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Maelstrom (1992 video game)

Maelstrom
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Developer(s) Ambrosia Software
Publisher(s) Ambrosia Software
Designer(s) Andrew Welch
Platform(s) Mac OS, Linux, Mobile phones
Release 1992
Genre(s) Multi-directional shooter
Mode(s) single player

Maelstrom is a 2D video game developed by Andrew Welch, released in November 1992 for Macintosh. The game is an enhanced clone of Atari's 1979 Asteroids arcade game with a visual style similar to Atari's 1987 sequel, Blasteroids.Maelstrom was released when there were few action games for the high-resolution color displays of the Macintosh, so it garnered interest (despite the dated concept) and led to the creation of Ambrosia Software. The game was later released under GPL and Creative Commons license as Free Software. Ports for operating systems, such as Linux, macOS and Windows, resulted from this.

Maelstrom is played as a 2D overview in a section of space. The object of the game is to reach the highest score possible by shooting asteroids with a plasma cannon from a spaceship that the player controls. The ship can move in any direction across the screen and also has a limited amount of shield. The player may also pick up powerups throughout the levels and encounter unusual objects and enemies throughout the game.

Maelstrom was created using THINK C and uses 18,000 lines of C code with 9,000 lines of inline assembler. The game was initially released in November 1992 as unlimited shareware for the Macintosh. In 1993, Maelstrom received the "Shareware Industry Award for Best Game" and other awards.

Ambrosia Software gave the source-code to Sam Lantinga, who created a SDL port from it and released it in 1995. Latinga's version also included some novelties like networked multiplayer gaming. In 1999 Ambrosia Software released Latinga's version 3.0 as Open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). In 2010, Andrew Welch and Ian Gilman released the game's contents under the free Creative Commons license Attribution, which makes Maelstrom completely Free Software.


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