Silicon Beach Software… yes, that was the company that made the Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle Macintosh Classic games. Surely, they are no longer in business anymore, correct? Correct.
Wow, now this is interesting. The developers behind Silicon Beach Software were the first to pioneer a lot of modern technologies years in advance. SuperPaint introduced many modern image editing tools like the Magic Wand before Adobe Photoshop was introduced, one to two years in advance (depending on how you count). SuperPaint2 introduced a plugin architecture. Jonathan Gay later went on to co-found FutureWave Software, which eventually produced Macromedia Flash and Adobe Flash. The animations in the Dark Castle computer game were produced with an early version of a tool that later became known as Macromedia Director. Even the company name, Silicon Beach Software, is credited for giving San Diego the nickname “Silicon Beach.”
As the productivity software was much more lucrative than the games, Silicon Beach Software did not produce many games, quickly shifting to a full focus on the productivity software. This companies end came about by its purchase first by Aldus in 1990, then by Adobe in 1994. Delta Tao acquired the rights to the Dark Castle video games in 1994.
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach_Software
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperPaint_%28Macintosh%29
So really, I have to say this, so the fate of SuperPaint was very much similar to the fate of Aldus FreeHand. Both were first developed by an independent company, Aldus was later involved, then when they were purchased by Adobe, they basically got killed off.
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_FreeHand
Alas, now for the case of the Dark castle articles, when I am revisiting them, it feels like a Wikipedia deletionist has been through since the first time I had visited, and looking at the history of the articles, I can confirm this is correct.
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Castle
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dark_Castle
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Dark_Castle
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Return_to_Dark_Castle&action=history
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Return_to_Dark_Castle&oldid=371130671
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Return_to_Dark_Castle
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Dark_Castle
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Color_Dark_Castle
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Dark_Castle
What about Photoshop? Sure, they came late to the party from a technological standpoint, but they are still around, why is that? It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. If you take a real careful look at their history, you can see that the main reason why they are still around is because they were the “first” to get the right connections with the right people – Industrial Light & Magic, Adobe, and bundling their software with scanner hardware being sold. Both SuperPaint and Photoshop were developed on the Macintosh computer platform, both originally for working with grayscale scanned images. Because they were Adobe’s first purchased product of its kind, naturally they got preferential treatment over similar products that were purchased later, regardless of whether the later purchases have been around longer, like was the case of SuperPaint.
20190517/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoshop