Mac Game Marathon [large images]

[Weasel]

Diamonds (1995, Varcon Systems)

A simple-looking but ultimately frustrating puzzle game. There is a board full of colored blocks, and you are presented with a ball that is constantly bouncing up and down. You are in control of the ball's left and right motion. The objective is to change the ball to different colors by bouncing it off of paint brush blocks, then destroy blocks that match your ball's color. It seems simple enough from the beginning:

But then the very next level gives you this:

Notice how there is no light-blue-colored paint brush block. This means that you are required to hit all the light-blue blocks without ever accidentally hitting the paint brushes, or else you will need to kill your ball (by hitting one of the skull blocks) in order to reset the color. Now it might be because I'm playing on a G3 when this game probably only requires a 68K Mac, but the ball moves quite fast and it is somewhat hard to control.

Later the same year, Varcon Systems released a sequel, More Diamonds. The game is essentially unchanged except for a brand new set of levels...like this one:

Again, no light-blue paint brushes. Level design gets even more unforgiving as time goes on, requiring absolute pixel-perfection in your movements and timing or else you will face certain death.

Diamonds 3D (1996, Varcon Systems)
The next year, Varcon teamed up with publisher MacSoft (a subsidiary of GT Interactive) to release Diamonds 3D. It's not quite what you'd expect; rather than an even more frustrating colored-block-removal game, Diamonds 3D is instead a 3D Breakout-type game with the perspective set behind the paddle. The game controls quite a bit nicer on account of it supporting the mouse, and the ball actually seems to respect some degree of real physics now, as you can influence the direction of the ball by moving your paddle just as the ball hits it. However, much like Diamonds before it, it's quite fast.

I seem to be doing well here...

...shit.

[Weasel]

The Fool's Errand

Originally released in the late 1980's by Cliff Johnson, The Fool's Errand is quite the devious puzzle game, framed with an epic story with characters derived from, of all things, a tarot deck. The Fool is in search of the 14 treasures of the world, and along his journey he meets The Sun, The Moon, The World, The High Priestess, and many others.

(An example of the prose that frames the many puzzles.

TFE's puzzles range from word and picture scrambles to word searches, bizarre variants on Lights Out, and many downright insane variants on the traditional maze. Interestingly, this is the only one of Cliff Johnson's "trilogy" of puzzle games that got a port to a computer outside of the Macintosh - it has colorized versions on MS-DOS and early Amiga computers.

Puzzle Gallery: At The Carnival
Cliff Johnson's second Mac puzzle game. I'll let the title screen explain it for you:

(Yes, even the title screen is a puzzle - here you see it half-completed.)

This has about the same selection of puzzle types as The Fool's Errand, with many puzzles having multiple layers to them - after solving a picture scramble, the finished picture may provide the framework for another puzzle. Solving the puzzles is often worth the time and effort, because while all the puzzles are accessible from the beginning (unlike TFE and the later 3 in Three), solving each of them often reveals a humorous joke at the expense of the amusement park in which the game is set (fittingly named Hazard Park).


A unique variant on the word-scramble/polyomino puzzle, in which the finished puzzle spells out a sentence.

3 in Three

The "final" game in Cliff Johnson's series (after which he would go on to make a series of higher-budget puzzle games for the CD-i, which later got ported to Windows 95 and Mac OS), 3 in Three tells the story of a computer that goes nuts as a result of a power surge that coincidentally happens at the exact same time as a pair of workaholics tries to round off a number in a spreadsheet. 3.333 becomes 3.33, and the last 3 is unceremoniously booted off the spreadsheet, sparking a long series of puzzles to guide the lost 3 back to her spreadsheet.

This is where the puzzles start getting really unique and crazy. Thankfully most of them have a simple and helpful description that at least tells you what the goal is.

System's Twilight
While not designed by Cliff Johnson, this freeware puzzle title is certainly in the same vein as 3 in Three and its ilk, and if anything has even more vicious puzzles, including word manipulation, mazes that change their layout for each step, and wiring puzzles.

System's Twilight is wholly abstract; it does have a story behind it like 3 in Three, but the characters are all strange blobby shapes, and the sound effects are all mouth noises.

This game actually gets so difficult that there is still a website active that contains solutions to every single puzzle in the game, some with graphical aids.

[Weasel]

Should I expand on any of these at all for HG101 articles? There are four Cliff Johnson titles I have yet to play (one of them is because it's not out yet).

[jorpho]

I recall a freeware Windows game by the name of Frozen Fruits that sounds a lot like Diamonds. It seems to be available through www.blueskied.com/fruits1/classic-games.htm .

I also recall a Macintosh 3D Breakout game that looks a lot like Diamonds 3D, only considerably more primitive.

By the way, the engine of the DOS version of The Fool's Errand was re-used for a similar game which apparently isn't nearly as good. It's called Are We There Yet?
www.hotud.org/component/content/article/41-puzzle/19754

[Weasel]

Whoops, looks like I was wrong - the only one of Cliff Johnson's games that didn't get a PC port was 3 in Three, as At The Carnival got a DOS port that was just called Puzzle Gallery.

I should really try downloading the three CD-ROM games from his website; always wanted to try Labyrinth of Crete. =P

[jorpho]

Aye, I've been meaning to check those out forever as well.

Another game I completely forgot about (shame, shame!) is Rescue!. It might bear a superficial resemblance to EGA Trek and other versions of ye olde Star Trek computer game, but it's a good deal more action-oriented.
www.traud.de/rescue/

I also want to check out Asterax again sometime. I saw it once long ago and only recently re-learned its name.
musegames.com/news/games-we-loved/asterax/

[Weasel]

A bit of a bump to describe a search I'm undertaking...

I am presently in search of the Mac version of Super Wing Commander. Super Wing Commander being, naturally enough, a remake of the original Wing Commander by Origin Systems. The game did receive a 3DO release, but it was also ported to PowerPC Macs, and I am having trouble finding the game (for a sane price). eBay, when they actually have it listed, tends to offer prices of $40 and above. I cannot find any other way to get this game. Help would be appreciated.

[Weasel]

I discovered today that Super Wing Commander has a playable demo. However, said demo requires the CD inserted to play. What the hell, demo.

[Weasel]

Labyrinth of Crete (1995, Philips)

Originally a CD-i game developed by Philips Funhouse (a division headed by Cliff Johnson, creator of The Fool's Errand), the failed launch of the Philips CD-i resulted in Funhouse porting their three titles (Cartoon Carnival, Labyrinth of Crete, and Merlin's Apprentice) to Mac OS and Windows 95. Cliff Johnson's website has them available in both flavors for free. The Windows version is nigh impossible to run nowadays. The Mac version, on the other hand, quite enjoys running on Mac OS 9.2.2.


The story casts you as a thief who attempted to steal from the Temple of Hera in ancient Greece. Hera is obviously not too happy with you, and at first, neither is Zeus. So you're stuck into the famed Labyrinth of Crete, which was until recently impossible to escape. However, because Zeus is for whatever reason not enjoying his wife very much anymore (probably something to do with his grandson being a minotaur and all that), he grants you a deal: figure out how to deal with the minotaur of the Labyrinth, solve the puzzles, and escape with your life, and not only do you get to keep your soul (since when was Zeus a taker of souls, anyway?), you are offered the chance to rule a kingdom of your own.

The game proper starts here, in the main room of the labyrinth. Clicking on any of these faces will bring you to a different area. Clicking on the Minotaur just grants you a kind of scary face-to-face with the actual minotaur, which doesn't kill you or anything (he's chained up) but grants a clear picture as to why you can't really get out yet.

The first thing you do in each of the chambers is assemble the corridor in a somewhat Tetris-like arcade minigame. What you're supposed to do here is drop the pieces in the correct places, where you can tell the correct place by observing the blurred picture in the background. Misplacing any pieces means one column of the puzzle will be erased and you'll have to try it again. With about all of the puzzles in this game, you can press the spacebar at any time to hear Cliff explain the goal of the puzzle, get hints, or reset to the beginning of the puzzle (or return to the main chamber).

Once you've built the corridor, you're sent to the next puzzle, which varies depending on the path you picked. This one's weird: you click on each of the letters in IRON, drag them through the maze over the gems which turn the letters into other letters, until the letters instead spell RUBY. I haven't figured this one out yet.

What I especially like about this game is that prior to starting the game, you're asked to select your difficulty level in five different areas, such as Action, Words, and Logic. Thus, the experience can be tailored to people who suck at action games but are great with words, for example.

The production values are vastly higher than Cliff's previous Mac puzzle games, with full voice acting and animation (not provided by the same Russian studio that provided the animations for the Zelda games, thankfully...), and the puzzles are quite well designed as well, showing Cliff and company haven't lost their brain-teasing touch. Recommended.

[susanismyalias]

That seems pretty cool.

[Feynman]

Aug 25, 2010 23:06:48 GMT -5 Weasel said:

Should I expand on any of these at all for HG101 articles? There are four Cliff Johnson titles I have yet to play (one of them is because it's not out yet).

I think you should do an article on SimStapler. Best game EVER.

In all seriousness, these pictures are a real blast from the past for me. When I was still just a wee lad (must have been late elementary, maybe early middle school?), my mother bought a Macintosh Performa, and while I got the old DOS machine all to myself at that point, I naturally had to mess around with the shiny new computer in the house as well. I poked around online for various shareware and freeware games, and I even subscribed to MacAddict magazine (I still have all the discs that came with the magazine to this day).

There was a lot of really fun freeware and shareware games out there. Not only some of the things listed already, but excellent titles like Space Cab, Mantra, Glider 3.0 (which later became the AMAZING Glider 4.0), Arashi, the Ambrosia Software and Spiderweb games... lots of good stuff. And that's just the shit I can remember off the top of my head... if I were to install a mac emulator and dig my old discs out of the closet, I could be here for hours.

The Mac was also home to Pathways Into Darkness, a hybrid FPS/adventure game by Bungie that was WAY ahead of it's time, and really deserves a modern remake.

[Weasel]

Sept 8, 2010 16:12:38 GMT -5 Feynman said:

and I even subscribed to MacAddict magazine (I still have all the discs that came with the magazine to this day).

I'm actually looking for some things from those discs - Freeverse Software no longer offers many of their old software toys (I think the Jared iPhone app is the only one left). I have SimStapler, but I'm missing all the others...I miss Holodeck Swabbie, Banshee Audio Diagnostics, Mr. Relaxer, and the rest that I can't remember off hand anymore (it's been ten years...)

[jorpho]

o rly? I think I have a pile of those old CDs packed away somewhere too.

[Feynman]

Sept 8, 2010 16:37:51 GMT -5 Weasel said:

I'm actually looking for some things from those discs - Freeverse Software no longer offers many of their old software toys (I think the Jared iPhone app is the only one left). I have SimStapler, but I'm missing all the others...I miss Holodeck Swabbie, Banshee Audio Diagnostics, Mr. Relaxer, and the rest that I can't remember off hand anymore (it's been ten years...)

Later this evening when I have time to do so, I'll install Basilisk II and search my old discs... I know for a fact that between all those discs I at least have Jared, Jared Choir, and the holiday Jared.

EDIT: It looks like I won't be able to access my old Mac CDs after all, since Basilisk II won't read CDs in Vista 64, and neither will HFVExplorer. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

[jorpho]

Sept 9, 2010 14:18:47 GMT -5 Feynman said:

EDIT: It looks like I won't be able to access my old Mac CDs after all, since Basilisk II won't read CDs in Vista 64, and neither will HFVExplorer. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Really? Yikes. I'd believe it.

How about ISOBuster? That should be able to read and image HFS CDs.