Panic Software are the makers of some of the finest Mac software out there, including the superb FTP application Transmit, the superlative Usenet program Unison, and the hyperbolically adjectived icon tool, Candybar.
When Panic isn’t applying their peculiar brand of genius to creating the best programs OS X has to offer, they are drafting up hilarious mock histories of their company’s misadventures in the burgeoning Atari 2600 market… replete with gorgeously hallucinogenic cover art for what their apps would have looked like at Atari cartridges back in 1983.
The mock history is the finest part of the post, though. According to their blog post, Panic started out in the late 70’s, “writing VAX/VMS automation code for the textile industry. Cotton attenuators, zipper sublimation, loom dynamics, that sort of thing.” But once Pac-Man Fever hit, Panic decided to go into writing Atari games arguing that “you could fill one of those plastic cassettes up with camel spit and those kids would still snap it up like over-eager turtles.”
Panic describes the released games as “disasters.”
Clearly “inspired” by existing Atari 2600 games, with cringe-inducing graphics (at one point, a tester confused a smiley face for a wagon wheel) and inscrutable gameplay (”Rotate joystick to fire!”, read the manual of one), the games, once thought to be the savior of the company, almost heralded its demise…
Almost immediately, the entire Panic Games lineup was being discounted at pennies on the dollar at every major retailer.
The entire thing is worth a length lunch hour chuckling, but I think the thing that struck me most when reading it was just how likely we are to see some futuristic hologram programmers mock the early days of App Store development in the year 2040.
Kudos, Panic! You just reminded me it really is time for me to pick up another Transmit license.
[via MeFi]
