Gabriel Knight The Beast Within

Yay, Just bought this game (mac) from Amazon and got it for $0 by applying for a amazon visa card.

What a great Christmas gift to yourself - enjoy your time with Gabe and von Glower.

Thanks. I think this one was my fav out of them all. I should get it by Thursday.

Its an awesome game - well done!

TLC and Marian!

TLC, I also took advantage of the $20 discount and got an Amazon Visa card. It doesn't cost anything and I only use it for Amazon purchases. Enjoy the game. It's one of my all-time favorites!

Marian, especially von Glower! I needed a drool bib while playing the game . !

Susan

I have been thinking of playing it again this Christmas. Are you saying it is available for Mac?

I got it today and returning it. Its for Mac but won't install, says its incomplete or defective.

If this was a boxed game, it would be for Mac OS7 through OS9.
The best way to play it on a modern Mac with OSX is to use the DOS version of Beast Within with the Mac version of DOSBox.

You might check the box to see if the game is a hybrid disc (both DOS and Mac on the CD).

GOG has it preconfigured.
https://www.gog.com/game/gabriel_knight_2_the_beast_within

Jenny, there was something weird on the first disc, when I opened it, there was a desktop and trash files both empty. And they sealed it (called it new) but the first disc was in a cd envelope, not in the case with the other discs.

The contents of the cd was weird from what I'm used to seeing.

There should be 6 CD's.
I don't know what the contents of the CD's would look like on a modern Mac.
However the CD's can't be read on a PC (at least not without special software).

It looks like there were separate Mac and DOS versions though, not a hybrid disc as I first thought. So if you're trying read the CD on a PC, you'd need a program like one of the programs mentioned here, which allows the PC to understand the file system used on old Mac CD's
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000676.htm

Are you looking at the CD on a PC or on your Mac?
I don't have a modern Mac handy to test, but I thought modern Macs could read the old Mac file systems.
Apple is not great for backwards compatibility though, and it's possible you'd need a special program in order to read Mac CD's made for OS9 and earlier. If your Mac came with reinstall CD's (or DVD's), the program to read old Mac CD's may be on the CD's (just not installed by default).

As for the CD being in a sleeve instead of the CD case, I notice I have an empty CD sleeve in the game box of my Mac version of GK2, so it's possible it originally came with one of the CD's in the sleeve. Not sure why they'd do that, but it's not unheard of.

I looked at it on my Mac. I already started the return process to Amazon. Thanks Jenny.

From what I googled, the latest Mac versions won't understand the file system used on the old Mac CD's, and you're better off trying to read them on a PC, where programs are available to help read the file format used on the old Mac CD's.

OS 10.6.8 was the last Mac version I used, and that was able to read the old Mac CD's. According to Google, OS 10.9 is not though. So at some point between OS 10.7 and 10.9 Apple decided they couldn't be bothered with supporting their older file formats.

So your game is probably fine -- just not compatible with newer Macs at all.

I do have the Win version of the game. I guess I'll have to pull out my old monster laptop to play it. Thanks for all your info, Jenny.


I was curious to see what the Win version would open up on my Mac, there was loads of stuff on it, compared to around 7 on the Mac version.

I will still play it on my Mac, but on the Windows PC I installed on the Boot Camp partition.

TLC, if you have enough space on your Mac, and an old version of Windows with a code to activate it, you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free. To install it on bootcamp is relatively easy, just open boot camp on your Mac, there is a link for instructions.

I have both a PC and a Mac on my Mac, dual boot. Problem solved.

Ahh, the memories. The first time I played GK2 was on my Mac Performa with MacOS 7.5.3. The summer of 1996 if memory serves. It was a mac only version of the game. Not a hybrid win/mac.

I'm not surprised it didn't work on a modern mac. Since OSX 10.6 or so Apple has dropped all compatibility with pre-OSX games and applications. And even when the support was there it was pretty limited. Doubt anything developed for MacOS 7.5 has ever worked on OSX.

Hope you get to play the game. I recently replayed GK2 for the 6th or 7th time and it's as good today as it ever was. On my top ten list for sure. But only the second best GK game...:)

Thanks, I installed my Win version on my Win XP laptop.