Peg Leg Demo

PegLeg is a 1994 Mac arcade shooter by Sean Ansorge, published by Changeling Software as a High Risk Ventures production. You pilot the Mach Z Battalion Blaster against waves of alien pirates in a top-down field of fire, with full-screen play on any 256-color monitor and one of the first fat-binary builds aimed at the brand-new PowerPC.

Gameplay

The Macintosh Garden entry describes it as a top-down arcade game where "stuff comes down and you shoot it, try not to get hit or run in to something," with a key wrinkle: "your shooter tends to drift when you let go of the controls, so you are constantly correcting." Three difficulty levels (slow, medium, fast) tune the pace, with the high setting noted as "well, fast, particularly on a Power Macintosh."

This release: the demo

The cataloged file is the playable demo (PegLeg* the Demo, v1.0.5). The author's notes track the version history: 1.0.3 added a self-playing attract mode that kicks in after a minute of idle time, and 1.0.5 fixed a screen-redraw bug in the PDS video cards on some early PowerMacs. Cmd-Shift-D triggers the demo mode manually.

Technical notes

PegLeg ships as a fat binary running native on PowerPC and on 68020-and-up 68k Macs. Requirements: System 6.0.7+, 8-bit (256-color or grayscale) video, 32-bit QuickDraw, 1.9 MB free RAM (a 2 MB partition is fine for 13-inch screens, more for larger monitors), and 2.1 MB of disk. Sound Manager 3.0 is recommended.

Pricing and successor

The full game shipped at a US$39.95 SRP, with a US$20 "Reduced Packaging" direct-order option from Changeling. PegLeg later got a sequel, PegLeg 2, published by MacSoft in 1996; commenters on Macintosh Garden remember the original's graphics fondly.