Scarab of Ra — into the Great Pyramid Runs here
1987 · Rick Holzgrafe (Semicolon Software) · System 7 · Mini vMac (Mac SE) · 512×342 black and white
Guide updated September 2026
You are an archaeology student sent into the Great Pyramid of Ra, and the pyramid does not want you there. Scarab of Ra is a first-person maze adventure: you step through stone corridors, pick up what you find, and keep an eye on your food, your lamp and your health while you map your way down towards the scarab.
Rick Holzgrafe wrote it for the Macintosh and released it as shareware in 1987, and it became one of the best-known Mac shareware games. This is version 1.4, © 1987–1992, running on an emulated Macintosh SE.
Boots straight into the game at the entrance of the Great Pyramid. Move with the arrow buttons in the Movement panel and use Pick Up for what you find.
Controls
| Movement panel | Step forward and back, turn left and right |
| Pick Up | Take what is on the floor here |
| Inventory menu | Use, eat or drop what you carry |
| Map menu | See the part of the pyramid you have explored |
| Speed menu | How fast time passes |
| Hints menu | The game's own hints, if you are stuck |
Scarab of Ra is shareware. Its About box says it "may not be changed or resold for profit, but it may be freely distributed and copied", with a $10 fee to Semicolon Software for those who enjoy it. The copy here is unchanged. Full reasoning is in notices/scarab-of-ra.md, and the takedown promise applies without argument.
Archives and originals
- Internet Archive: the disk this copy came from.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Macintosh SE, 512×342, black and white |
|---|---|
| System | System 7.5.3 |
| Emulator | Mini vMac, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Version | 1.4, © 1987–1992 Rick Holzgrafe |
| Saves | Games save inside the emulated Mac, in your browser |
The screen is split into panels: Movement top left, a News log of what just happened, the corridor view, your Inventory, and a Status panel with prestige, gold, health, speed, hunger and the weight you are carrying.
Staying alive in the pyramid
You start with sixteen ounces of food and a lantern. Hunger climbs as you walk and carrying too much slows you. Most of the early game is learning how far you can go before turning back.
Read the News panel. It tells you what you found, what just attacked you, and what changed. The pyramid is home to creatures that are not all equally dangerous, and the Hints menu is there for when you are properly stuck.
Map as you go. The Map menu shows what you have seen, and the corridors are built to lose you.
Why it is remembered
Scarab of Ra is one of the games that defined Macintosh shareware in the late 1980s: small, clever, entirely mouse-driven, and made by one person. Its interface of separate panels, each doing one job, is very much a Macintosh design rather than a port of something else.
Questions people ask
Is this the full game?
Yes. Scarab of Ra was shareware: complete, with a request to send $10 if you enjoyed it.
Is it free to play here?
Yes. Its own licence allows it to be freely distributed and copied, as long as it is not changed or sold.
How do I move?
Click the arrows in the Movement panel at the top left. Pick Up takes whatever is on the floor.
Why am I getting weaker?
Hunger. Eat from your inventory before it gets critical, and do not carry more than you need.
Put Scarab of Ra 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/scarab-of-ra/"
width="512" height="342"
style="border:0;max-width:100%"
allowfullscreen
title="Scarab of Ra"></iframe>Sized to this title's real screen. How embedding works.
