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When I brought home my first Macintosh, an LC II back in 1993, the first thing I did was scout the internet for games. Using my 2400 baud modem and an AOL account (I'd go back to the 2400 baud modem before I'd go back to AOL). I don't know how quickly I found Ambrosia Software's Maelstrom, or even it may have been suggested to me by another Mac user, but I do know it was the first Mac game to which I became truly addicted, and it's the only game that has made it onto each of my systems as I've upgraded. That's nearly ten machines, including the 500MHz iBook and 867MHz G4 upon which I currently work. Why? Because the great games never lose their staying power.

Truth of the matter is that Ambrosia Software has many games with such staying power. Their catalog is solid and diverse, offering titles that appeal to gamers of all ages, of both sexes, and at any skill level. Even better, their Macintosh loyalty has remained unwavering. During the gaming dark ages of the mid- to late-90s, they continued to turn out quality titles that kept us all entertained. Even now, Ambrosia Software continues to release games that easily rival those of the major development and publishing houses.

This is why, then, that the Academy of Bots and Polygons was almost unanimous in its decision to present Ambrosia Software with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Fourth Annual Applelinks Moofie Awards. After notifying Ambrosia of the award, we had the opportunity to speak with Tom Anthony about the company, about games, and about a bird named Hector...

Applelinks: When you released Maelstrom in March of 1994, did you have any idea that—nearly twenty games later—Ambrosia Software would be one of the most dominant and respected shareware game developers in the Macintosh community?

Ambrosia: Ambrosia's el Presidente, Andrew Welch, wrote Maelstrom way back in 1992, at which point he "took a year out" to see where Ambrosia would go. He even said he would finish up his photojournalism course at Rochester Institute of Technology—that year out turned into 11 years already!! I don't think Andrew, his roommate and chief tester of the time, Ed Ota, or anyone else knew what was going to happen.

Maelstrom was re-released in 1994 with a new oomph, and then, in August 1997, Ambrosia Software, Inc. was trademarked. Since then, Ambrosia has kept on doing what it always has and not forgotten to have fun. Hopefully, in another 11 years someone will be saying that same thing again!

Applelinks: That "fun" has carried over to those who play your games about twenty times over now. The earliest of those games were obviously inspired by arcade classics, while your later games have focused more on original gameplay and style. Was this a conscious business decision or simply an inspiration shift? How have OS advances affected the style of your games?

Ambrosia: Yes, some of our earlier titles, Maelstrom, Apeiron and Swoop were about bringing new enjoyment to certain classic games. The "shift" in games is more of about adding diversity to our range of games—we simply try to develop a range of games with great playability. Some of these are still inspired by the principles of classics games; for example, pop-pop and Deimos Rising. However, we have tried to listen to the gamers and have expanded the limits of where we are prepared to go—we are entering the 3D arena with Redline and Siege. You could put this down to a business decision, or maybe just us wanting more games to play in the office!

We have always tried to use advances in the abilities of the OS to our advantage where possible, whilst keeping the game open to the audience that doesn't have that OS. This is of course becoming a tougher and tougher deal as the leaps in hardware capabilities take bigger and bigger leaps. However—an interesting trend we have noticed is that users of our old less "modern" games are still craving them in their new OS! This has spurred the recent decision to port Apeiron to Mac OS X, with no changes to gameplay (it's still great fun!) or features other than a new internet feature to keep track of global high scores.

Applelinks: That's understandable. Although the new games have been great, the two I play the most are still Maelstrom and Bubble Trouble, both of which are now available for OS X. But speaking of new games, I haven't heard much talk of Siege. Can you tell us a little more about it? Also, are there any classic arcade games you seriously considered giving the "Ambrosia treatment" but didn't?

Ambrosia: Siege is in the early stages of development now; it has a running engine and preliminary networking support. It's author, Ben Dyer, is doing some cool stuff with it. Between us, we have been playing about with various gameplay ideas, trying to find the best road to go down. I can tell you it will be a tactical, multiplayer strategy game played in a range of armored vehicles. Right now, it is looking like it will be a lot of fun!

As to whether there are classics we would like to use as inspiration for future games, we currently have a title in development by the name of Rockfall that reminds different people of a few games of the past. Keep your eyes open to see that appear on our upcoming web page when it has progressed a little further. Beyond that, we are always open to ideas presented to us, and if some of those ideas happen to be based on classics, then that is fine with us...as long as it entertains! Also, if I ever get enough time, there is a classic that I would like to revamp too, but I am keeping that under my hat for now...

Applelinks: As long as it's not Journey, I'm sure it'll be great. You mentioned above that Ben Dyer is authoring Siege. How many programmers does Ambrosia have on staff? Do you do handle the programming in house or do you hire freelancers for various projects?

Ambrosia: We currently have two programmers in house. Other than that, we work entirely with freelance programmers. In house, our el Presidente, Andrew Welch, is currently working on Wiretap, a utility that records your Mac's audio, and an update to Snapz Pro X, our screen capture utility. Our other code-guru is Matt Slot, who is constantly working on tweaks to our code libraries and is currently working on an awesome library that will provide a lot of internet features to our upcoming titles.

We currently have nine unreleased products being worked on that involve third party programmers. Eight are games. All have been announced, and some appear on our upcoming web page.

Aside from ports of already great games, these projects tend be the third party programmers' "babies," and are much loved by them. This may go some way towards explaining our success with providing nicely polished and cared for products!

Applelinks: So, do you come up with game ideas and then assign them to your freelance programmers, or do the programmers approach you with their own ideas?

Ambrosia: The game developers come to us, normally with a prototype to show their idea. If we agree to move forward, then we immediately start working closely with them. Early on, everyone at both ends is involved in lots of brainstorming to refine the game idea as a whole, suggest missing features and remove the weaker elements.

Applelinks: Okay, so now that we have a fairly good idea at what goes into making the games, how about playing them? Which Ambrosia games do you find yourself playing the most? How about games not published by Ambrosia?

Ambrosia: Most certainly pop-pop, I am addicted! We have a bit of a competition going on in the office, Andrew and our artist, Marcus, are good, but I like to think I am the best... the emphasis being on "think."

My favorite game outside of Ambrosia is the Fallout series from MacPlay, they have a great, addictive story, which I love. Off the Mac, I still love MarioKart 64 from Nintendo, I'll take anyone on...

Applelinks: Do you guys have an old N64 there at the office? How do you keep yourselves entertained when you're not working?

Ambrosia: No, the N64 lives with me at home or we would get even less work done! Other than games, to keep ourselves entertained, we have a variety of quirky hobbies between us: music, running, kung-fu, dog training, travel, and not to forget teaching our office parrot, Hector, naughty phrases to scare delivery people with!!!

Applelinks: Okay, aside from scaring delivery people, what's Hector's role with the company. Does he work freelance, or is he on the payroll?

Ambrosia: Hehe! Firstly, he is actually a she. It came as a shock to everyone when that was found that out!! She works, guarding the office 24/7, solely for a variety of nuts and toys to chew on. She looks friendly enough; however, beneath the surface, she is deadly, protecting Ambrosia with her life! She also does a pretty good impression of the sound effects for most of our games!

Applelinks: So, if you were to be burgled, what would be her preferred method of attack? Would she squish the burgler by shoving bubbles at him, deflect balls at him with a paddle, shoot staples at him or just pop him with a laser gun?

Ambrosia: Peck them! Though she can be seen flying a ship about in EV: Nova, so maybe she'd blast 'em!

Applelinks: Whatever gets the job done, I guess. And speaking of getting jobs done, a few of your recent games have been done in Windows as well as for the Mac, and you're currently working on the Windows version of pop-pop and EV Nova. Considering past events with Macintosh start-ups, how long do you think it'll be before Microsoft buys you up so that pop-pop 2 can be an Xbox exclusive?

Ambrosia: Hehe. Firstly, let me reiterate that we are a Mac-centric company. Due to popular demand, we have taken the route of porting some of our games, but intend to remain Mac based. As for a Microsoft buy out, I think we are safe for the time being...

Applelinks: Well, I'm sure Hector would be up for it. She could take that Microsoft money and retire back to a tropical island. In the meantime, Macintosh gamers are a protective lot. Has Ambrosia's decision to port games to Windows met with much ire from Macintosh users? Likewise, do you get many complaints from PC users who aren't used to waiting around for their ports?

Ambrosia: A few of the users who frequent our web boards were a bit upset; they liked to consider Ambrosia games a luxury of being Mac users. However, others understood where we were coming from and that it would be cruel to exclude Windows users pleading for ports for their choice in OS!

The PC users aren't used to waiting and having no promised release date. I get a lot of e-mails asking for a release date, which I would gladly give them if I knew it! Although, even though PC users aren't as accustomed to shareware as Mac users are, there seems to be a lot if interest.

Applelinks: Any talk about developing for consoles or licensing your titles to console developers? It seems to me that many Ambrosia games would fit quite well in the GameCube or Gameboy Advance library.

Ambrosia: We design our games around what the Mac has to offer, both in what it can do and what the people using the machines want. We try to cover our bases and provide a range of gameplay styles for different people. However, we think that the style of our current games wouldn't normally transfer well to a console, where the user expects different things.

Having said that, we have been investigating the idea porting some of our earlier titles to PDAs, where the games fit the demographic and style of gamer a lot better. We haven't made a final decision yet, but we have been working out the requirements and implications of such a move. Keep you eyes peeled for more news on this front!

Applelinks: Will do; that'll be great for PDA owners. I feel that games such as Ferazel's Wand, Mars Rising or Swoop could sell well on the Gameboy (I say this, of course, because I want them on the Gameboy), but I certainly won't argue the point...I'd much rather have you guys focusing on the Mac. In that vein, just a couple more questions before we wrap this up. At Macworld Expo 2001, nearly every game developer with whom I spoke showed disappointment and unease with Apple's support for them. How do you feel Apple's relationship with game developers has changed over the past couple years?

Ambrosia: Apple have been a company in limbo over the last few years, but they have made a great turnaround and regained a lot of focus. Our relationship with Apple has been great—we immediately jumped on the OS X bandwagon very early, which got their attention and support. This relationship resulted in Deimos Rising, our scrolling shooter, being bundled with the new iMacs, eMacs and iBooks. Apple obviously wants great games for the platform, and it seems to us they have been doing a lot more since 2001 to ensure they keep them.

Applelinks: Is there anything more you'd like to see them do?

Ambrosia: Nope, just to keep developing the cool technologies that allow us to keep making games more fun! They are doing a lot to improve the machines and OS; everything else is our responsibility! Though, maybe, send me a free Powerbook...for testing, of course...

Applelinks: Funny, I was thinking the same thing; how my news coverage and reviews could certainly be improved by the acquisition of a free Powerbook...or at least one of those new iPods.

But, okay, one final question and I'll let you get back to your kung-fu practice. Sticking with Apple and their relationship with the Macintosh community, who would win in a fight, me or Phil Schiller?

Ambrosia: You both look pretty tough, it would be close... Better settled with a pop-pop battle!

Applelinks: Fair enough, but I suppose I should get to practicing.

Okay, Tom, I thank you for taking the time to talk with us. More importantly, we thank Ambrosia Software for all the great games over the past decade or so, and for the continuing devotion to the Macintosh and its legion of gamers.

Ambrosia: Thank you, Kirk. And thanks to the gamers for supporting for us!
  

To check out Ambrosia Software's entire line-up of Macintosh games, including the recently released cyber-hacker game "Uplink," simply visit their website. To see how Ambrosia fared in this year's Moofi