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Oxyd Imagine yourself as a marble and all the perils you might have to go through in everyday life and you have Oxyd, Dongleware Publishing’s 1993 marble simulator shareware game. Actually more of a puzzle game, players guide a black marble through mazes and traps to activate contact buttons, match colors and proceed to the next level. Amazingly well done for a shareware game, the graphics are sharp, the sounds fun to listen to and the sense of humor within the game makes it something worth picking up every so often. Items such as coffee, cherries, umbrellas, sticks of dynamite and extra lives make the game even more fun, Oxyd containing a cool sense of humor and style that doesn’t fade.
Perhaps the coolest thing about this game is the sheer size of it. Dongleware presented players with a free game that took even the more hard-core players hours to complete. The kicker came at the end of the free demo when players learned that for a small price, they can receive the full game, complete with hundreds of extra levels to work through. The entire package is as addictive as any game currently on the market, Oxyd drew players in to the point that they’d be carefully move their mice across their desks to have as much control as possible while navigating their way through a difficult level. The game isn’t based on shooting the most enemies or having the highest end computer, but on patience and intelligence, something that makes for an extremely fun combination. Maelstrom The mother of Asteroids clones for the Macintosh, Ambrosia Software’s Maelstrom is the early 90’s Macintosh shareware answer to this arcade classic. Players take control of a small blue spaceship and must blow passing asteroids to bits while avoiding collisions as well as repelling the occasional flying saucer attack. Complimenting the game’s cool arcade style is a sense of humor and style that takes advantage of great graphics for early 90’s technology and clever sounds that make the game fun. The true thrill of the game is both the game’s gradual but unrelenting pace and the items available to the player. Weapons such as machine guns and three-way shots can be picked up while engine boosts, shields and brake upgrades can help the ship stop on a dime before it collides with an asteroid.
What starts out as a simple game quickly becomes frantic as the levels go by, the numbers of asteroids and alien attack growing at every turn. Maelstrom mutates from a casual walk in the park to deciding the next move in a split second almost without warning, providing both a great initial challenge and the desire to go back and do better. Ambrosia Software set out to make a great game and achieved it admirably with Maelstrom, a game that will probably reside on players’ hard drives for as long as their Macs can support it. It may not be your favorite game all the time, but every time you double-click it, you’ll remember why you saved it in the first place...
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