![]() 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. Thanks as always to my supporters on Patreon - especially my $10+ backers Vivek Mohan, Simon Moss, Wade Tregaskis, Eric Zocher, and Seth Robinson. ![]()
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