This is Pangea Software’s Nanosaur updated to run on modern systems. Originally released in 1998 as a Mac-only game, Nanosaur casts a cybernetic dinosaur from the future who’s sent back in time 20 minutes before a giant asteroid hits the Earth.
Download the game for macOS, Windows or Linux here: https://github.com/jorio/Nanosaur/releases
- BUILD — How to build Nanosaur on macOS, Windows or Linux.
- CHANGELOG — Nanosaur version history.
- LICENSE — Licensing information (see also below).
- Instructions — Original instruction manual.
- Game Engine Information — An overview of Nanosaur’s game engine, written by Brian Greenstone.
Nanosaur was bundled with the original iMac and ran on Mac OS 8. It’s also notable for being a prominent showcase of QuickDraw 3D’s capabilities, which was Apple’s high-level 3D graphics API during the 90s.
In 1999, Pangea released Nanosaur’s source code to the public. This port is based on that release. (Note: the restrictive terms in that link are ancient — Pangea does endorse the existence of this port today.)
This port aims to provide the best way to experience Nanosaur today. It introduces some modern comforts (such as support for arbitrary resolutions) and fixes some gameplay bugs. The overall experience is intended to be faithful to the spirit of the original game, so modifications to the game’s design are out of the scope of this project.
To make it easier to port the game, I wrote an implementation of parts of the Macintosh Toolbox API, which I called “Pomme”. You can think of Pomme as a cross-platform reimagining of Carbon, albeit at a much smaller scope. Later, I extended Pomme to port several other Pangea games from the Mac OS 7-9 era (see “other Pangea game ports” below).
The first release of this port used a custom fork of Quesa to render the game’s 3D graphics. Quesa is an independent implementation of QuickDraw 3D; it was incredibly useful to get the game up and running initially. Nanosaur has switched to a tailor-made renderer as of version 1.4.2.
Nanosaur™ © 1998 Pangea Software, Inc.
- Programming: Brian Greenstone
- Artwork: Scott Harper
- Music: Mike Beckett, Jens Nilsson
- Cinematics: Chris Ashton
- Enhanced update: Iliyas Jorio
Nanosaur was updated and re-released here (https://github.com/jorio/nanosaur) with permission by Pangea Software.
This version of Nanosaur is licensed under CC NC-BY-SA 4.0.
If you like games by Pangea Software, you might enjoy my other ports:
