Mac Ski

MacSki is Storm Impact's color skiing simulator for the Macintosh, developed by David Cook and Tom Zehner and originally published with XOR Corporation in 1990. The game ships with a built-in Course Editor that lets players design their own runs alongside the bundled slalom, downhill, and obstacle-strewn courses.

Race and design

The publisher's blurb: "Grab your skis and get ready to race! Select a course from a number of challenging runs or design your own dream course using the built-in Course Editor. Change the weather and snow conditions - set the level of difficulty to the point where you feel challenged." The vertical-scrolling viewport tracks the skier downhill while obstacles and course gates close in.

Snowmen, penguins, and snow bunnies

Macintosh Garden's description leans on the cast: "MacSki includes Snowmen and Penguins, Igloos, and Snow Bunnies, and much more!" Some of the more exotic bundled courses ask the player to ski under Stonehenge pieces or knock down penguins and snowmen as scoring objectives, putting MacSki closer to a playful arcade sim than a strict racing simulation.

Presentation and tooling

Digitized sounds and color graphics were a contemporary selling point; the Course Editor was the longer-tail hook, letting players keep the game alive long after the bundled runs were memorised. Settings cover weather, snow conditions, and ski type, all tunable per session. Mouse and keyboard controls are both supported.

Provenance

Developers David Cook and Tom Zehner; published by Storm Impact and XOR Corporation. Macintosh Garden lists 1990 as the release year and classifies the title as Sports with a vertical-scrolling perspective. MacSki was Storm Impact's second-most popular series after TaskMaker. This Info-Mac node mirrors the same title; the canonical Macintosh Garden page is at games/macski.