Soldiers Of The Sun

Soldiers of the Sun is a side-scrolling arcade rescue shooter by Ben Spees, published as shareware by Mixed Metaphor Software in 1995. You pilot a small, upgradeable patrol ship against the alien forces of Hyperion Six, recovering kidnapped hostages level by level. This entry tracks the earlier 1.1 release that predates the better-known 3.0 build.

The Original Branch

Version 1.1 is the smaller, earlier package archived on Macintosh Garden at roughly 1.99 MB. It establishes the formula the 3.0 build later expanded: fly out, locate hostages on each Hyperion Six level, and shepherd them back to home base while the planet's defense grid hunts you down. Mixed Metaphor's documentation calls the player ship "puny but expandable."

How It Differs From 3.0

The 3.0 release (tracked as soldiers-sun, nid 10538) shipped as separate 68K and PowerPC builds with steeper RAM and disk requirements. The 1.1 build is the leaner original and is the version typically referenced as the game's first public release; both are preserved together on the same Macintosh Garden page.

System Footprint

Soldiers of the Sun targets the System 7.0 through Mac OS 9 era on 68k or PowerPC hardware, expects 8-bit color, and tests cleanly under SheepShaver and Basilisk II for modern play.

Provenance

The release is credited to Ben Spees writing as Mixed Metaphor Software (gerrit@funnytown.com / mixedmetaphor.com on the original Info-Mac headers) and is dated 1995 on Macintosh Garden's listing.