Macattack

MacAttack is a fast-action vertical shooter released in 1993, billed as a Macintosh-exclusive take on Atari's Tempest. Developed by Roger Kemper at New Reality Entertainment and published by GameTek, it cast players as defenders of "the Net" across waves of geometric enemies, blending arcade reflex play with the era's color-capable Macs.

Tempest, Reborn for the Mac

The game tracks closely with the same vector-arcade lineage that produced Juri Munkki's Arashi and the later STORM, projecting a tube-shaped playfield down the screen and challenging players to sweep enemies before they crawl up the rim. Where Tempest used true vector hardware, MacAttack ran on raster Color QuickDraw, leaning on chunky 256-color sprites and Sound Manager 3.0 audio for impact.

Shareware and Commercial Hybrid

MacAttack had an unusual distribution life. It shipped as a boxed commercial floppy through GameTek and was simultaneously distributed as Kagi-registered shareware, and it later turned up on bundle CD-ROMs such as MacPack Blitz. The original 1.0.4 floppy build famously required a write-enabled disk to launch, an artifact of its early copy-protection scheme.

Compatibility Notes

The minimum target was a color-capable Mac (SE/30 or later) running System 6.0.7 or higher with 1.5 MB free RAM, with 2+ MB and Sound Manager 3.0 recommended. The 68k binary survives on later hardware, though a community patch is needed for iMacs and G3s to avoid a crash on quit. The latest preserved release is version 1.99.

Legacy

MacAttack remains a footnote in early-90s Mac arcade history, frequently cited alongside Arashi as proof that the platform could host serious twitch-shooter design even before the Power Macintosh transition.