This Thread is about everything related to AmbrosiaSW.

Did you play their games back in the 90s, do you still play those or their newer games?
What do you think about their non game software like Snapz Pro?


Back in the 90s I was a big fan of AmbrosiaSW. I read their Ambrosia Times whenever they came out.
I loved to play their Arcade Style games like Barrack, Bubble Trouble or Slithereens. Of course it all started with Maelstrom and Apeiron (I never understood Chiral even though I tried it sometimes just because it's from Ambrosia).
Later they did some bigger games like Harry the Handsome Executive or Ferazel's Wand.
Most people love their Escape Velocity games, but I was not a fan of such games so I was a bit saddened when I saw how many addons people did for those compared to the addons for the other Ambrosia games, and how it was their first game to get a sequel (with Mars Rising beeing the only other Ambrosia game with a sequel).

I couldn't wait for their rarely known first person shooter Manse which might be one of the first fps games using a flashlight. It was never released for reasons I don't remember (if they ever told). But I remember finding a beta version on the net a few years later. I will have to search for that one again on my HDDs.


What is your memory about AmbrosiaSW?

Apeiron is how I got my username. Long story short, I was trying to beat the high score, didn't think I did, so I mashed the keyboard, and found that I did beat the high score after all. I had entered "iug" as the top score, and I kept using the name from there on in.

Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.
Escape Velocity.

I was one of the people who loved Escape Velocity. If I hadn't beaten the game with every faction already, I'd probably have rebought EV Nova by now. If they ever release a new one, I'll be buying.

As for their other games, I was introduced to nearly all of them through MacAddict pack-in cds. They were all pretty high quality for shareware. I think Barrack was my favorite. It was an answer to MS's Jezzball that beat it in every way.

My first one was Maelstrom. I played that at my high school's sole Quadra 650 (a really souped up one with 32 MB RAM and a 24-bit color video card for photoshop work). I played that, Warlords (PC, run on an old IBM Tower600 w/ 1 MB RAM), Crystal Caliburn (mmm...pinball), and Strategic Conquest 3.0 (4.0 sucked balls).

But EV was my absolute favorite due to the plugins you could use for it. I've beaten the Star Trek: TNG one and got most of the way through the B5 plugin, until it decided to swarm me with Omega class Earthforce warships. Despite their size, their turn rate was insane.

Ah, Crystal Caliburn. I loved that game..But this is an Ambrosia thread, so let's see what comes to mind that is on topic:

I'll be re-acquainting myself with the AmbrosiaSW lineup in the coming months.

Maelstrom was my first too. I think I've already covered my thoughts on it pretty well.

I still remember the devastation I felt when my trade ship Not At All Phallic was destroyed by pirates in EV. Never actually tried any of the EV plugins...yet. I plan to buy EV Nova later this year. Escape Velocity is the only space game I've ever liked -- for that alone I hold it in high regard.

Deimos Rising came bundled with the family eMac. I wasn't into shmups at the time, so I don't think I got into it.

Deimos Rising IMO is the Hello Kitty version of games like DoDonPachi. ^_^

Ambrosia was a consistent stream of amazing games when I was in Middle School/High School.

I remember running across the Alien ship in EV and dying to tell my friend at school the next day. It was also the game that taught me valuable things, like hacking via ResEdit, or why 32767/-32768 weren't just random max/min values for things.

And outside of EV, I highly enjoyed Barrack and Harry the Handsome Executive. I really need to beat Harry the Handsome Executive someday.

Registering EV was one of the first real things I did with my money. And still totally worth it, over EV, EV:Override, and EV:Nova

EV was the very first piece of shareware I ever registered, back when I had to beg my parents to agree to entering their credit card if I paid them cash up front, and it was one of the first games I ever played around with my own content design for. Of course, at that age, I made some pretty broken weapons and ships, but got more fun out of watching the game react to my parameters than just murdering everything. I still remember using my Raiden-inspired purple homing laser to disable-without-killing a Confederate cruiser and actually storm and capture it. And then realizing the repercussions of my actions when the Rebels started ganging up on me because I was in a Confed ship, and the Confeds started ganging up on me because I was a criminal, and the Pirates started ganging up on me because that's just what they did. So then I started taking over planets, and the world was good again ^_^ I also recall a dialogue with Ambrosia customer service when I figured out how to trigger their title screen Easter eggs with ~80% reliability and just wanted to pin down what details I was missing. Of course, their policy on Easter eggs was(/is?) to refuse comment
I tried EV Nova when it came on my radar, and was positively impressed at the increased detail, but just didn't have the time at that point to dive into a dedicated playthrough.

Avernum was one of the first commercial game series I cracked and began hacking the save files of while it was still in active distribution. Iirc, I even pinged Ambrosia regarding my working up a save file / character editor tool, since the game editor had done so much for the EV series. Don't remember where that dialogue went, but I know the tool didn't get beyond a command-line hack.

Mars Rising and Diemos Rising were the clear lead contenders for a Mac alternative to Tyrian in the days before Cocoa Tyrian, although neither quite filled the void, and thus neither one got registered.

Snapz Pro came up when I was trying to find an OSX screen-video-capture app to start putting my NES homebrews up on YouTube. It wasn't until I was impressed and went to register that I realized it was also Ambrosia. Needless to say they got my money on that one that much faster.