Looking for an old game for the Mac

June 9, 2006 11:20 PM

Looking for an old Apple Macintosh videogame

First off, apologies for my poor memory of this game that I'll try to describe: there was a videogame (freeware?) for the macintosh back in 1992 or 1993 that featured your character on maybe either wheels or (more likely) a floating board, and you fought against one A.I. opponent in a giant convex bowl. A ball was released into the bowl spinning around, and you scored a point by being the first to catch the ball and put it in a basket/hole in the side of the playing space. Does anyone have any memory of this game? What it was called, if it still exists, anything?

posted by jonson to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Some bad news and some good news:

The bad news is that I can't remember what this game is called and google isn't finding it.

The good news is that I have a copy of it outside in my workshop, and will look it up in the morning if the answer has not been posted.
posted by jdroth at 11:28 PM on June 9, 2006

Pararena - link is to the sequel. You may be able to download the original.
posted by jdroth at 11:36 PM on June 9, 2006

Pararena by John Calhoun. It started life as a shareware app (available here) and was later published commercially (here).
posted by disarray at 11:40 PM on June 9, 2006

Yep. That's it. Pararena.

Trying to remind myself of the name of this game, I stumbled across a pretty cool website that has many screenshots of old Mac games as animated .gifs, if you're just looking for a little bit of nostalgia or curiosity. Here's the page with Pararena (it's at the bottom)
posted by furiousthought at 11:47 PM on June 9, 2006

Actually, nobody touch that. I think I've finally found something worthy of the front page.
posted by furiousthought at 11:56 PM on June 9, 2006

You people are amazing, thanks!
posted by jonson at 12:35 AM on June 10, 2006

So... as a follow up, now that I've sold my soul to the devil and use a PC these days, is there any sort of emulation environment that would be free (not interested in purchasing a Mac, nor expensive Virtual Mac software, if such exists, solely to play this game) where I could run this? I'm betting there isn't, but just thought I'd check...
posted by jonson at 12:39 AM on June 10, 2006

Ah, soft dorothy software. How soft you were.
posted by fleacircus at 1:06 AM on June 10, 2006

Jonson, I haven't used a PC in several years, but when I left I was running some sort of System 7 emulator that worked like a charm. It would even read floppies. Unfortunately (for you), I don't have the time nor the inclination to figure our how I did that, but rest assured: it can be done, and without much difficulty. Just takes some patient googling.
posted by jdroth at 1:21 AM on June 10, 2006

Actually, I took your advice, jdroth, and ended up with Basilisk II, and an old Quadra 650 ROM, and played Pararena for the first time in 14 years. Ridiculous, that in one night I could go from not having even thought of this game in a decade to remembering, finding a copy, creating a virtual computer environment & playing it in the space of a couple hours. Silly old internet, I love you.
posted by jonson at 1:24 AM on June 10, 2006

Yes, but what would really make me just die is if the internet would allow me to run Xybots (an old arcade game from the same era) on my g5. That would be completely insane.

I have insomnia. I'll see what I can dig up on Xybots...
posted by jdroth at 1:27 AM on June 10, 2006

This is becoming quite the Green/Blue cross pollination. If you find something on xybots, post it to the front page to keep the trend going. BTW, I'm not familiar with xybots, but if it's an arcade game, is it not playable via MAME?
posted by jonson at 1:35 AM on June 10, 2006

Lots to see here
posted by psyward at 2:38 AM on June 10, 2006

Love the 2-bit breasts on the splash screens.
posted by hoborg at 6:36 PM on June 10, 2006