Bill the Demon — and it will change your monitor to suit itself Runs here
1997 · Bryan Smith · Mac OS 8 · SheepShaver (Power Macintosh 9500) · 800×600 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026
A colour Macintosh action game from 1997 whose first act is admirably direct: a dialog telling you it only runs in 256-colour mode, that a black-and-white version exists elsewhere, and asking whether it should change your monitor for you — promising to put it back when you quit.
Click Switch and the game starts. That dialog is a small period artefact in itself: the era when software routinely reconfigured your display because the display was the constraint.
Boots Mac OS 8.6 and opens Bill the Demon. It asks to switch the monitor to 256 colours — click Switch.
Controls
| Switch button | Let it set the monitor to 256 colours, which it needs |
| Arrow keys | Move |
| Space | Act |
| Cmd-Q | Quit to the Finder; the monitor is restored |
Shareware, distributed freely by its author. This copy is unregistered and unmodified, with the startup notice left where it is.
Archives
- Internet Archive — the Tucows Macintosh archive copy this was built from.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Power Macintosh 9500, 800×600 in colour |
|---|---|
| System | Mac OS 8.6, shared with every other title of this era |
| Emulator | SheepShaver, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Saves | Progress and scores persist inside the emulated Mac |
Click Switch at the opening dialog. The game genuinely will not run otherwise, and since the monitor it is changing is an emulated one, nothing on your own machine is affected.
It does not carry its own operating system; Mac OS 8.6 comes from the shared image, so it starts faster if you have opened another Mac OS 8 title here.
Why it is remembered
The colour-depth dance. Before displays were reliably 24-bit, games routinely asked to change your monitor and promised to change it back. Seeing that dialog again is a sharper reminder of the period than most of the software around it.
Two versions, one author. Bryan Smith maintained a separate black-and-white build for people on older hardware, and the startup notice points at where to get it — the kind of thing an individual shareware author would do and a publisher would not.
It is representative. Hundreds of games like this circulated on Info-Mac and the shareware CD-ROMs. Most are gone; this one is here because the Tucows archive was preserved.
Getting started
Click Switch. Quit and Switch are the only two options and Quit ends the game before it starts.
Play a round without trying to be efficient about it; the rules become obvious quickly and reading about them first is slower.
Quit properly with Cmd-Q when you are done, which is what restores the display mode — inside the emulated Mac, where it does no harm either way.
Questions people ask
Why does it want to change my monitor?
It only runs in 256-colour mode. The monitor it changes is the emulated one, so nothing on your own machine is touched.
Is it free?
It is shareware — freely distributed and playable, with the author's notice intact.
Is there a black-and-white version?
The author made one and the startup notice points at it, but it is not on this site.
Can I save?
Progress and scores persist inside the emulated Macintosh in your browser.
Why does it take a while to start?
It boots Mac OS 8.6 first, from the image shared with the other Mac OS 8 titles here.
Who wrote it?
Bryan Smith, released as Macintosh shareware in 1997.
Put Bill the Demon on your own site
Free, no permission needed and no account. Paste this where you want the machine to appear; it brings its own emulator and asks nothing of your page.
<iframe src="https://macemu.com/embed/bill-the-demon/"
width="800" height="600"
style="border:0;max-width:100%"
allowfullscreen
title="Bill the Demon"></iframe>Sized to this title's real screen. How embedding works.
