Squirt Derby
| Filename | squirt-derby-223.hqx |
|---|---|
| Size | 7,830.2 KB (8018107 bytes) |
| Architecture | PowerPC |
| Downloads | 9 |
Squirt Derby is a 1999 Macintosh racing-management shareware game by Prisim Software (also makers of Get Rich Quick and Shattered Stone). Rather than a real-time racer, it is a quirky bet-and-train management game built unusually in MetaCard, a more capable HyperCard-style authoring environment, in which the player wagers, upgrades, and arms a chosen runner across roughly 20 rounds for a championship cup.
Setting and theme
The game is built around a deliberately silly fictional racing circuit. The player picks a character to compete against four AI opponents, with side-business systems including a loan-shark "thug" character who fronts cash, an in-game gambling parlor, and a weapons vendor. The tone is closer to a tongue-in-cheek browser game than a sports sim.
Gameplay
Each cycle the player can train their runner to improve stats, buy weaponry to harass opponents in upcoming races, place bets on race outcomes (including against their own racer), and borrow money to keep solvent between events. Winnings and successful bets fund the next round of upgrades; players who lose races and bets repeatedly fall into debt to the loan-shark NPC. The campaign runs for about 20 races to determine the cup winner.
Engine and technical changes
Squirt Derby was authored in MetaCard, a slightly more advanced HyperCard clone, which gave the game cross-platform portability and rapid scripting at the cost of more limited animation. It is a PowerPC Mac title requiring thousands of colors, 640×480 resolution, and at least 10 MB of RAM — light by 1999 standards but tied to the MetaCard runtime.
Development and release
Released as Squirt Derby! 2.2.3 via Info-Mac and similar shareware channels in 1999 by Prisim Software, it was distributed as a small downloadable installer and is preserved today on Macintosh Garden and the Macintosh Repository (entry 4246). The developer's sibling titles in the same period followed the same MetaCard-based, management-flavored design philosophy.
Reception and legacy
The game received no formal magazine reviews, but later retro coverage — including a YouTube playthrough titled "Squirt Derby – A Daft Racer Management Game for Classic Macintosh" — has affectionately revisited it as a charming oddity of the late-90s Mac shareware scene. Its blend of betting, training, and arming-your-racer mechanics anticipates the much later browser idle/management genre.
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