Spins! — from a company with a website that no longer answers Runs here
1999 · The Foundation Company · Mac OS 8 · SheepShaver (Power Macintosh 9500) · 800×600 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026
Spins! opens on a black screen with a logo — The Foundation Company, in serif capitals with a globe in it — and a web address underneath in orange.
The address does not go anywhere any more. That splash is a small monument to a category of business that existed for about six years: the tiny software company with a real logo, a real domain, and a product distributed through shareware archives.
Boots Mac OS 8.6 and opens Spins! on the publisher's splash. Give it a moment to reach the game.
Controls
| Mouse | All in-game interaction |
| Menus | Options and difficulty |
| Cmd-Q | Quit to the Finder |
Shareware, distributed freely. Unregistered and unmodified. The Foundation Company appears to have stopped trading and no successor product contains this program.
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 | 1.2 |
| Saves | Scores persist inside the emulated Mac |
The splash sits for a few seconds before the game appears. That is the program's own timing.
Spins! 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
1999 is the tail end. Mac OS X was announced the following year and the classic shareware scene did not survive the transition intact. Games from this window are among the last of their kind.
The dead web address. Shareware from the late 1990s is full of URLs that no longer resolve, and they are a better record of how the software was sold than any description.
Somebody made a logo. The Foundation Company put real design effort into a splash screen for a puzzle game distributed through Tucows. That ambition is characteristic of the period.
Getting started
Wait out the splash screen; it is short.
Try the menus before playing — late Mac shareware almost always had difficulty settings worth adjusting.
It is a short-session puzzle game. A few rounds will tell you whether it is for you.
Questions people ask
Is it free?
It is shareware — freely distributed and playable. This copy is unregistered and unmodified.
Does the web address on the splash work?
No. The Foundation Company appears to have stopped trading and the domain no longer reaches them.
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 rather than the emulator being slow.
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.
