Surgery

Surgery! is a hilarious 1-to-4 player party game by Bob Grubb modeled on the classic Operation board game, in which contestants extract parts from a hapless patient without rousing him. The 3.01 release is a complete color rewrite of an older black-and-white version that circulated for years on bulletin boards and shareware CDs.

Gameplay

Players take turns picking absurd objects out of the patient's body using a steady hand and the mouse. Touch the wrong area and the patient wakes, ending the turn. The game scales from solo play up to four-player hot-seat sessions, making it well suited to family and party use.

Color Rewrite

Where the original release was strictly black-and-white System 6 era fare, version 3.01 was rebuilt from scratch for any 256-color or better Mac. The result is a much more presentable parlor game that retains the goofy charm of the older edition.

Distribution

Distributed as $10 shareware by author Bob Grubb (bobgrubb@ewol.com), Surgery! was a fixture of late-1990s Info-Mac and shareware-CD compilations. It is preserved in the Info-Mac game archive as surgery-301.hqx.

Audience

Marketed for kids of all ages, the game's appeal is its low barrier to entry, instantly recognizable Operation premise, and the comedic value of seeing the patient jolt awake.