solsys

Yup for Mac OS 9 games you would have to get the windows version and run them thru bootcamp. As far as Universal Binaries vs Windows Native, it depends greatly on the game and how well it was ported originally. Chances are the Windows version might still be better, since the game was probably written for it originally. For example, Civ IV runs great on my MBP, whereas World of Warcraft runs better on my PC. As far as WinXP goes, see if you can find XP Professional, the main advantage over Home will be that Professional will recognize both cores on the CPU and can offload some OS tasks to the 2nd core while the game is running full-tilt on the first, plus newer games are being written so they will take advanage of both CPU cores. Before deciding, check to make sure that the old windows games work with XP, since OS 9 games would have been ports of games written for Windows 98, which can be hit-and-miss on XP.

Quick Answers and No Flames Your games should work The old PowerPC programs are being translated on-the-fly by Rosetta The hardware itself is screaming fast, it just has to do a ton more work translating the app. Windows versions of your games WILL NOT work under OS X Better Explanation: Basically the problem with the older mac games is that they were originally created for the old PowerPC Macs, and in order for them to work on the intel macs, they're translated by the OS automatically when they are run. The best way to think about it is Person A speaks English and Person B speaks French, in order for them to communicate they run everything they say to each other through person C. No matter how good a translator C is, the conversation will be slower, and certain nuances of speech will be lost, which can cause mis-understandings, or in the computer's case: bugs. I've played several PPC games(Including SC4) on my Intel MacBook Pro, and they have all worked fairly well, though they are slower than they would be on an equivalent G5. Older games tend to work better, since they were made to work with slower hardware to begin with. If you are going to get a Mac Mini, I would -highly- recommend getting the full 2GB of ram, and if you can afford it, go for the 1.83Ghz version. My MBP running at 2.0 Ghz works fine on smaller lots, but it can bog down a bit on larger built-up lots (of course SC4 never ran well on my PC, so I didn't notice much of a difference ) All of that being said, Certain games (like Sims 2) have been converted to "Universal Binaries". What this means is that the app has been rebuilt in a way that allows it to run without translation on the new machines. You can go to: http://guides.macrumors.com/Universal_Binary_Games and see which games have been updated. Aspyr has said several times than a UB version of SimCity is on the way, but it isn't here yet... Hope that clears up your confusion,

I've been running SC4 for the past few days on my 2 Ghz MacBook Pro w 1GB of RAM & 256MB Radeon x1600 and it has worked fine, a little laggy at times but it hasn't crashed at all. I have a feeling that another GB of Ram would help, and a Universal Binary would be REALLY nice but for the time being it is perfectly playable under Rosetta.