MacMatch — from the Macintosh's first year Runs here
1984 · Axlon · System 6 · Mini vMac (Mac Plus) · 512×342 black and white
Guide updated September 2026
A matching game, published by Axlon in conjunction with The Software Machine, copyright 1984 — which makes it one of the oldest pieces of third-party Macintosh software that still runs. The title card credits Eagle I. Berns, Michael Kosaka and Phillip Goldman, and then there is a Hello button and four score slots.
It is not a deep game. It is a very early one, and the interest is largely in that: this is what somebody thought a Macintosh was for, eleven months after the machine went on sale.
Boots to the title card. Click OK, then Hello to start, with four score slots along the bottom.
Controls
| Mouse | Turn tiles over |
| Level menu | Board size and difficulty |
| Players menu | How many people are playing |
| Options menu | Sound and display |
Axlon was Nolan Bushnell's company and is long gone; its software catalogue was never transferred to an identifiable successor, and MacMatch has not been sold since the mid-1980s.
Archives
- Internet Archive — the Macintosh floppy this copy was made from.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Macintosh Plus, 512×342, black and white |
|---|---|
| System | The floppy's own — this disk carries the System it shipped with |
| Emulator | Mini vMac, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Saves | Four score slots persist inside the emulated Mac |
Up to four players share the machine, which is the arrangement almost every 1984 Macintosh game assumed — one computer, several people, taking turns with the mouse.
The board sizes go up far enough that the largest is a genuine memory test rather than a formality.
Why it is remembered
Axlon was Nolan Bushnell's company. After Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, Bushnell founded Axlon, which made toys and — briefly — software. That a game published under his name in the Macintosh's first year survives at all is the main reason to look at this.
1984 software is thin on the ground. Most of what shipped for the Macintosh in its first calendar year was Apple's own, MacPaint and MacWrite included. Third-party titles from that window are scarce and mostly lost.
It is honest about what it is. A matching game with four players and a high-score table, doing that well, on hardware that had existed for less than a year.
Getting started
Click through the title card, then Hello. There is no setup required to start.
Turn the board size up from the default once you have played a round — the small boards are over quickly and the game only becomes interesting when you cannot hold the whole thing in your head.
The four score slots are for four people at the same machine. That is how this was meant to be played.
Questions people ask
How old is this?
Copyright 1984 — the Macintosh's first year, which makes it among the oldest things on this site.
Can several people play?
Yes, up to four, sharing the machine and taking turns.
Do scores persist?
Yes, in four slots inside the emulated Macintosh in your browser.
Who was Axlon?
Nolan Bushnell's post-Atari company, which made toys and a small amount of software.
Is it in colour?
No. The Macintosh of 1984 was black and white.
Is it difficult?
At the larger board sizes, genuinely. The default is over quickly.
Put MacMatch 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/macmatch/"
width="512" height="342"
style="border:0;max-width:100%"
allowfullscreen
title="MacMatch"></iframe>Sized to this title's real screen. How embedding works.
