Requires: Mac Plus or better, 600K RAM for b/w, 1400K for color
Protection: Single-time password
 
Are you one of those people who long for winter yet are living somewhere, like Davis, CA, that is still experiencing temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s with no relief in sight? Perhaps you’re on of those people (like me) who lack the basic coordination required to keep two skis straight when all they want to do is add to the increasing entropy in the universe by heading in opposite directions! Or maybe you’re just looking for a quality, fast-paced arcade game that doesn’t involve blowing things up and that doesn’t require payment in gold bullion. If so, you might want to take a look at the newest version of MacSki, a shareware game published by Storm Impact.
A Mac that Skis? What exactly is MacSki? My first guess was that it was some sort of neat peripheral that would allow my Mac to go gliding down the local slopes but I was wrong. MacSki 1.5 is a shareware skiing arcade game that has, in earlier versions, won major awards for Best Sport Game. Does version 1.5 live up to that standard? Definitely. MacSki is just more than a game where a cute little guy goes flying down slopes, dodging assorted obstacles and racing against the clock.
It does this and more. Once you register the game you can ski over 35 different courses with different objectives, including races against the clock, slaloms, skiing through gates, giant slaloms, Stonehenges (a version of skiing through gates, but with a harder penalty for not lining up correctly), snowman demolishing and penguin squashing.
Sound interesting? It should, especially when you consider that David Cook and Thomas Zehner, MacSki’s main programmers, realized that not everybody uses the same size skis and that different skis are needed for different conditions. Thus they wisely give you the ability to choose one of 9 combinations of ski length and performance. The final touch that makes MacSki an outstanding shareware game in terms of features is the option to customize weather and ski conditions.
There’s more. MacSki also comes with a course editor that will allow you to modify existing courses or create new ones with which to terrorize your friends. You can make courses with all the moguls, snow fences, bunnies, and snow bunnies you like and still have more objects to add. Creating courses is achieved by dragging the desired objects onto the white background and arranging them however you please. Once you register your copy of MacSki, you will see that many of the 35+ courses available are custom made—some contain secret messages, others show that their authors have warped senses of humor.
 
Let’s Ski! The actual skiing in MacSki requires four basic movements, pushing off with your ski poles, steering left or right and slowing down. You can use either the keyboard or a mouse (my suspicion is that a trackball would be the control device of choice) or a combination of the two. The responsiveness of your skier to keyboard or mouse inputs is a function of the type of skis you have chosen; long, stiff skis turn like battleships but fly like the wind, short, soft skis turn on a dime but have trouble outpacing a waddling penguin. All the courses start you at the top of a hill (mountains, in some cases) and you ski your way down, careful to obey any flags, signs, gates and other authoritative objects while doing your best to avoid objects that will make you face plant in the snow. This includes squirrels, camera men, assorted vegetation, rocks, and my favorite, assiduously placed moguls that give you no option but to fly headlong into igloos and snowmobiles. There are more objects that can appear onscreen but I’ll leave it up to you to discover those.
As mentioned before, there are seven types of courses. These can be grouped into four basic types:
1). Beat the Clock - You try to get from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill as fast as possible.
2). Slaloms - There are two types of slalom, the regular slalom where you ski around flags of different colors, making sure that you are on the correct side of the flag and the giant slalom, where you can choose which side you want to be on initially provided you remain consistent for the rest of your descent.
3). Gates - Your task is a simple one. Simply get your skier through the gates. There are two types, those with gates made of flags (you can hit the flags and you won’t fall down) and those with Stonehenges (hit a Stonehenge, i.e. a gate made of stone, and you are going down, hard!).
4). Collision skiing - All you have to do is hit all the snowmen or squash all the penguins on your way down the slope in as little time as possible. Snowmen are easier—they don’t move but there have been unsubstantiated reports of snowmen being found in close proximity to immovable rock monoliths.
 
Technical Stuff. MacSki can run in either color or black and white. I tested MacSki on a IIci (25 MHz 68030) and found that courses with low to moderate numbers of objects resulted in smooth animation in 256 colors. Courses with a large number of objects on screen visibly degraded the performance but this wouldn’t be a problem on faster machines. Running the game in 16 colors or black and white improved the performance as did judicious editing of the offending courses to remove some of the extraneous objects. Most users should have little trouble adjusting the game and the courses to get smooth animation out of their computers.
Summary. Every time I play this game I have to pinch myself to make sure that I am not dreaming. MacSki is an excellent shareware game that is higher quality than many full-blown commercial games. It is highly customizable and has a simple yet well-designed interface. The graphics and sound quality are excellent and the ability to create your own courses is an unexpected bonus. I could find almost no flaws in MacSki 1.5 and with registration a mere $28, there is no reason that anyone should not have a copy residing on their hard drive.
Pros
• Fast paced action with a humorous touch
• Excellent sound and graphics
• Multiple course types, ski types and weather combinations
• Course editor
Cons
• Complex courses may slow down older Macs
• The Saint Bernard (rescues you after one spill too many) takes his time
