Maniac — brought to you by Best Before Yesterday Runs here
1997 · Best Before Yesterday · Mac OS 8 · SheepShaver (Power Macintosh 9500) · 800×600 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026
Maniac opens on a splash for the developer's own name — "Best Before Yesterday" in tumbling multicoloured letters on black — which is a good enough joke to lead with.
What follows is a Macintosh arcade game of the late shareware era: colour, straightforward, made by one person under a name chosen to amuse them.
Boots Mac OS 8.6 and opens Maniac on the developer's splash screen. Give it a moment.
Controls
| Arrow keys | Move |
| Space | Act |
| Menus | Options and difficulty |
| Cmd-Q | Quit to the Finder |
Shareware, distributed freely by its author. This copy is unregistered and unmodified.
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 |
| Version | 2.1 |
| Saves | Scores persist inside the emulated Mac |
The splash screen sits for a few seconds before the game proper appears; that is the program, not the emulator being slow.
Maniac does not carry its own operating system; Mac OS 8.6 comes from the shared image, so it starts faster if you have already opened another Mac OS 8 title.
Why it is here
The name. "Best Before Yesterday" is the sort of thing a person calls themselves when they are writing software for fun and nobody is making them pick a serious name. That was most of this scene.
It is version 2.1. Somebody cared enough to iterate on a small shareware game through at least two major versions, for an audience that mostly did not pay.
Breadth matters here. A catalogue of only the famous titles would suggest the Macintosh had thirty games. It had thousands, and they mostly looked like this.
Getting started
Wait out the splash. It is short and it is the best part of the presentation.
Check the menus before playing; late Mac shareware almost always had adjustable difficulty and the default is rarely the friendly one.
It is a short-session game. Play a few rounds rather than settling in.
Questions people ask
Is it free?
It is shareware — freely distributed and playable, with the author's registration notice intact.
Who is Best Before Yesterday?
The name the developer released under. Very little else about them survives.
Do scores persist?
Yes, inside the emulated Macintosh in your browser.
Is it in colour?
Yes, 800×600 on an emulated Power Macintosh.
Why does the splash sit there?
That is the program's own timing, not the emulator.
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.
