Silicon Beach Software

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Silicon Beach Software was a developer of Apple Macintosh  software, founded in San Diego, California in 1984 by Charlie Jackson and his wife Hallie. It developed game  and "productivity software".

Silicon Beach was a pioneer in graphic tools for desktop publishing (DTP). SuperPaint was a graphics program which combined features of Apple's MacDraw and MacPaint. SuperPaint2 and Digital Darkroom were the first programs on the Apple Macintosh to offer a Plug-in Architecture, allowing outside software developers to extend their capabilities. Silicon Beach coined the term "plug-in".

Digital Darkroom was an innovative photo editor initially for grayscale only, but including the Magic Wand tool, which also appeared later in Photoshop and an option for printing grayscale content on dot matrix printers. It was used professionally to clean up scanned images for clip art libraries.

SuperCard, like SuperPaint, superseded the capabilities Apple’s HyperCard using a superset of the HyperTalk programming language and solving problems with HyperCard by adding native support for colour, multiple windows, support for vector images, menus and other features.

The game Airborne! (1985), was the first Apple Macintosh game with digitized sound. Dark Castle released in 1986 was ported to several other operating systems by other companies. Sequel Beyond Dark Castle was Silicon Beach's last game, as productivity software was much more profitable.

Silicon Beach Software used the term Silicon Beach to refer to San Diego in the same way that Silicon Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley and San Jose area.

Silicon Beach was acquired by Aldus Corporation in 1990.

Silicon Beach Software products included

  • Airborne! (1985) combat game. A demo before the game was released was called Banzai!.
  • Enchanted Scepters (1985) Point-and-click adventure game made with the engine that later became World Builder.
  • World Builder (1986) graphical adventure game authoring package.
  • Apache Strike (1987) 3D helicopter game.
  • Beyond Dark Castle (1987) Sequel to Dark Castle.
  • Super 3D (1988) 3D modelling application.
  • Silicon Press (1986) card and label printing software
  • Personal Press (1988) easy to use desktop publishing software, later renamed Adobe Home Publisher.

Software Products

Beyond Dark Castle

Beyond Dark Castle
1987
Beyond Dark Castle was an action adventure computer game, released for Macintosh in 1987 by Silicon Beach Software.

Manufacturer : Silicon Beach Software
Type : Software - Game

Dark Castle

Dark Castle
1987
...

Manufacturer : Mirrorsoft
Type : Software - Game

Dark Castle

Dark Castle
1991
Yet another of the wealth of interactive adventures for Philip's console.

Manufacturer : Philips
Type : Software - Game


 

Silicon Beach Software

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