A helicopter, a tiny little man, and a horse-drawn wagon. That doesn't sound like much of an idea for a game, but it's the basis for StuntCopter, a shareware Mac game released by teenage programmer Duane Blehm in October 1986. Blehm released two other games -- Zero Gravity and Cairo ShootOut! -- and updated versions of StuntCopter before his untimely death a few years later. His parents decided...

The quintessential paper plane simulator, John Calhoun's shareware classic Glider first emerged in 1988 "for all Macs". Its basic premise involved the player guiding a paper plane through 15 rooms, while avoiding obstacles (including a cat) and keeping the "glider" airborne, with the help of upward air movement from vents. Subsequent versions added new rooms, features, and obstacles, but the...

Way back in 1993 a college student by the name of Andrew Welch released a small shareware game called Maelstrom. Despite being little more than an Asteroids clone -- created mainly to prove that a Mac IIsi could handle decent 256 color animation -- the game was so successful that it led to the formation of Ambrosia Software.  Subsequent games solidified the developer in Mac gaming history,...