Hey, you Mac old timers (like me). How many times have you said to yourself, “Man, I could use a round of Duke Nukem 3D right now!” or wished you could go back to a version of Adobe Photoshop that didn’t have all the tools you need? (Okay, never, but play along with me here.)
Well, now you can go back to the old days of the Mac with a Mac OS 8 emulator, written by Felix Rieseberg. He created a JavaScript app which includes a virtual machine that emulates a Macintosh Quadra 900 running Mac OS 8.1. The 261MB compressed download expands into an app that runs that system in a window on your modern Mac.
IDGPlaying a little bit of Duke Nukem 3D. Oh, I needed that!
The emulator also includes a few apps, such as Adobe Photoshop 3.0.5, Adobe Illustrator 5.5 Tryout, Oregon Trail, and Duke Nukem 3D Demo. If you are able to make files using the included apps, there is a way to move them from the emulator to your Mac; the built-in help has instructions. There’s also Netscape Navigator 3.01 and Internet Explorer 3.01, but they didn’t work for me.
If you’re interested in the Mac OS 8 emulator, you can download it from GitHub. There are also versions available for Windows and Linux.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor
Roman has covered technology since the early 1990s. His career started at MacUser, and he's worked for MacAddict, Mac|Life, and TechTV.