Silicon Beach Software, Inc., was an early American developer of software products for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

personal computer. It was founded in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

in 1984 by Charlie Jackson and his wife Hallie. Jackson later co-founded

FutureWave Software FutureWave Software, Inc was a software development company based in San Diego, California. The company was co-founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay on January 22, 1993. VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Sof ...

with

Jonathan Gay Jonathan Gay (born 1967) is an American computer programmer and software entrepreneur based in Northern California. Gay co-founded FutureWave Software in 1993. For a decade, he was the main programmer and visionary of Flash, an animation editor ...

. FutureWave produced the first version of what is now

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...

. Although Silicon Beach Software began as a publisher of game software, it also published what was called "

productivity software Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings ...

" at the time.

History

Silicon Beach's best known "productivity software" product was

SuperPaint SuperPaint was a pioneering graphics program and framebuffer computer system developed by Richard Shoup at Xerox PARC. The system was first conceptualized in late 1972 and produced its first stable image in April 1973. SuperPaint was among the e ...

, a graphics program which combined features of Apple's

MacDraw MacDraw is a discontinued vector graphics drawing application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacDraw was one of the first WYSIWYG drawing programs that could be used in collaboration with MacWrite. It was eventu ...

and

MacPaint MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was nota ...

with several innovations of its own. SuperPaint2 and Digital Darkroom were the first programs on the Macintosh to offer a Plug-in Architecture, allowing outside software developers to extend both programs' capabilities. Silicon Beach coined the term "plug-in". Silicon Beach was a pioneer in graphic tools for

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...

. Not only was

a tool that had advanced graphic editing capabilities for its day, but Digital Darkroom was also a pioneering photo editor. It was grayscale only, not color (like the early Macintosh computers), but had a number of interface innovations, including the Magic Wand tool, which also appeared later in

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...

. It also had a proprietary option for printing grayscale content on

dot matrix printer A dot matrix printer is an impact printer that prints using a fixed number of pins or wires. Typically the pins or wires are arranged in one or several vertical columns. The pins strike an ink-coated ribbon and force contact between the ribbon ...

s. Digital Darkroom was used professionally to clean up scanned images for

clip art Clip art (also clipart, clip-art) is a type of graphic art. Pieces are pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively and comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is creat ...

libraries. Another Silicon Beach product was

SuperCard In sports, a card lists the matches taking place in a title match combat-sport event. Cards include a main event match and the undercard listing the rest of the matches. The undercard may be divided into a midcard and a lower card, according to ...

which, like

, superseded the capabilities of an Apple-branded product (in this case,

HyperCard HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard combines a flat-file database with a graphical, f ...

). SuperCard used a superset of the

HyperTalk HyperTalk is a discontinued high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. Because the main target audience of HyperTalk ...

programming language and addressed common complaints about HyperCard by adding native support for color, multiple windows, support for vector images, menus and other features. Silicon Beach Software produced video games for the Macintosh. The most well known is ''

Dark Castle ''Dark Castle'' is a 1986 platform game for Macintosh published by Silicon Beach Software, later published by Three-Sixty Pacific for other platforms. It was designed and illustrated by Mark Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay. In ''Dark Castl ...

'' released in

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal ente ...

. It was

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to several other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s by other companies. Sequel ''

Beyond Dark Castle ''Beyond Dark Castle'' is a computer game, released for Macintosh in 1987 by Silicon Beach Software. It was designed by Mark Stephen Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay. It is the sequel to '' Dark Castle'', with more levels, monsters and item ...

'' was Silicon Beach's last game, because productivity software was much more lucrative. Their 1985 release, ''Airborne!'', was the first Macintosh game to feature digitized sound. Silicon Beach Software is credited with coining the term

Silicon Beach Silicon Beach is the Westside region of the Los Angeles metropolitan area that is home to more than 500 technology companies, including startups. It is particularly applied to the coastal strip from Los Angeles International Airport north to t ...

to refer to

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

in the same way that Silicon Valley refers to the

Santa Clara Valley The Santa Clara Valley is a geologic trough in Northern California that extends 90 miles (145 km) south–southeast from San Francisco to Hollister. The longitudinal valley is bordered on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains and on the east ...

and San Jose area. Silicon Beach was acquired by

Aldus Corporation Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing (DTP) software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing ...

in 1990 and Aldus, in turn, by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

in 1994.

Other products

*'' Airborne!'' (1985) combat game. A demo before the game was released was called ''Banzai!''. *'' Enchanted Scepters'' (1985)

Point-and-click adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based me ...

made with the engine that later became ''World Builder''. *'' World Builder'' (1986) graphical adventure game authoring package. *''

Apache Strike Apache Strike is a 3D helicopter game first released for the Macintosh in 1987. Gameplay Its objective is flying an Apache helicopter through a rudimentary hidden line removal, hidden line-rendered cityscape in order to destroy the enemy's stra ...

'' (1987) 3D helicopter game. *''

'' (1987) Sequel to ''

''. * Super 3D (1988) 3D modeling application. * Silicon Press (1986) card and label printing software * Personal Press (1988) easy to use desktop publishing software, later renamed Adobe Home Publisher

References

External links

Coverage of MacWorld Boston 1988
including SuperPaint and Digital Darkroom with founder Charlie Jackson from '' The Computer Chronicles''
Video review of ''Beyond Dark Castle'' and ''Apache Strike''
with Silicon Beach development V.P. Eric Zocher from '' The Computer Chronicles''
''Silicon Beach Software''
profile at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

{{Authority control Macintosh software companies Defunct video game companies of the United States Dark Castle