Ambrosia Software

Last updated

Ambrosia Software
Company type Private
Industry Software, video games
FoundedAugust 18, 1993;30 years ago (1993-08-18)
DefunctJuly 19, 2019;5 years ago (2019-07-19)[ citation needed ]
Headquarters Rochester, New York, U.S.
Key people
  • Andrew Welch
  • Dominic Feira
Products Shareware video games and utilities

Ambrosia Software was a predominantly Macintosh software and gaming company founded in 1993 and located in Rochester, New York, U.S. Ambrosia Software was best known for its Macintosh remakes of older arcade games, which began with a 1992 version of Atari, Inc.'s Asteroids from 1979. The company also published utility software. Its products were distributed as shareware; demo versions could be downloaded and used for up to 30 days. Later the company released some products for iOS. Ambrosia's best-selling program was the utility Snapz Pro X, [1] [2] according to a 2002 interview with company president Andrew Welch.

Contents

In 2017, customers reported on Ambrosia's Facebook page that attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful and they were unable to make new purchases. [3] As of July 2019, the website is offline. As of May 2021, the website resolves but leads to a domain parking page with ads unconnected to the company.

History

The first game distributed under the Ambrosia Software name was Maelstrom , a 1992 remake of the 1979 Asteroids arcade video game. It uses raster graphics similar in style to Atari's later Blasteroids (1987) and the Atari ST game Megaroids (1988). [4] Despite the concept being 13 years old at the time of release, Maelstrom was popular at a time when Macintosh action games were in short supply, and it won some software awards. [5]

Ambrosia Software was incorporated August 18, 1993, by Andrew Welch after he graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1992. [6] Maelstrom was followed by more action games, including Apeiron (a remake of Centipede), Swoop (a clone of Galaxian ), and Barrack (a clone of JezzBall ). In 1999, Cameron Crotty of Macworld wrote that "No other company has gotten so much mileage out of renovating mid-1980s arcade hits." [7]

Nearly all of the company's ten employees were laid off in 2013, but Welch denied rumors of the company closing. [8] In late 2018, the company's last remaining employee announced that Ambrosia was officially shutting down operations. [9]

Products

Games

Ambrosia Software's games, in order of release:

Ambrosia, in conjunction with DG Associates, has also released the Escape Velocity Nova card-driven board game. [12]

Productivity software

Ambrosia Software's utilities, in order of release:

Shareware policies

One of Ambrosia's founding mantras was that shareware software should not be distributed as crippleware. The company's software was released on the honor system with only a short reminder that you had used the unregistered software for "x" amount of time, creating what is commonly called nagware. [13]

This policy was later changed and the company employed typical shareware piracy prevention measures, [14] as well as more innovative ones such as used in the Escape Velocity line of games where the team's mascot, Hector the Parrot (known in-game as Cap'n Hector), would use her heavily armed ship to ceaselessly attack players of unregistered copies after the trial period had expired. Their software products therefore began to fall under the category of crippleware. [14] Although the company no longer provides new expiring license codes, Ambrosia's founder Andrew Welch released Decoder Ring [15] which allows anyone to generate new license codes.

Matt Slot has written about the factors that played into the policy change. [13]

Related Research Articles

Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. Shareware is often offered as a download from a website. Shareware differs from freeware, which is fully-featured software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available; and free and open-source software, in which the source code is freely available for anyone to inspect and alter.

<i>Escape Velocity</i> (video game) 1996 video game

Escape Velocity is a single-player role-playing space trading and combat video game series first introduced in 1996 by Ambrosia Software for the Macintosh. Two other similar games based on the original, EV Override and Escape Velocity Nova, followed in 1998 and 2002 respectively, the latter of which is also available on Microsoft Windows. In addition there is a trading card game available based on the storyline of the EV Nova universe.

Escape Velocity Nova is a video game developed by Ambrosia Software in collaboration with ATMOS. It is the third game in the Escape Velocity series of space trading and combat games. It was released on March 19, 2002 for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9, and later ported to Windows and released on July 11, 2003. The game's premise, set in a time period after mankind has discovered hyperspace technology, grants the player freedom to take missions, trade goods, steal from other ships, and enter one of six storylines.

StuffIt is a discontinued family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files. Originally produced for Macintosh, versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux (x86), and Sun Solaris were later created. The proprietary compression format used by the StuffIt utilities is also termed StuffIt.

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<i>Maelstrom</i> (1992 video game) 1992 video game

Maelstrom is a multidirectional shooter developed by Andrew Welch and released as shareware in November 1992 for Mac OS. The game is an enhanced clone of Atari, Inc.'s 1979 Asteroids arcade video game with a visual style similar to the Atari Games 1987 sequel, Blasteroids. Maelstrom was released when there were few action games for the high-resolution color displays of the Macintosh, and the game attracted attention despite the dated concept. The response led Welch to start Ambrosia Software.

Xara is an international software company founded in 1981, with an HQ in Berlin and development office in Hemel Hempstead, UK. It has developed software for a variety of computer platforms, in chronological order: the Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Z88, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and more recently web browser-based services.

<i>Mars Rising</i> 1998 video game

Mars Rising is a vertically scrolling shooter written by David Wareing and released as shareware by Ambrosia Software for Macintosh computers in 1998. Reviewers called out similarities to Xevious and Raiden. It was followed by Deimos Rising in 2001.

<i>Apeiron</i> (video game) 1995 video game

Apeiron is a Macintosh game developed and released as shareware by Ambrosia Software. An adaptation of the 1980 arcade game Centipede, it was first released on February 11, 1995. In November 2004, a Mac OS X port was made available.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unsanity</span>

Unsanity was a macOS shareware software developer founded in May 2000, notable for coining the term "haxie". Unsanity produced Mac utilities that relied on their own Application Enhancer, a utility that modified the system and other applications. Software incompatibility with Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Lion ended Unsanity's offerings.

<i>Avara</i> 1996 video game

Avara is a 1996 first-person shooter written by Juri Munkki for Macintosh and published by Ambrosia Software. A fast 3D engine, integrated Internet play, and easy level editing were notable features at the time of its release. While not commercially successful, the game found a cult following. Munkki publicly released the source code in 2016, the game's 20th anniversary.

<i>Ares</i> (video game) 1998 video game

Ares is a space strategy video game created by Nathan Lamont of Bigger Planet Software, and first released by Changeling Software in 1998. In 1999 the game was re-released as shareware by Ambrosia Software and released as open source software and freeware in 2008. The key feature of the game was its ability to zoom in and out smoothly; this allowed the player to switch between a close-up view, which emphasized space combat skills, and a strategic view of the entire map.

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<i>Pillars of Garendall</i> 2001 video game

Pillars of Garendall is a role-playing video game that was built by Beenox Studios and Ambrosia Software. It was built using the Coldstone game engine, which was also a joint Beenox/Ambrosia project. The game was released in 2001 for Mac OS Classic, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RemoteAccess</span>

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Escape Velocity Override is a space trading simulator game written by Peter Cartwright, with the support of his school-friends, and developed by Ambrosia Software for the Apple Macintosh. It is the sequel to Escape Velocity with an extended version of the original game engine, but Override has an entirely new story line set in a different, larger universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbon Copy Cloner</span> Backup software

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References

  1. ↑ "MacSlash Interview: Andrew Welch of Ambrosia". MacSlash (retrieved from the Internet Archive). January 23, 2002. Archived from the original on December 31, 2007. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
  2. ↑ More information on Snapz Pro X
  3. ↑ "Ambrosia Software". Facebook . Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Megaroids". Atari Mania.
  5. ↑ "Into the Maelstrom". The Mac Observer. December 8, 1999. Archived from the original on June 8, 2011. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
  6. ↑ "Home-grown Ambrosia feeds software niche", Michael Saffran. In RIT: The University Magazine, Vol. 10, #1
  7. ↑ Crotty, Cameron (January 1999). "Mars Rising". Macworld .
  8. ↑ Mathis, Joel (April 11, 2013). "Despite layoffs, Ambrosia says it's still in business". Macworld . Archived from the original on April 15, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Bonus: The Rise & Fall of Ambrosia Software, '90s Mac Legends - PAX Aus 2019 talk".
  10. ↑ Salvador, Phil (May 17, 2012). "Barrack". The Obscuritory. Archived from the original on January 29, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Manse by Brian Barnes & Andrew Welch". The Ambrosia Times. July 1, 1996. Retrieved June 30, 2024.
  12. ↑ Cohen, Peter (October 20, 2004). "Ambrosia makes Darwinia and EV board game". Macworld. Archived from the original on May 3, 2021. Retrieved April 11, 2023.
  13. 1 2 Slot, Matt (March 11, 2002). "The Plain Truth about Casual Software Piracy". TidBITS . Retrieved April 28, 2011.
  14. 1 2 Welch, Andrew (January 22, 2000). "Ambrosia Times: President's Letter: On CDs and Shareware". Ambrosia Software. Archived from the original on March 22, 2005. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
  15. ↑ Welch, Andrew (October 1, 2023). "Decoder Ring".
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