Avalon

Avalon (full title Avalon 2029) is a single-player shoot-em-up action game for Macintosh by Bill Corbett, released as shareware around 1997 and distributed through Info-Mac. The player commands a tank fixed at the bottom of the screen and blasts waves of enemies running across the playfield, working through five distinct mission types and a bonus level.

Gameplay

Action is screen-locked: the tank slides along the bottom edge while enemies appear from above and the sides. The five mission types vary the enemy mix and objective, and a bonus level rewards strong play between mission groups. Powerups dropped during play unlock heavier weaponry as the campaign progresses.

Arsenal

The player can collect five different kinds of guns plus missiles and assorted goodies that augment firepower, defense, or score. Weapon swaps happen mid-fight, encouraging the player to balance held ammunition against the threats currently on screen.

System requirements

Avalon 2029 needs a Macintosh running at least System 7 with Sound Manager 3.0 or later, plus roughly 3 MB of free RAM and 3 MB of hard-drive space. The build in Info-Mac is a single fat binary that runs on 68k and PowerPC Macs of the era.

Distribution

Avalon was uploaded to Info-Mac by Bill Corbett (billc@cs.stanford.edu) and is preserved on Macintosh Garden among the late-1990s Mac shareware action archive. It is a relatively obscure title but representative of the screen-locked tank shooter sub-genre that thrived briefly on the shareware Mac.