Sumo

SUMO is Stephen Linhart's surrealist arcade game, released in 1994 (v1.0.3) and re-released as freeware for personal use in 1998. The pitch on the upload sets the tone: "The fast action, constant challenge, wild and outlandish game of harmony and balance! In SUMO you are there, and there is a surrealistic, alien version of sumo wrestling."

Core loop

Macintosh Garden's one-liner is exact: "Try to knock your opponent's marble out of the ring." Players slam marble-like avatars at each other in a circular arena, sumo-style, trying to knock the other off the platform. Two-player support is built in, and the perspective is isometric.

The learning AI

The hook Linhart called out specifically is the opponent: "A realtime action game with a neural-network that learns." Even by 1990s indie standards this was an unusual claim - the AI adapts to the human player's tendencies over repeated matches rather than running a fixed strategy. It is the feature most contemporary reviews and shareware roundups singled out.

Licensing change

The Info-Mac upload's subject line is "SUMO - action game, now Freeware!" The relicensing from the original commercial release reads, in the author's words: "Copyright 1998 by Stephen Linhart - Free For Personal Use." The MacSoft-published commercial edition predates the freeware re-release.

System requirements

From the BinHex header: "MacOS - Macintosh System 6 or Newer Required." That is one of the lowest floors in the Info-Mac game tree - SUMO will run on essentially any Mac of the era, classic or PowerPC, and SheepShaver handles it without trouble for modern play.

Provenance

Distributed through Info-Mac as sumo-102.hqx with author contact stephen@stephen.com. Macintosh Garden mirrors v1.0.3 as sumo_v103_disk_image.sit (756 KB) with one isometric screenshot, crediting MacSoft as the original publisher and Stephen Linhart as author.