looking for wonderland

November 3, 2008 6:00 AM

I'm writing an MA thesis based (in part) on American McGee's Alice... problem is I haven't played it and can't seem to find a copy for Mac OS in Canada.

Amazon.ca doesn't have it at all. Amazon.com has it, but won't ship it to Canada (also costs about $75-$100). Ebay only has it for Windows. I could get that and load parallels (or something), but I'd prefer to find a copy for Mac. So far no luck on Craigslist. The only other option I've come up with is to have Amazon ship it to a friend in the US, and have them ship it to me. Again, I'd rather just take a trip to Toronto, if possible.

I'm in Hamilton, ON - is there anywhere in this area (including Toronto) that I might find a copy of this game. My supervisor is putting the pressure on.

posted by ndicecco to Media & Arts (15 answers total)

I might get creamed for suggesting this, but if it's a hassle to deal with moving a physical copy of the game around, you could just buy the cheapest copy you can find, have it shipped as a gift to a friend in the states, and then download a copy. You've paid for the game and can keep the receipt to prove it, but don't have to deal with the hassle of moving the physical copy around.

Also, have you checked the publisher/producer's websites? Some game companies are starting to put their older catalogs online for download-- Blizzard has been pretty successful with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if other companies with legacy titles like Alice are doing the same.
posted by baphomet at 6:09 AM on November 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Some game companies are starting to put their older catalogs online for download

Unfortunately, Alice was published by EA and they don't have any Mac titles available for download. The developer, Rogue Entertainment, has since closed.

Given that you're looking for a game that's almost a decade old on non-gaming platform, baphomet's buy-and-BitTorrent suggestion is probably your best bet. Torrent it and you can start working on it immediately. Have it shipped to an American friend and have them ship it as a gift to Canada. By the time you need to show anything to your supervisor or faculty, you should have the actual game.
posted by Nelsormensch at 6:22 AM on November 3, 2008

Best answer: If you can't find a physical copy for yourself and downloading isn't an option, you could just watch a playthrough of the game. Here are two different Lets Play runs of the game, and here are some speed runs. The speed runs are probably not ideal to watch since they don't represent typical gameplay, and they'll skip the story elements entirely, but if you're short on time they might be of some help.

Speaking of time, if you do get a copy be advised that the game will likely take somewhere between 10-12 hours to complete, so make sure you've got enough time blocked out. It's one of my favorites, so I do hope you get a chance to enjoy it.
posted by CheshireCat at 6:31 AM on November 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

n-thing the torrent route, as I believe Alice is abandonware at this point. Or you could try contacting American McGee.
posted by zippy at 6:34 AM on November 3, 2008

Also, while you're waiting to get the full game, here's a forum post with a download link for the mac demo of Alice.
posted by zippy at 6:39 AM on November 3, 2008

Will Amazon ship to General Delivery? Getting a P.O. Box in, say, Lewiston, NY for a single item might not be the most cost-effective thing to do, but if they'll ship to the Post Office there you could nip over the Niagara and pick it up.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:53 AM on November 3, 2008

Does GameTap carry this? That might be an idea.
posted by GilloD at 7:31 AM on November 3, 2008

Here's a working link to the demo. Try it out before buying a copy of the game to see if it even works at all (it didn't work on my MacBook). Alice was released 8 years ago in the very early days of Mac OS X, so it'll be expecting older versions of libraries and also be running under Rosetta emulation. You'll probably have a lot better luck getting the Windows version to run under VMWare/Parallels or Boot Camp.
posted by zsazsa at 7:35 AM on November 3, 2008

I think you may have to grit your teeth and run it on a PC.
posted by Class Goat at 9:01 AM on November 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Here's a complete, room-by-room walkthrough of the game.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:20 AM on November 3, 2008

FWIW, I've just verified that the Alice demo won't run in Rosetta under Leopard on a MacBook Pro. I had little hope that it would run, but wanted confirmation one way or the other. This almost certainly means that the full version won't run either unless you build an old PPC Mac running Mac OS X 10.1 or Mac OS X 10.2.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 9:49 AM on November 3, 2008

Ehhh...the 1st commenter had it right.
Buy it, send it to where ever, the go to somewhere like demonoid.com or Mininova and grab the torrent.

It plays fine via BootCamp running Vista. Dont over think it.

Im much more interested in what and or how your writing a MA thesis on a video game. Seriously, I would love to hear. Send me a letter on here if you have the time or get the chance. I need to go to your school.....


Take Care
posted by TeachTheDead at 10:14 AM on November 3, 2008

http://www.cmec.ca/copyright/stat-eng.htm

"Section 27(2)(a) of the Copyright Act provides that the following does not constitute an infringement of copyright:

"any fair dealing with any work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review or newspaper summary."

The present Act does not define fair dealing. Making single copies of periodical articles, short stories and chapters from books is defended as fair dealing by teachers, students and researchers across Canada, but creators may disagree. The practice, however, has never been challenged in the courts."

This is a copyright gray area but I would argue that you should have the right to make a copy of the game for research purposes without infringing, given that it is (apparently) impossible or very difficult to obtain the game through legitimate means. See also wikipedia. Certainly you should be allowed to download the game for a limited time, either until you can obtain a legitimate copy, or until you've met your research needs. After that, you can simply delete it.
posted by PercussivePaul at 11:32 AM on November 3, 2008

I'm pretty sure I've got a copy floating around somewhere. It's yours if you want it.
posted by lekvar at 3:18 PM on November 3, 2008

Response by poster: All of these have been very helpful - the play-through video is especially useful, while I take all of the other suggestions into consideration. Thank you all!
posted by ndicecco at 5:35 PM on November 5, 2008