Macromedia Shockmachine

Shockmachine is a runtime application from Macromedia to run Shockwave content offline without the need for a web browser. It works with the Macromedia Shockwave Player plugin.

Product history
Shockmachine is a derivative of Macromedia Director Player and was used for the distribution and playback of Shockwave-based content developed with Macromedia Director, particularly games. Minimum requirements in 2000 were a PC running Windows 95 with at least an 8-bit graphics card, or a PowerPC-based Mac running at least Mac OS 7.6.1.

Release
Shockmachine was announced at the 1999 Macromedia International User Conference in San Francisco on May 24 and was launched in the following summer. 7 games were included with Shockmachine in the form of digital "cartridges", each averaging about 300 KB. Additional games were made available through Shockwave.com. Features included unlimited save, enhanced playback and zoom and a personal entertainment center operated by Shockwave Remote, which was included with both Shockmachine as well as Shockwave Player 7. Shockmachine was available on a CD-ROM for US$19.99. It was soon repriced to $2.99 and later became a free download from the Shockwave website.

Discontinuation
Adobe Systems shut down the website after its acquisition of Macromedia in December 2005. Adobe then began to rebrand all of Macromedia's products, such as Adobe Director and Adobe Shockwave. Adobe stopped selling Director on February 1, 2017. Support for Shockwave ended on March 14, 2017. In February 2019, Adobe announced that all remaining support for Shockwave on Microsoft Windows would be officially discontinued, effective April 9, 2019.

Articles

 * Shockwave 8 and ShockMachine by Evan Kleiman at Low End Mac (2000-07-11)