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Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave) was Macromedia's first and most successful multimedia player prior to the introduction of Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash). In an attempt to raise its brand profile all Macromedia players prefixed Shockwave to their names in the late 1990s. Although this campaign was very successful and helped establish Shockwave Flash as a dominant multimedia plugin, Shockwave and Flash became more difficult to maintain as two separate products. In 2005, Macromedia marketed three distinct browser player plugins under the brand names Macromedia Authorware, Macromedia Shockwave and Macromedia Flash.

Although Shockwave was designed for making a wide variety of online movies and animations, its actual use has become concentrated in the area of game development. Other features not replicated by Flash include a much faster rendering engine, including hardware-accelerated 3D, and support for various network protocols, including Internet Relay Chat. Furthermore, Shockwave's functionality can be extended with so-called "Xtras".

Unlike Flash, the Shockwave browser plugin is not available for Linux or Solaris despite vocal lobbying efforts.^[1] It has also yet to pe ported to Intel Macintosh systems, although users can run the PowerPC version under Rosetta emulation. However, the Shockwave Player can be installed on Linux with CrossOver or by running a Windows version of a supported browser in Wine. According to Adobe, Macromedia Shockwave Player is available on 52.3% of Internet-enabled PCs.^[2] It uses .DCR files created using the authoring tool Macromedia Director.

• Shockwave.com (Shockwave.com) - games website created as an independent company in 1999 by Macromedia^[3] and merged with AtomFilms in 2001^[4].
• Adobe Official Homepage
• What's the difference between Shockwave and Flash? (dated 2004)
• How Stuff Works - The Difference Between Flash and Shockwave
• Shockwave3d.com - hundreds of examples of Shockwave's 3D capabilities