Requires: Any Macintosh with a 13" or larger 256 color/grayscale monitor, 2.1 MB free RAM (2.8 MB for music), 3.1 MB of hard drive space, and System 6.0.7 or later.
Protection: None
 
In 1992, Andrew Welch astonished the Macintosh gaming community with Maelstrom, his shareware adaptation of the classic arcade game Asteroids. After over two years of writing a plethora of handy utilities and publishing shareware games, Andrew Welch and his corporation, Ambrosia Software, have just released Apeiron. Ambrosia Software has now done for Centipede what Maelstrom did for Asteroids; it has revamped an arcade classic into what promises to be a tremendous success.
Ape Iron? Apeiron is a 256-color fast-action shooter. The object, as you probably know, is to destroy the Pentipede as he weaves his way through a mushroom patch to the bottom of the screen. He moves laterally across the screen until he hits the side of the screen or a mushroom, at which point he drops to the next level and reverses direction. When you shoot the Pentipede, the segment that you shoot turns into a mushroom. If your shot hits a segment in the middle of the Pentipede, you will divide him into two segments, each of which descends toward you separately. As you proceed to higher levels, each level will begin with an extra Pentipede head; on level 3 there is one long Pentipede (minus two segments) and two separate heads. Needless to say, it becomes a challenge to prevent the nasty creature from reaching the bottom of the screen. When he does, you’re in for a real challenge: more Pentipede heads appear from the sides of the screen at regular intervals.
There are also many miscellaneous baddies infesting the mushroom patch. A scorpion traverses the screen from left to right, providing a real nuisance when he appears on the screen right next to your shooter. A lizard moves across the upper parts of the screen poisoning mushrooms, which in turn causes the Pentipede to plummet toward the bottom of the screen. A flea drops vertically toward you leaving mushrooms in his wake. And there’s even a cameo from an old Ambrosia favorite; the green alien ship from Maelstrom swoops over the patch, destroying mushrooms and providing a great opportunity for bonus points.
 
The Yummiary. Many opportunities are available to enhance your ship’s meager capabilities. Your shooter is confined to the lower portions of the screen, its movement hampered by mushrooms and its shooting capabilities limited by the fact that only one bullet can exist on the screen at any point in time. However, opportunities for powerups abound. By shooting mushrooms you can reveal small coins which, when collected, can give you control over the direction of your shots, a machine gun, the ability to pass through mushrooms, and many more handy items. You can also shoot bonus multipliers or psychedelic mushrooms (which briefly allows you to rack up ten times the normal amount of points for anything you shoot) to give your score a boost.
Eye Candy. Aside from Apeiron’s incredibly addicting gameplay, it is a very impressive display of graphics and sound. From the opening title screen to the short animation after your death, Apeiron is visually astounding. The graphics are clear and colorful, the animation smooth. The visual effect experienced upon shooting a psychedelic mushroom is in itself an amazing experience. The four-channel sound is equally impressive; the background music as well as the entertaining sound effects (especially the “Oh, no!” when you die) make the game as appealing in sound as it is in graphics.
The best aspect of this game’s graphical capabilities is its speed. In a time when games like Marathon just aren’t the same on an ‘030, I was very pleased to be able to play Apeiron at full speed while also playing the background music and all the sounds. Ambrosia Software should be commended for its dedication to high-quality shareware games such as this one, and even more so for its commitment to developing software for the whole spectrum of Macintosh computers, from the Mac II to the PowerPC 8100. Incidentally, Apeiron is not PowerMac native, but the game should run fast enough in emulation to make a native version unnecessary.
Mission: Impossible? Yes, you guessed it. Apeiron, which is Greek for boundless or limitless, is very appropriately titled. Fortunately, the game is extremely captivating; its entertainment value does not diminish after spending the better part of an hour on a single game. It presents a wide array of surprises and challenges at higher levels, each of which can keep you occupied and entertained as you tackle Pentipede after Pentipede. All things considered, Apeiron’s astounding graphics and sound coupled with its captivating gameplay make it a joy to play and a worthy successor to a classic such as Maelstrom. Finally, Apeiron is shareware and thus costs only a meager $15. Could you have asked for a better deal?
On top of all this, Ambrosia Software is hosting an Apeiron high score contest. After each game, players receive a score code that can be sent in to the folks at Ambrosia Software to be entered into their contest. The top fifty scores coming from registered Apeiron players will win an Ambrosia T-shirt. The top three scorers will receive $300, $100, and $50, respectively. Scores will be posted monthly here in IMG; the deadline for scores is June 1st, 1995.
Nasty Bugs. Yes, Apeiron has its share of minor bugs. There are minor inaccuracies in shooting; sometimes a bullet will seem to fire straight through a mushroom that it should have hit. Occasionally a coin blasted to the top of the screen by your bullets will remain trapped there until you destroy the mushroom trapping the coin. Fortunately, these bugs are either extremely rare or inconsequential (i.e. not significantly affecting gameplay). Plus, Ambrosia has a reputation for hunting down these bugs and patching them quickly. The bottom line is that Apeiron, while having its share of inaccuracies, is for the most part smooth-running and polished.
