The week in games

Every week MacCentral brings readers the latest news and headlines from the Mac gaming industry, and this week was no exception. Regardless, there are always stories we aren’t able to get to in our regular news coverage — that’s why we created this weekly retrospective, which we call the Week in Games.

Arcane Arena beta 12 released

A new build of Freeverse Software’s massively multiplayer online game, Arcane Arena, is now in distribution. Beta 12 can be downloaded online. It features an online persistent world, massively multiplayer battles, a turn based combat system, dungeon quests and a chat interface. The game is available as a public beta, so if you haven’t given it a try yet and it sounds interesting to you, visit the Web site.

Diablo II “Chest Hack” ban claims 20,000 accounts

Blizzard Entertainment recently took steps to combat cheating in online games of its popular title Diablo II by identifying and thus banning 20,000 user accounts from online play. These accounts were all associated with 8,500 users who have been guilty of exploiting the “Chest Hack” which appeared in user community discussions over the past week, according to Blizzard. Details are available on the Battle.net Web site.

Dragon’s Lair action figures coming alongside 3D game

Ubi Soft is planning to ship Dragon’s Lair 3D for Mac and PC this year — it’s a full 3D version of the classic videodisc arcade game from the 1980s. This week Digital Leisure Inc., which has the rights to that 2D original version (now distributed on DVD-ROM), announced plans to ship action figures made by AnJon, Inc. based on the forthcoming game.

Harpoon3 update posted

Jesse Spears has posted a new update for Harpoon3, the naval warfare simulator. This new build, 3.4.8, sports improvements to the recently implemented Nuclear Weapon code, and also features “major bug fixes” for OS X users.

MacSoft: Stronghold, Beachhead 2K2 coming in May

Inside Mac Games has posted details provided to it by MacSoft producer and master musician Al Schilling. Schilling tells our friends at IMG that the castle siege simulation Stronghold and the shoot ’em up Beachhead 2002 are both coming in May, just in time for E3 it seems, while Max Payne will be released in June. Master of Orion III got pushed back to later this year. He also talks about the company’s interest in publishing Neverwinter Nights, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal 2. Check out the link for details.

Reckless Drivin’ 1.4 gains OS X gamepad support, more

Jonas Echterhoff announced the release of an update to his 2D arcade-style action game for the Macintosh, Reckless Drivin’. Version 1.4 gains support for some gamepads under OS X by implementing HID Manager; force-feedback support has been added for MacAlly iShock II game pad users; and bugs have been fixed. The game is distributed as shareware, so check it out.

Rune soundtrack available

If you can’t get enough of Rune — the year-old viking 3D action game from Human Head Studios that just got a new lease on life thanks to Mercenary Studios’ decision to coordinate the distribution of the Rune: Halls of Valhalla Mac expansion pack — then you may be interested in Mercenary Studios’ release of the limited-edition Rune Soundtrack, available for order now for US$14.99.

Sixtyforce 0.6.2b1 supports OS X

Gerrit Goossen — whose main paying gig these days has been to port realMYST to Mac OS for the MacPlay bunch — has released another new build to his Nintendo 64 emulator for the Macintosh, Sixtyforce. Version 0.6.2b1 now supports OS X, and features “lots of compatibility fixes and a number of speed improvements.”

Tamte on Halo for Mac OS

Certainly anyone who still says that Halo isn’t coming to the Macintosh just isn’t paying attention — all you have to do is visit Bungie’s Halo Rumor Control Database and read the “Halo on PCs and Macs, by Matt” entry for the skinny. But one important advocate for Microsoft’s game plans on the Mac platform — Destineer Studios founder Peter Tamte, former Bungie exec, too — recently told our friends at MacGamer.com that “Anybody who has asserted that Microsoft will prevent Halo from shipping on the Macintosh is not well informed,” pointing to Microsoft VP Ed Fries’ own comments at Macworld Expo as proof.

Elsewhere on the Web

MacGamer.com has posted a review of Icewind Dale, the new role-playing game from MacPlay. Inside Mac Games has a review of CH Products’ Fighterstick USB, a joystick that works on the Mac. The Games page on Apple’s Web site features a new feature talking about CyberExtruder, technology that lets you literally put your face in the game.

Closer to home

This week was chock full o’ gaming goodness on the pages of MacCentral. Just yesterday we had news of a new game headed for kids based on the popular Peanuts cartoon characters. NCsoft announced that Lineage has gone live; it’s the massively multiplayer online role playing game that puts more than 330,000 concurrent users (Mac and PC alike) together in an online fantasy world. Pangea Software has re-released Cro-Mag Rally as a shareware title now that stocks of the commercial release have dwindled, just like it did with Bugdom. MacPlay announced that realMYST is shipping; it’s the 3D real time version of the legendary puzzle game. Feral Interactive provided a status update of its current Mac gaming efforts; it reports that the F1 racing game it’s working on is soon to be in beta, Black & White’s multiplayer patch is coming soon, an expansion pack for Black & White is on the way, and it outlined its Max Payne distribution plans for Europe and Australasia too. e.p.i.c. interactive said it’s shipping Gorky 17, an action/adventure game for the Mac. ATI has new retail card drivers that apparently improve 3D performance on some of its Radeon-branded cards. Want more? Hit our News Archive page.

As always, we encourage you to let us know if you have ideas for ways we can improve our games coverage here on MacCentral, or if you have Mac game-related products and services you’d like our readers to know about.