Abbalone

Abbalone 3D is a Macintosh adaptation by Anomic Software of the contemporary abstract strategy board game Abalone, presented on a hexagonal grid with a perspective view of the playing surface. Released in 1996 as shareware, it ran across the late System 7 through Mac OS 9 era and is preserved by Macintosh Garden alongside SheepShaver emulation notes.

About Abalone

Abalone is a two-player abstract game invented in France in 1987. Each side controls fourteen marbles on a hexagonal board and tries to push six of the opponent's marbles off the edge by sumito moves, where a larger in-line group displaces a smaller adjacent one.

The Mac implementation

Anomic's port renders the hexagonal board in a tilted 3D perspective rather than the usual top-down diagram, giving the marbles a tactile, photographed look typical of mid-1990s Mac game art. Standard Abalone rules apply, with mouse-driven group selection and pushes.

Distribution and registration

The build on Macintosh Garden ships as abbalone-3d.hqx (about 1 MB) and includes a registration key field. A demo version with the registration locked has been mentioned in community forum threads about old Mac childhood games.

Compatibility

The title runs on classic Mac OS and is reported to work under SheepShaver for retro play. It is not present in the funet/Info-Mac software mirror.