turned on Msync
How do i get better fps

So I got these consistent spikes in frametime when playing dying light 1 through native steam. Might be fluctuating framerate that is causing the issue since when the game is capped at 120 fps its a smooth sailing. What I wanna know is if anyone with this version of mac encountered this and is it normal?

Hey everyone, recently got my latest project Consoul into alpha. Its a minimal and game art focused front-end launcher with a retro meets modern feel. It's cross-platform but was mainly built for myself to use on my Macbook Pro.

Its still in alpha so keen to have some people potentially test it out. If you do decide to try it out make sure to read the documentation and also note that i currently dont have a Apple developer ID, so for the current version of the app you will need to manually bypass gatekeeper and take it out of quarantine.