Glider for Windows

I think Glider was the quintessential Macintosh game. There's nothing about the game that would have made it impossible for it to be ported to Windows—but I don't think it would've felt right anywhere else. It was too much a part of the Mac culture.—Chris Klimas

In fact, Glider 4.0 was ported to Windows, but rather late, in 1994, the same year that Glider Pro came out on the Mac. It did not make a great impression there. Was Chris Klimas right, was the game too much a Macintosh game to ever be successful on Windows? Maybe, but then maybe it was just too late, and too underfeatured.

The game looked good. John Calhoun worked the 16 colors masterfully, and even the Windows palette, which was far less usable than the one on the Mac, did little to impair his art. In, say, 1992, the game would have been quite spectacular. It would have compared well with Stuffin' the Briefcase.

In 1994, it came in a wake of Macintosh games ported to Windows. They had 256 colors or even hi-color support, they had midi music, sometimes QuickTime movies. A quiet little game in 16 colors that nevertheless took over the whole screen (which was more common on the Mac than on Windows at the time) and came on a CD (though it weighed only 3.3 MB) looked out of place.

And the Windows version lacked an important feature: the editor. It would have been a better idea for Casady & Greene to release the new Glider Pro on both platforms.