Acid Software is New Zealand's leading software developer and publisher. In their active Amiga days they've produces many excellent games and tools for the Amiga. Most people will probably remember the excellent funny arcade racer Skidmarks, which also has seen some sequels (Skidmarks 2, Super Skidmarks, Ultimate Skidmarks). Like most of the other games from Acid Software this racing game was created by using the fabulous Blitz Basic 2 programming language from Mark Sibly. But let's start from the beginning...
Many people who have created games for Acid Software have worked for other companies before, like the people from Art Software and Vision Software who were responsible for games like Sirius 7 or Zombie Apocalypse, before they joined Acid Software. The first real program of Acid Software was Blitz Basic, followed by the second version, which was released in 1992. A number of commercial games were written by using Blitz Basic 2, the most famous was probably a little game called Worms and I guess not many people know this game today... ;-)
In 1993 they've released their flagship product: Skidmarks! Meanwhile they've also tried to convert it to Windows and you can find a downloadable example on their website! But it seems they weren't happy with the result, because it seems the development was stopped. The next big game was called Guardian and was programmed by the Blitz Basic 2 programmer Mark Sibly. Of course he used his program to make this game. Guardian is a shoot'em up in Defender style, but it's completely in 3D and uses a fast and colorful vector graphics engine.
Roadkill was the next game, a futuristic racing game featuring also weapons and it was developed by Vision Software. In 1995, when everyone wanted to do a Doom clone for the Amiga, Acid Software published the game Gloom from Black Magic Software. It was a very brutal game and was therefore banned in Germany. The 3D engine was excellent at this time and the game worked perfectly on a plain A1200. Even this game has seen some sequels.
Unfortunately since then we haven't heard much about Acid Software, but following the infos on their webpage, it seems they're working on a new game, after they've played around with some new technologies in the last years (demo versions are downloadable from there website). The new game in development is called Rollerbot and the info on their site says it's a "3D fruit fest set to maximum challenge". Watching the screenshots it makes me thinking of a good looking mixture of Jump 'n Run / Arcade and Puzzle elements. Of course in 3D (which game don't use a 3D engine today...). Look promising! A demo version shall be available for download soon, so visit the webiste of Acid Software frequently. Maybe we'll see another masterpiece like Skidmarks soon. | 
Skidmarks
Zombie Apocalypse
Roadkill
Rollerbot
Rollerbot |