Looking for an old Apple Mac 128K game

April 13, 2023 6:24 PM

I've searched through so many illustrated lists online. Can't find it. Game play was simple: Top down 2D with a humanoid player character surrounded by a number of alien-robot things*, also some debris scattered around the field. The player can move one space in one direction each turn, but the bots will move towards them along the shortest distance. You win by getting to a goal or by getting the bots to crash into each other or the debris. *I seem to think they looked like the Red Guards from Star Wars, you know: for a black and white <1>
posted by es_de_bah to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Was it this old daleks game?
posted by WedgedPiano at 6:48 PM on April 13, 2023

From your description I'm almost positive it's Daleks -- but I don't remember a color version. The old familiar black and white version has a few screenshots here. (And yes, comments are directed to a CompuServe address...)
posted by sesquipedalia at 8:11 PM on April 13, 2023

I've seen a lot of reimplementations of Daleks; almost certainly the asker has seen one of those.
posted by Merus at 10:01 PM on April 13, 2023

Here's the DOS version at the Internet Archive; looks like a less-polished version of the Mac game I remember.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:46 AM on April 14, 2023

The one I remember was actually a Mac “Desk Accessory” (programs that could run simultaneously within the Finder, in the days before multitasking) called DAleks. (Get it?)
posted by staggernation at 4:28 AM on April 14, 2023

thanks so much! I swear I spent a whole morning looking thru archives. You guys are great.
posted by es_de_bah at 5:43 AM on April 14, 2023

The one that was a time-destroyer on early Macs was Daleks version 0.3 by Johan Strandberg from April 1984. I'm kind of amazed that there isn't a playable version on the Internet Archive - I shall remedy that this evening.

It looks like this: daleks
posted by scruss at 7:27 AM on April 14, 2023

... and here it is, all playable in the browser: Daleks version 0.3
posted by scruss at 6:56 AM on April 15, 2023