Escape Velocity (later known as Escape Velocity Classic) is the first of the Escape Velocity trilogy by Ambrosia Software. Available only for Mac, it is basically a 360° topdown-shooter with relatively simple graphics and gameplay. The player flies around in a ship, lands on a planet which opens in a window with several options, such as buying upgrades and new ships or accepting simple cargo missions. One would then take off again, jump to the destination system and unload the cargo. The backstory is that there were two main fractions, the Confederation, centered on Earth, which basically tries to keep or regain control over the distant systems, and the Rebellion, which comprises the outer systems, striving for independence. There are a few independent systems that keep out of the war, a few civilian companies and pirates. And the mysterious aliens which only make an appearance once in one of the storylines. The greatest feature of the game is that it is completely customizable. One can not only mod the existing game, but create total conversions.

The ships you see here are recreations of the EVC-ships that were to be used for a total conversion of Escape Velocity Nova, the third installment of the trilogy. The idea was to bring the original EVC back, but using all the new features of EVN (larger, 16 bit graphics, scenes, animations, effects). I abandoned the project as with MacOS X, editing Escape Velocity versions became more difficult. One had to use a ressource editor to do so, but MacOS X isn't based on resources. With the end of MacOS Classic, the runtime environment for OS9 programs under OSX, there was no good way left to work on plugins.

These ships were created around mid to late 2008.