What is Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six?

It’s a very good time to be a Mac gamer. The hardware matches and even betters its PC equivalent in some instances, and the quality and style of modern Mac games have advanced beyond recognition. Today’s state-of-the-art games involve light-sourcing, Phong shading, and trilinear mip-mapping. To best enjoy them, you’ll need an up-to-date 3D graphics card for playing Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, and yes, Rainbow Six.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six is the thinking man’s Quake: There’s plenty of action here, but you won’t get far without planning and strategy. The Rainbow Team is a United Nations-sponsored counterterrorist unit invented by Tom Clancy, author of the novel Rainbow Six (soon to be a movie). Six is a military position, usually bringing up the rear of an attack force.
The gameplay is first-person shooter, but the pace is something entirely new. Jumping straight into a mission and blasting indiscriminate will most likely get you killed by machine-gun fire. Before entering a mission, you examine predetermined maps and plans or, better yet, create your own. You can then plot which team member goes where, and figure out the best way to achieve your objective.

In most games, sending out computer-controlled characters ends in bloody tragedy, but in Rainbow Six, your team members start out a lot smarter than you. They’ll usually complete their objectives if given sensible orders. Meanwhile, you can play the hero — barge into a room full of terrorists and blast at everyone except the hostages. The level of difficulty depends on the situation.

The single-player game seems relatively short and easy — but the challenge soon mounts. Once you’ve tested your skills in the single-player missions, you’ll be ready for the online multiplayer action (for up to 16 players), where the game really comes into its own. The wide range of options includes competitive one-on-one death matches and cooperative team-based strategies. Stealth and cunning are still key — in Quake, you can happily take a direct hit to the face with a rail-gun and survive, but in Rainbow Six, a single pistol shot to the head will finish you.

Rainbow Six has a few technical issues. The game requires some pretty meaty specifications for good performance, and has retained many of the PC version’s flaws — clipping errors and occasional problems with the artificial intelligence of team members. More than once you’ll curse your “buddies” as they jam up in a narrow corridor and give away your position.

The Mac version is superior to the PC game in a couple of ways. It’s easier to install and has a much better interface. The game also comes complete with an extra mission pack (Eagle Watch), expanding the longevity of the single-player game. It’s not hard to recommend Rainbow Six. The sheer wealth of options and missions, combined with the timeless multiplayer action and sophisticated gameplay, make it an all-time classic.

0’Connor, Frank. (March 2000). Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. MacAddict. (pg. 51).

Download Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.6 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

• 200 MHz PowerPC 604 processor
• 64 MB of RAM
• 275 MB of free hard drive space
• Rage Pro accelerator

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver