Descent II
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| Author: | Parallax Software |
| Publisher: | MacPlay |
| Engine: | Descent |
Descent II feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel and that's because it's pretty much the same engine with minor cosmetic enhancements.
On the good side, the new weapons are more powerful, the new enemies are cool and the maps are bigger—and now you can go back and revisit secret levels, sometimes from different maps. On the bad side, the Guide-Bot is annoying, the secret levels are for the most part confusing if not frustrating and the ability to destroy lights may look cool but it makes navigation difficult. But all that is nothing compared to the Thief-Bot. This character is so detrimental to gameplay people are still complaining about it in the new millennium (like in this blog post). It would take three years before gamers got the sequel they deserved with Descent 3, but in the meantime Descent II kept the franchise alive and it did a good job at that.
CD imaged as a bin-cue pair and compressed with OS X zip. Just unzip and burn with Toast to make a CD that contains both game (version 1.2) and audio partitions.
[Top DL]: Unpacked copy of the game. No installer, just drag-n-drop to play.
[2nd DL]: The full game CD with music.
[3rd DL]: This download is an updater.
[4th DL]: The PC version of the game cutscenes, for use with D2X-Rebirth.
[5th DL]: The Vertigo Series game addon for use with D2X-Rebirth. OS 9 compatibility unconfirmed.
[6th DL]: The Macintosh Redbook soundtrack in an easy to use package for D2X Rebirth. Just place it in the iTunes Music folder and select the Jukebox music option to use. Note: you can also find the original PC versions of the soundtracks (if you prefer those more) at the DXX website's Addon page.
See also Descent and Descent 3.
CompatibilityArchitecture: PPC
Minimum Requirements
- Power Macintosh
- Mac OS 7.5
- 16 MB of RAM
- 30 MB of free hard drive space
- 256-color display
- 2x CD-ROM drive
To run this in Mac OS X, you'll need the DXX engine.
For a version of this game with hardware acceleration suppport, click here for Mac OS 9 and here for Mac OS X.
Comments
Update: I've just uploaded a slimed down version of the Vertigo Series game addon as well as the PC version of the cutscenes (since the Mac versions don't work with D2X-Rebirth).
[Edit]: the Descent Mission Database also has a port of the Descent Maximum (the Playstation version of Descent 2) campaign & multiplayer levels available here: http://www.enspiar.com/dmdb/viewMission.php?id=705
I think we have all the official Decent 2 levels now.
@themacmeister it's the ms-dos version of the addon so I don't know if it will work in OS9, but I can confirm it works in D2X-Rebirth. Just follow the instructions in D2X's Readme to install it.
@3371-Alpha -- what on earth is in that 900+MB download? Will those files even work with OS9 Descent II ??
The Descent 2: Vertigo Series game addon can be found here: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Descent_II_Vertigo_Series_1996
Also It would be cool if someone could upload the PC version of the cut scenes/video files since the mac versions don't work with DX2-Rebirth.
It is very nice and this is also for the people here in macintosh garden that upload games and programs and generally do their contributions. We really appreciate that. Macintoshgarden is the best abandonware site for Macintosh computers.
Thank you for expressing your appreciation, Dimitris1980.
It is very nice that you do all this with the bin-cue image and we can hear the music while playing the games.
I have now uploaded a bin-cue image consisting of version 1.2 of the game (originally uploaded here) and an audio partition provided by IIGS User from the copy (version 1.1) described by him below
To continue my comment below:
Meanwhile I looked at the box. The games come on 2 CD-ROMs, Descent II is on a separate CD.
Still have to put this CD into drive to determine whether it contains Audio partition.
I own this CD-ROM compilation, which contains Descent II:
eBay.co.uk/Apple Macintosh CD-ROM~iPlay (Compilation)~Sim City/Flight/Capitalism/Descent II
Not sure yet if it contains matching Audio partition, thought.
Has anyone got an original CD of this? If so, it would be good to get a bin/cue image that captures both game and audio partitions.
Cybermonkey, would you make a full image of it with SimplyBurns? http://simplyburns.berlios.de/
I'd REALLY love to have a copy with the CD audio intact (and not mp3-ed.. yuk).
I have a legit copy of this game. I couldn't finish it because some of those bosses were pretty damn hard!
@j_damage•69: Lucky for us the game can run without it. What would take plenty of space are the movies, but even with those included I think the stuffed file will be under 400 MB.
@Balrog: Really? In my case (Descent 1) Toast only burns one volume at a time. Am I doing something wrong? Now that Toast 5 is up I feel like giving it another shot.
I'm guessing the soundtracks would take up the most space... Although I think the game needs the music to run.
A toast image preserves the second volume. Hopefully it will fit in the 400MB though ...
So how are you going to burn them?
Separate volume. It's missing here.
The first game also has the soundtrack in this format, but as a separate volume. Does Descent II has this strange arrangement too or is it all in a single volume?
Great! Though originally this had CDDA audio (basically audio tracks at the end of the disc). The copy I'll post later will have these (if they fit)
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Only the following files are damaged. I was able to extract the rest.
I'll see if the PC version (if there is one) uses the same data files.
EDIT: I've located a copy and should have it up within a few days.
@ j_damage•69: You posted the message on the wrong page. Besides, the copy of Descent 1 on this server runs fine from the disk image. No need to burn it to a CD.
I did mean this version.
There is something wrong with this file. Stuffit Expander 5.5 crashes when extracting alien1.pig. Greg's Browser says the size of this file should be 4.8 MB expanded, yet the file left after the crash is 45.1 MB. Help.