Ambrosia Software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ambrosia Software

Type	Private
Founded	August 18, 1993
Headquarters	Rochester, New York
Key people	Andrew Welch — President
Industry	Software, video games
Products	Shareware video games and utilities
Website	www.ambrosiasw.com

Ambrosia Software is a predominantly Macintosh software company located in Rochester, New York. Ambrosia produces utilities and games. Its products are distributed as shareware; demo versions can be downloaded and used for up to 30 days.

Ambrosia's best-selling program is the utility Snapz Pro X^[1], although the company is better known for the production and the distribution of games. Incorporated August 18, 1993 by its president, Andrew Welch, after graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1992^[2], the first game produced by Ambrosia was Maelstrom, a remake of the Asteroids arcade game. Maelstrom quickly became popular in the Macintosh community, and won a number of software awards.^[3]

This initial success led Ambrosia to release several more arcade-style games. These included Apeiron (a remake of Centipede), and Swoop (a remake of Galaxian).

The unofficial mascot of Ambrosia Software is Hector the Parrot.

[edit] Products

[edit] Games

Ambrosia Software's games, in order of release:

• Maelstrom
• Chiral
• Apeiron — later ported to Mac OS X
• Swoop
• Barrack
• Escape Velocity
• Avara
• Bubble Trouble — later ported to Mac OS X
• Harry the Handsome Executive
• Mars Rising
• EV Override
• Slithereens
• Cythera
• Ares
• Ferazel's Wand
• Pillars of Garendall
• Deimos Rising
• Coldstone game engine
• Escape Velocity Nova
• Bubble Trouble X — Mac OS X port of original, with minor gameplay changes
• pop-pop
• Uplink — Mac OS X port
• Aki
• Apeiron X — Mac OS X port of the original, with enhanced graphics
• GooBall
• Darwinia — Mac OS X port
• El Ballo
• Redline
• SketchFighter 4000 Alpha
• DEFCON — Mac OS X port
• pop-pop — Universal Binary release
• Uplink — Universal Binary release
• Aki — Universal Binary release
• Mondo Solitaire
• Aki — iPhone/iPod Touch release
• Aquaria — Mac OS X port
• Escape Velocity Nova — Universal Binary release
• Multiwinia — Mac OS X port

Ambrosia, in conjunction with DG Associates, has also released the Escape Velocity Nova Card Game.

[edit] Productivity Software

Ambrosia Software's utilities, in order of release:

• Eclipse
• Big Cheese Key
• FlashWrite
• FlashWrite ][
• ColorSwitch
• Snapz
• To Do!
• Oracle
• ColorSwitch Pro
• Snapz Pro— Screen capture application
• iSeek — Desktop search application
• Snapz Pro X — Mac OS X-compatible version of original
• WireTap Pro — Audio recording utility
• Screen Cleaner Pro — April Fool's joke
• EasyEnvelopes — Mac OS X v10.4 and Mac OS X v10.5 Dashboard widget
• Dragster — File transfer application
• iToner — iPhone custom ringtone transfer utility
• WireTap Studio — Audio recording, editing and master storage; won a 2007 "Eddy Award" from Macworld
• WireTap Anywhere — professional virtual audio patchbay utility, enabling the recording of any Mac OS X application's audio output from within any Mac OS X audio application.
• Soundboard — Mac OS X Audio playback ("computerized cart machine")

[edit] Community

Ambrosia Software has gathered a sizeable following in the Macintosh community in part due to forum-based discussion of its products, and the outgoing personalities of the company's employees. Mainly supported through the company's web site forums and their IRC server (irc.ambrosia.net), the community lists over 20,000 members with support forums for each of Ambrosia's utilities and games, complemented by general discussion forums focusing on politics, graphics, games and general camaraderie.

[edit] "Crippled" shareware

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; so-called nagware. This policy has since been changed and the company today employs typical shareware piracy prevention measures. Their software products now fall under the category of crippleware. An article in the company's newsletter, the Ambrosia Times, outlines the factors that played into the policy change.^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ambrosia Software