Great list! A few favourites from my childhood (not sure if they were shareware): Dirt Bike 3.1 by Brad Quick (2D dirt bike racing game, almost a proto-Trials-like) Blobbo by Glenn Andreas (movement based puzzle game) Crystal Quest by Patrick Buckland (mouse controlled space chaos game) Darkwood by Robert Chancellor (very simple but compelling RPG) Glypha III by John Calhoun (Egypt-themed Joust-like) Was glad to see Escape Velocity, and Nova, so high on the list, and to hear you mention Endless Sky, which scratches some of that EV itch.
Man I spent so many hours playing the Dirt Bike games and uploading custom 3d levels to AOL back in the day. I tried playing the 2D Dirt Bike again recently and found the controls so hard now when they were so intuitive when I was a kid.
I genuinely love this channel. This particular video has already unlocked so many memories from my childhood and I'm only 7 games in. Thank you for this.
Thank you for unlocking memories of a few of these games I had completely forgotten despite playing them constantly. Shareware mac demos were so satisfying as a kid, and I praise when one of those magazines had TIMs The Incredible Machine on it. Thanks again. I am extremely tempted to try and emulate a few. Also want to emulate Design It! 3D, as it is what got me into 3D modeling environments.
This reminds me my childhood, and I agree with you, EV Nova is by far the best game, I spent a lot of time, and I am proud to say I reached the end of all races, Polaris, auroran, fed, vellos, pirate, i just love the concept, I mean the space travel, the cosmic map, the areas that have nothing showing us that space is empty, and mysterious, this is why I love space, and this game had such an impact on me. And I am so happy that I finally can meet someone who appreciate this game as I do. Love you, man I subscribed.
I 100% support EV Nova as number one, but I'm kinda surprised none of dongleware's sharewasre games were on the list. PerOxyd, Bolo and Tubular Worlds in particular were absolutely fantastic, imho, though admittedly none of them are Mac exclusive.
There are so many entries that are favorites of mine, but I saw a lot that are new to me that i really want to check out! So much nostalgia in sucj a short time. I think my facorite thing was jearing all the short, familiar sound effects. Great job and thanks!
Now THIS looks like a hell of a video. Very glad to learn more about this corner of the gaming scene that I don't know that much about, despite having tried a good few of the games that I'd never have heard of it they hadn't been covered on this channel (Unicycle, Moz Pong, Skyscraper and SimTower). And to think I only found this channel because I wanted to show an old friend "Duck City"!
Three more gems from the PowerPC era: Maniac by Alex Metcalf (Pac-Man with word guessing), Space Debris by Richard Bannister (a more modern Crystal Quest, which could also be on this list), and Giza by Squeegee Software (1st person dungeon crawler)
I didn't realise Maniac had word guessing, assumed it was just straight up Pac Man. I'll have to fire that one up soon! Thanks! Space Debris I meant to put in the 'almost' bit at the start... and forgot. Already had the screen recording of that too. Darn.
Maniac is playable in Basilisk, but a bit stuttery and the music doesn't play all instruments. These glitches were introduced on MacOS 8 and later. Should ideally be played on MacOS 7.5-7.6
I've been trying to track down a platformer Mac OS 9 shareware game where you are a grey robot with a single wheel leg. Popular around the time Carmen San Diego games were coming out. Hopping was a major mechanic. I can't remember anything else but that it was a demo I loved and one I wanted to pay for. I think it was a puzzle game. Hand drawn simple but polished feel. Short levels and the screen didn't move. 2D playfield like Munchies. I went through every upload on macintosh repository and didn't see it.
I played a bunch of these because they were on CD's taped to the front of Mac magazines in the 90's. Could probably have predicted that an EV game would be number 1, although I never actually played Nova- I had a PC by that point, I think. For what it's worth, I remember finding an insanely late-90's South Park Easter Egg in EV Override. If you chose 'Kenny' as your character name and got killed, a message popped up saying 'Oh my God, they killed Kenny!' There were a bunch of great games on those disks, although the shareware kind of blurs into the demos a bit after more than 20 years.
Thank you so much for this. I was trying to track down eight iron for the past couple weeks as I’ve been getting back in the shmups that was like the first shooter I played besides Starfox way back in the day.
I loved this video. I played about 75% of these titles in my childhood with my brother and cousins. My favorite was Harry the Handsome Executive, my brother and one of my uncles was the EV games. My grandfather's favorite was Bubble Trouble, another uncle's favorite was Snood. I also loved Monkey Shines, Boom, Greebles, Factory and The Zone a lot. So many good titles. I was very fortunate to have these games growing up in the 90s.
There used to be a firefighter game from what i remember and can’t seem to find anything about it online. It’s like it never existed but i know it did!
I remember playing the shareware versions of most of these games, but I also remember growing up relatively poor and not registering very many of them and not being able to convince my folks to do so either. EV Nova and its predecessors were the G.O.A.T. of shareware games, but Greebles was amazing also.
Thanks for making this, definitely triggered some great nostalgia as a 30-something who played many of these growing up and - as a toddler - unplugged mom's Macintosh II when she was working on taxes. Sorry mom.
Great list, lots on here that are new to me. I especially want to try out Glimmer, it looks really cool. Avara of course would be at the top of my list, it's one of my favorite games of all time. I appreciate the printed titles at the end, but if you make another video like this, I would suggest printing the titles in the intro for each game as well. Some of them were difficult to understand.
8:21 there was also another sci-fi 4x shareware game for the mac titled Galactic Core, which was published by spiderweb software back in the day, afaik one of just 4 games not developed by Jeff Vogel that spiderweb published.
trying to find and oldschool mac games, it was first person maze, gives me windows screensaver vibes, but had enemys/monsters in the maze that would end game if touched, does it ring any bells?
When I was like 7 years old I played Yipe as a kid now I am 28 and the vague memory of the game was in my mind my whole life, thanks to you I found it.
Somthing about those old mac graphics. I remember as a kid thinking it looks so cutting edge. It still has a nice appeal to it to this day. Miss those times so very much.
Congrats on finding the original Super Ships. :) Where did you actually find it? The Geneforge and Avernum games are generally worth a look. They're all available on Steam, I believe. And my dad still loves playing Snood, even today. Also, surprised to not see Shadow Wraith or its sequel, Souls in the System on your list. Or were they not shareware?
Mac Garden user MrDav found it but didn't specify where from. Shadow Wraith is indeed superb but its retail, a boxed copy sits on my shelf 👍 Souls in the System is too but is much more elusive. Still on the hunt for that one 🔎
@@YesterYearsMacGames Interesting, I'm pretty certain it was shareware. Anyway, Souls in the System is on Macintosh Repository, but I was never able to get one of the downloads to run on Sheepshaver. Sadly I don't have any original Macintosh hardware to try it. Boxed version... who knows. I decided to work on my own little "sequel", but I doubt it'll be as good as the original. :)
As the author of Tanks of Terror, I'll take #47, it's an honor! Right when I'm getting back into indie game development, too!
Great list! A few favourites from my childhood (not sure if they were shareware):
Dirt Bike 3.1 by Brad Quick (2D dirt bike racing game, almost a proto-Trials-like)
Blobbo by Glenn Andreas (movement based puzzle game)
Crystal Quest by Patrick Buckland (mouse controlled space chaos game)
Darkwood by Robert Chancellor (very simple but compelling RPG)
Glypha III by John Calhoun (Egypt-themed Joust-like)
Was glad to see Escape Velocity, and Nova, so high on the list, and to hear you mention Endless Sky, which scratches some of that EV itch.
Man I spent so many hours playing the Dirt Bike games and uploading custom 3d levels to AOL back in the day.
I tried playing the 2D Dirt Bike again recently and found the controls so hard now when they were so intuitive when I was a kid.
I thought I had tried every Mac shareware game with my MacAddict subscription in the 90s, but I hadn’t heard of half of these games. Great video!
Haha same here.
If you need another nostalgia hit, all the MacAddicts are archived over on the Internet Archive.
I genuinely love this channel. This particular video has already unlocked so many memories from my childhood and I'm only 7 games in. Thank you for this.
Thank you for letting us know that Greebles was re-released on Steam!
That game was wild for me and my sibs back in the day.
Can't believe you got glimmer so low! With 3d glasses this wowed me like I was in 1998
Thank you for unlocking memories of a few of these games I had completely forgotten despite playing them constantly. Shareware mac demos were so satisfying as a kid, and I praise when one of those magazines had TIMs The Incredible Machine on it.
Thanks again. I am extremely tempted to try and emulate a few. Also want to emulate Design It! 3D, as it is what got me into 3D modeling environments.
This reminds me my childhood, and I agree with you, EV Nova is by far the best game, I spent a lot of time, and I am proud to say I reached the end of all races, Polaris, auroran, fed, vellos, pirate, i just love the concept, I mean the space travel, the cosmic map, the areas that have nothing showing us that space is empty, and mysterious, this is why I love space, and this game had such an impact on me. And I am so happy that I finally can meet someone who appreciate this game as I do. Love you, man I subscribed.
I 100% support EV Nova as number one, but I'm kinda surprised none of dongleware's sharewasre games were on the list. PerOxyd, Bolo and Tubular Worlds in particular were absolutely fantastic, imho, though admittedly none of them are Mac exclusive.
I got a Shipped notification from eBay today; the noise was almost exactly one from Oxyd. It instantly brought back nostalgia.
33 is like the old arcade game Quantum (which used a track ball)
Solarian II been looking everywhere for this. Cheers.
is there any modern adaptation or clone of Short Circuit? such a banger puzzle game!
Great video! Though, I would liked to have seen the names of the games on-screen ala the "didn't quite make the list" games at the start.
There are so many entries that are favorites of mine, but I saw a lot that are new to me that i really want to check out! So much nostalgia in sucj a short time. I think my facorite thing was jearing all the short, familiar sound effects. Great job and thanks!
Now THIS looks like a hell of a video. Very glad to learn more about this corner of the gaming scene that I don't know that much about, despite having tried a good few of the games that I'd never have heard of it they hadn't been covered on this channel (Unicycle, Moz Pong, Skyscraper and SimTower). And to think I only found this channel because I wanted to show an old friend "Duck City"!
Three more gems from the PowerPC era: Maniac by Alex Metcalf (Pac-Man with word guessing), Space Debris by Richard Bannister (a more modern Crystal Quest, which could also be on this list), and Giza by Squeegee Software (1st person dungeon crawler)
I didn't realise Maniac had word guessing, assumed it was just straight up Pac Man. I'll have to fire that one up soon! Thanks! Space Debris I meant to put in the 'almost' bit at the start... and forgot. Already had the screen recording of that too. Darn.
Maniac is playable in Basilisk, but a bit stuttery and the music doesn't play all instruments. These glitches were introduced on MacOS 8 and later. Should ideally be played on MacOS 7.5-7.6
APERION!! Thank you for letting me justify sending this video to my dad :D
I've been trying to track down a platformer Mac OS 9 shareware game where you are a grey robot with a single wheel leg. Popular around the time Carmen San Diego games were coming out. Hopping was a major mechanic. I can't remember anything else but that it was a demo I loved and one I wanted to pay for. I think it was a puzzle game. Hand drawn simple but polished feel. Short levels and the screen didn't move. 2D playfield like Munchies.
I went through every upload on macintosh repository and didn't see it.
I played a bunch of these because they were on CD's taped to the front of Mac magazines in the 90's. Could probably have predicted that an EV game would be number 1, although I never actually played Nova- I had a PC by that point, I think. For what it's worth, I remember finding an insanely late-90's South Park Easter Egg in EV Override. If you chose 'Kenny' as your character name and got killed, a message popped up saying 'Oh my God, they killed Kenny!' There were a bunch of great games on those disks, although the shareware kind of blurs into the demos a bit after more than 20 years.
Thank you so much for this. I was trying to track down eight iron for the past couple weeks as I’ve been getting back in the shmups that was like the first shooter I played besides Starfox way back in the day.
I loved this video. I played about 75% of these titles in my childhood with my brother and cousins. My favorite was Harry the Handsome Executive, my brother and one of my uncles was the EV games. My grandfather's favorite was Bubble Trouble, another uncle's favorite was Snood.
I also loved Monkey Shines, Boom, Greebles, Factory and The Zone a lot. So many good titles. I was very fortunate to have these games growing up in the 90s.
There used to be a firefighter game from what i remember and can’t seem to find anything about it online. It’s like it never existed but i know it did!
I remember playing the shareware versions of most of these games, but I also remember growing up relatively poor and not registering very many of them and not being able to convince my folks to do so either. EV Nova and its predecessors were the G.O.A.T. of shareware games, but Greebles was amazing also.
Thanks for making this, definitely triggered some great nostalgia as a 30-something who played many of these growing up and - as a toddler - unplugged mom's Macintosh II when she was working on taxes. Sorry mom.
Fantastic picks! I think a shout-out to Spaceward Ho! by Delta Tao would also be merited for another game in the turn-based space strategy genre.
Immediately subscribed. Brilliant trip to the past.
Great list, lots on here that are new to me. I especially want to try out Glimmer, it looks really cool. Avara of course would be at the top of my list, it's one of my favorite games of all time.
I appreciate the printed titles at the end, but if you make another video like this, I would suggest printing the titles in the intro for each game as well. Some of them were difficult to understand.
8:21 there was also another sci-fi 4x shareware game for the mac titled Galactic Core, which was published by spiderweb software back in the day, afaik one of just 4 games not developed by Jeff Vogel that spiderweb published.
It's from before the color era, but I would include Scarab of RA
31:21 - Solarian II is the greatest. And speedrunnable!
I played so much Realmz!!!!
trying to find and oldschool mac games, it was first person maze, gives me windows screensaver vibes, but had enemys/monsters in the maze that would end game if touched, does it ring any bells?
Perhaps one of the MazeWorld games?
Corking list!
When I was like 7 years old I played Yipe as a kid now I am 28 and the vague memory of the game was in my mind my whole life, thanks to you I found it.
Somthing about those old mac graphics. I remember as a kid thinking it looks so cutting edge. It still has a nice appeal to it to this day. Miss those times so very much.
Congrats on finding the original Super Ships. :) Where did you actually find it?
The Geneforge and Avernum games are generally worth a look. They're all available on Steam, I believe.
And my dad still loves playing Snood, even today.
Also, surprised to not see Shadow Wraith or its sequel, Souls in the System on your list. Or were they not shareware?
Mac Garden user MrDav found it but didn't specify where from. Shadow Wraith is indeed superb but its retail, a boxed copy sits on my shelf 👍
Souls in the System is too but is much more elusive. Still on the hunt for that one 🔎
@@YesterYearsMacGames Interesting, I'm pretty certain it was shareware. Anyway, Souls in the System is on Macintosh Repository, but I was never able to get one of the downloads to run on Sheepshaver. Sadly I don't have any original Macintosh hardware to try it. Boxed version... who knows.
I decided to work on my own little "sequel", but I doubt it'll be as good as the original. :)
I appreciate the coverage of this niche of games, many of them were a pleasant part of my childhood!
I remember Burning Rubber! Fun game. And I've been looking for Battlin' Babe for like 5 years!
Bumbler too!
Snood! Wow good memory.
Munchies! I Loved that game.