![]() ![]() His dad owned a marketing company, and it was through that business that young Andrew planted the seed for what would become Ambrosia. Then second on the Mac gaming scene in the early 90s. And hopefully there'll be plenty of time at the end for questions and stories from you in the audience.īut before we go into rise and fall of Ambrosia, let's do some quick background. I wanted to set up an emulator as well but just ran out of time unfortunately. I've got some interview clips, a bit of gameplay footage, some photos and old documents to help us along the way. There's not enough time to cover everything, but I'll try to get to all the key stuff and you'll hopefully come away with a good sense of a) why Ambrosia Software matters to the history of computer games and b) what made Ambrosia special to the Macintosh flock. So in recognition of Ambrosia's achievements, which have slipped a bit under the radar outside of the old-school Mac faithful, I wanted to give you a tour through the company's rise and fall. But then it faded rapidly into the background, for reasons I'll get to later, and finally the company closed its doors at the end of last year. And they had top-drawer offbeat gaming options, too, with titles like Avara, a kinda abstract-looking arena-style first-person shooter, and Harry the Handsome Executive, where you guide a middle management executive through an office electronics apocalypse while scooting around in a swivel chair.įor about 15 years or so, from 1993 to around 2008, the Ambrosia Software name was inseparable from quality Macintosh games. Games like Maelstrom, Escape Velocity, Ferazel's Wand, Apeiron, and Bubble Trouble were hallmarks of quality, even if most of them were essentially just jazzed-up versions of classic 80s games. And arguably the best among them in terms of the quality of its output. They were heroes among the Macintosh faithful, one of only a few companies that made its games exclusive to the Mac. If you were a Mac gamer in the late 90s, chances are pretty high that you would have had at least one game in your collection that came from Ambrosia Software. ![]() My name is Richard Moss, and today I'm going to talk to you about a company that's pretty near and dear to my heart, not only as someone who grew up playing some of their games - but also as the author of a book called The Secret History of Mac Gaming, which covers their history, along with lots of other games and game developers from the 1980s and 90s Mac gaming scene. So please, enjoy, and I'll see you in a couple of weeks. ![]() The talk was called The Rise & Fall of Ambrosia Software, '90s Mac Legends, and you can find accompanying slides at as well as my full script on the accompanying blog post at lifeandtimes.games. But to tide you by until I'm back, I thought you might enjoy listening to my talk from PAX Australia 2019 about the lesser-known of the indie game publishing giants from before the time of Braid and Steam and all that other stuff we've had over the past 15 years. There'll be no regular episode of The Life & Times of Video Games this week because I'm off on my honeymoon. If you'd like to become a supporter, for as little as $1 a month, head to my Patreon page and sign up. And a very big thank you (and warm welcome!) to my five new patrons this month. However, with lots to see and do, dozens of ships, and multiple stories and plots to follow, it marks itself as a worthy successor to the 1992 classic, if only in spirit.Thanks as always to my supporters on Patreon - especially my $10+ backers Vivek Mohan, Simon Moss, Wade Tregaskis, Eric Zocher, and Seth Robinson. The combat is often entirely too one-sided. The writing, while not technically bad, is pretty dry. The controls are a little too arcane for their own good. Some of the mystery and wonder of exploration is lost, but it handily eliminates the inherent frustration. Where SC2 was content to let you often aimlessly wander for the next clue, you’re rarely without a clear objective in Nova. Nova actually improves upon the classic by being a much tighter, controlled experience. It even looks and plays similarly, featuring and isometric view similar to SC2’s top-down one. You’ll upgrade and buy new ships, and eventually get caught up in the game’s galaxy-spanning plotlines. From there you must make your way how you see fit: Take on odd jobs, haul cargo, maybe ransack a few ships. They both feature similar premises: You, a lone captain, are dumped into a large, foreboding, unknown galaxy. It’s a comparison not made without merit either. A shame too, since it’s probably the closest PC gamers have ever come to getting a real sequel to Star Control 2. Small wonder that when Nova got a PC port in 2003, anyone who possibly cared about it already had it. It was the third game in a long-time Mac-only series by a Mac-only developer, back before Apple was hip and with-it. It isn’t too hard to deduce why Escape Velocity: Nova is obscure. ![]()
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