Galaxus

Galaxus is a 1996 vertical-scrolling space and air combat shoot-em-up for classic Mac OS, written by Martin Christen and published by the Swiss developer Algomedia Software. The player flies a fighter through a series of mission-based levels, dodging waves of incoming enemies and bullets, and uses the cash earned between sorties to buy ship upgrades.

Top-down shoot-em-up loop

The action is straight vertical-scrolling arcade: fixed forward speed, free horizontal movement, and continuous fire. Enemy ships and ground installations stream down the screen in patterned waves, with periodic mid-level sub-bosses and a larger boss encounter to close most missions out.

Mission and upgrade system

Between sorties the player visits a shop screen to spend mission earnings on ship upgrades - weapons, secondary fire, defensive systems - layered on top of the base fighter. This light progression hook gives Galaxus a longer arc than a pure arcade clone, rewarding survival in earlier missions with more firepower for later ones.

Developer and origin

Algomedia Software was a small Swiss Mac developer, and Galaxus is one of its few surviving shareware titles. The game shipped as a FAT binary - a single application bundle that ran natively on both 68k Macs (68040-class) and PowerPC machines - rather than separate downloads for each architecture.

Platform and preservation

Galaxus targets System 7.0 - 7.6 and runs on Mac OS 9, with 68k and PPC support in the same FAT application. Macintosh Garden hosts the preserved download under Algomedia Software's author page and tags the game as Arcade (Vertical Scrolling). The game also has community video coverage on YouTube as a Macintosh game from 1996.