Ares is a computer game written by Nathan Lamont, inspired by Spacewar!, Rescue Raiders, Choplifter, Star Control, and others. Originally published by Changeling Software, which went out of business while launching Ares in 1998, Ares was modified by Lamont and re-released by Ambrosia Software in 1999 for classic macOS (“Mac OS” at the time).
Ares received some critical notice in its day:
INSIDE MAC GAMES said Ares has “more action than your average martial arts flick... it’s a beautiful looking game... the dynamic scaling is something to behold... this game is going to be hot!”
PC GAMES MAGAZINE rated Ares an “A” and raved “Ares is a Mac Star... Accolade’s classic Star Control knows few equals... but that changes with Changeling’s Ares... [it’s] a great stylish action game... [with] an amazing level of polish in the small details... you’ll really feel like you’re at a command console.”
Ares attracted a loyal fan base, and in 2008, Lamont released its original source code under the GNU GPL 2.0, and most of the media under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. In 2011, he added the option of using the GNU LGPL 3.0 for the Ares source code.
From this, a brave and skilled team, lead by “sfiera,” produced the amazingly faithful Antares (source), a pixel-perfect reproduction of the original game. Bravo sfiera!
The media (text, images, sounds, and music) are distributed separately. Not all media from the original commercial distribution is included. Some sounds have been intentionally excluded for licensing reasons. The source models for most of the sprites and interface elements are also available, under the same CC license, converted by the Xsera Team into contemporary formats (.wrl/VRML and .obj/Wavefront).
The movies are available under a more restrictive CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license . The more restrictive license is necessary because of some of the sounds effects used were, in turn, restrictively licensed.
Also available: Source Code for Hera, game data editor for Ares .