Nort X

Nort X is James Reid's two-player Tron-style lightcycle game for the Classic Mac, a reskinned and reworked version of his earlier Nort 2. Two riders pilot trail-leaving "motorbikes" around an arena, and the loser is whoever crashes into a wall, an obstacle, or the trail their opponent (or they themselves) just laid down.

Lightcycles, Mac-Style

The core loop is pure Tron: ride, leave a trail, force your opponent into yours. Players steer with assigned keys and can pre-place a configurable number of obstacles around the arena. The author notes you can technically ride on top of obstacles "but this is rather pointless" - they exist to be avoided.

Pickups Add A Twist

Scattered randomly each round are color-coded pickups: red ones affect the red player, green ones affect the green player, plus neutral items. A missile pickup blasts a hole in the trail directly ahead of the player who fires it, the 'U' key uses the opponent's most recent pickup against them, and 'P' clears the field and respawns a fresh set. Picked-up items fire on the dedicated use-pickup key.

What Changed From Nort 2

Nort X is described by Reid as "a modified version of nort 2" that keeps the fine-tuned gameplay but swaps in new graphics. Macintosh Garden's listing additionally credits it with "a daft soundtrack and... 'recycled' assets" and adds modifiers like nitro boosts and teleportation pickups to the lightcycle formula.

System Requirements

Despite the "X" in the name, the Macintosh Garden listing classes Nort X as a PPC Mac OS 9 title rather than a Mac OS X port. The original Nort v2 (jmreid@teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au, 1995) ran across the broader Classic Mac generation.