Ambrosia Software

Founded in 1990 as a company name for Andrew Welch, and incorporated on August 18, 1993, Ambrosia is a software developer which writes (and publishes) shareware games and utilities for the Macintosh. They are based in New York and are extremely popular within the Mac community. A lot of people feel loyalty to them by virtue of the fact that they stuck by the Macintosh at a time a lot of other developers switched to the PC.

Notable for the recent coverage of their new system for registration of their software - license keys, but ones which expire and require renewing (hence allowing checking of pirate keys) using an internet server..

A list of their games:

• Maelstrom (March 1994) - arcade/action (similar to Asteroids)
• Chiral (March 1994) - action/strategy involving molecules
• Apeiron (February 1995) - old-style arcade (Centipede clone)
• Swoop (September 1995) - arcade (Space Invaders clone)
• Barrack (March 1996) - unique arcade/action
• Escape Velocity (May 1996), Escape Velocity Override (April 1998), Escape Velocity Nova (March 2002) - space game involving arcade, strategy and "trading"
• Avara (September 1996) - gladitorial battles, internet-capable
• Bubble Trouble (October 1996) - cute cartoony action
• Harry the Handsome Executable (September 1997) - action from a swivel chair
• Mars Rising (January 1998), Deimos Rising (December 2001) - vertical-scrolling arcade
• Slithereens (December 1998) - Snake-like
• Cythera (August 1999) - RPG
• Ares (September 1999) - space warfare action (plus Heras, a scenario editor)
• Ferazel's Wand (January 2000) - side-scrolling action
• Pillars of Garendall (August 2001, also available for Windows) - epic fantasy RPG (plus Trinity, an expansion)
• Coldstone (January 2002) - game creation tool

And a list of their utilities (all of them for Macintosh):

• ColorSwitch Pro (April 1997) - useful configuration/control utilities for Mac OS
• Eclipse (July 1997) - powerful screen saver
• Snapz Pro (June 1999) - screen capture under Mac OS
• Snapz Pro X, shipped with "Pro" Macs (July 2001) - screen capture under Mac OS X