Available to order now (as of November 2021), The Secret History of Mac Gaming is both back in print and better than ever.

The Expanded Edition from Bitmap Books features a revised text layout (we pushed the margins nearer to the middle and justified the text) as well as a foreword by 7th Guest co-creator Graeme Devine, a beautiful-presented timeline of key moments in Mac gaming history, a pair of icon galleries, around 60 additional images, and around 6,000 words of additional stories (to add to the 115k words of the first edition).

Separate to the hardback from Bitmap, I’ve self-published a text-only ePub/Kindle edition that contains those same additional stories plus the timeline (minus the fancy layout).

If you already own a copy of the first edition and you’re not sufficiently swayed by these improvements, or if you’d like help pinpointing where those 6,000 words of additional stories are located, I’ve made a Digital Add-On Pack that you can buy for US$4. It also contains a list of all errors and corrections, plus updates to the ‘Where Are They Now?’ sections.

I won’t be doing any further new editions, except for an audiobook, but I will eventually have an entirely-new second volume. Sign up to my low-volume, book announcements-only newsletter via this link if you’d like to be notified when that’s available, or keep an eye on this website.

If you can buy direct from me or Bitmap, please do (that way I get a larger share of money from the sale, as do Bitmap):

• Expanded Edition hardback and PDF bundle available from Bitmap Books
• Text-Only ePub/Kindle Edition available from me via Gumroad
• (For owners of first edition only) Digital Add-On Pack with just the new Expanded Edition stories, timeline, and corrections available from me via Gumroad

But if you’d prefer to buy from a third-party/local bookstore, I have an affiliate link to buy through Amazon and Bitmap has a list of other stockists around the world. My fellow Australians, for instance, can get their copy from Melbourne-based store PixelCrib (and if you use this referral link, you and I both get a discount off our next order).

(Whatever you do, please don’t spend hundreds of dollars on a first edition copy from price-gouging resellers.)

The Macintosh changed video games. It challenged the medium to be more than child’s play and quick reflexes. It made human-computer interaction friendly, inviting, and intuitive. Mac gaming led to much that is now taken for granted by PC gamers and spawned some of the biggest franchises in video game history — including Myst, Halo, and SimCity. It allowed anyone to create games and playful software with ease, and gave indie developers a home for their products.

It welcomed strange ideas and encouraged experimentation. It fostered passionate and creative communities who inspired and challenged developers to do better and to follow the Mac mantra: ‘think different’.

Written by award-winning journalist and game historian Richard Moss, The Secret History of Mac Gaming draws on a combination of archive material and around 80 interviews with key figures from the era to tell the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It’s a book about people who followed their hearts first and market trends second, showing how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful video games could be.

The Secret History of Mac Gaming also features guest chapters from Craig Fryar, Apple’s first Mac games evangelist and the co-creator of hit game Spectre, as well as specially-created divider illustrations and cover art by graphic designer and pixel artist JJ Signal, all styled in the gorgeous 1-bit aesthetics of early Macintosh games. At 480 pages long, The Secret History of Mac Gaming features eye-catching coloured page edges, a hardback cover printed with pantone inks and a colour-coded bookmark ribbon. As with all our books, we use thread sewn binding for extra durability and print lithographically on high-quality paper to showcase the gorgeous visuals as they deserve.

The newly-expanded edition from Bitmap Books adds around 70 pages of extra content, including a foreword by The 7th Guest co-creator and id Software and Apple alum Graeme Devine, plus an annotated timeline, over 60 extra images, an icon gallery, and more than 6,000 extra words added to the chapter narratives — on top of the 115,000 words from the 1st edition — covering a variety of additional game and developer stories, including the tales behind Snood, Chaos Overlords, The Dungeon of Doom, and more. It also revises and updates the design, based on reader feedback, to provide a better reading experience.

• Hardcover
• 230mm x 158mm
• 416 pages 480 pages
• 115,000 words approx 120,000 words
• 150+ images 200+ images
• Sourced from ~80 interviews and extensive archival research

First edition now out of print; Expanded Edition available from October 29, 2021.