Running Galaxy Ranger on a Mac in 2024

galaxy-ranger-mac.md

Running Galaxy Ranger on macOS

César Astudillo posted about Galaxy Ranger on Bluesky, and of course I had to see if I could run it on any of my devices.

First I tried running it on my Powkiddy RGB30, and it did not work out of the box, so I brought out the big guns (my MacBook Pro).

This is what you need to get it running:

Requirements

• You need https://brew.sh installed, sorry
• Download the latest version of https://github.com/DirtBagXon/hypseus-singe/ that's suitable for your macOS version (in my case, it was Hypseus.Singe-v2.11.3-macOS-arm64-brew-mpeg2-Sonoma.zip but your mileage may vary.
• Download the Galaxy Ranger game files. You need two ROM sets:
  1. The video files from https://archive.org/download/space-ace (you don't need to download the whole thing, just the Galaxy Ranger.zip file).
  2. The game files from https://www.planetemu.net/rom/mame-roms/galaxyr.

Installation

• Unzip the Hypseus.Singe-v2.11.3-macOS-arm64-brew-mpeg2-Sonoma.zip file.

• Unzip the Galaxy Ranger.zip file. It will create a galaxy.daphne folder. Rename it to galaxy and move it to the Hypseus.Singe-v2.11.3-macOS-arm64-brew-mpeg2-Sonoma/roms folder.

• Unzip the galaxyr.zip file. It will create a galaxyr folder. Copy the contents of that folder to the Hypseus.Singe-v2.11.3-macOS-arm64-brew-mpeg2-Sonoma/roms/galaxy folder.

• Create a folder called astron in the Hypseus.Singe-v2.11.3-macOS-arm64-brew-mpeg2-Sonoma/roms folder.

• Copy these files from the galaxyr folder to the astron folder:

  • 5279
  • 5280
  • 5281
  • pr-5275.bin
  • pr-5276.bin
  • pr-5277.bin
  • pr-5278.bin

• Install some dependencies using Homebrew:

  brew install sdl2_ttf sdl2_image libzip libmpeg2

• Run the game:

  cd Hypseus.Singe-v2.11.3-macOS-arm64-brew-mpeg2-Sonoma
  hypseus galaxy vldp -framefile roms/galaxy/galaxy.txt

macOS will complain about the app not being signed, but you can open it by right-clicking on the hypseus file, selecting "Open", and letting it fail once.

Controls

• 1 or 2 to start the game
• 5 or 6 to insert a coin
• Arrow keys to move (up goes down, since it's a flight simulator of sorts)
• Ctrl is Button 1, and it shoots
• Alt is Button 2, and doesn't seem to do anything
• Space is Button 3, and it also doesn't seem to do anything

Conclusion

It's a bit of a hassle to get it running, but it's worth it. The game is fun, and it's a nice piece of history to have running on your computer.