Every week MacCentral brings readers the latest news and headlines from the world of Mac gaming. There are always a few stories that don’t make it into our regular news coverage, though, and that’s why we have this feature — the Week in Games.
Burst 1.0.0 released
Dracosoft has released Burst, an arcade puzzle game for Mac OS 8.6 or newer (including Mac OS X). You must line up three or more matching shapes for points. Burst is distributed as US$9.99 shareware.
Falcon 4 Patch 1.06d released
Centromedia has released Falcon 4 Patch 1.06d. It’s a free application that patches MacSoft’s version of Falcon 4 to the 1.06d update. With the new update Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation (ACMI) works again, and other changes help to make the game more stable, hand joysticks better, free memory, and much more.
FreeCell for OS X released
Bullseye Software has released a Mac OS X-only version of FreeCell, the popular solitaire card game. A demo version can be downloaded — your first 50 games are free, and it costs $20 to register.
Galactica A.D. bundled with “Space Food Sticks”
MonkeyByte.com has announced an unusual promotion for its space strategy game, Galactica: Anno Dominari. If you buy the game on CD, you’ll get free “Space Food Sticks” too.
Harpoon3 3.4.14.0/1 released
Jesse Spears has released new versions of the naval warfare simulation game Harpoon3. The .1 release, intended for Classic, is a major update which improves drawing speed.
MacMAME 0.60a released
Brad Oliver has released a new version of MacMAME, the freeware arcade game emulator for the Macintosh. ROM handling has been improved, core fixes have been made and bugs have been corrected, and joystick and mouse support has been improved.
Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix tops sales charts
MacPlay announced that it’ll make a Mac version of Soldier of Fortune II last week. Recently released for the PC, the game is burning up sales charts, according to the Windows version publisher Activision. Within five days of release, SoF II grabbed the 3rd, 2nd and top spots in US, UK and Australia sales charts respectively.
Elsewhere on the Web
MacGamer.com has posted The Mac Gaming ‘It’ List, a compendium of what’s hot and what’s not in Mac gaming. The Gamesome Mac weekly QuickTime radio show will feature Westlake Interactive’s Brad Oliver tomorrow night. Inside Mac Games looks at the Kensington Turbo Mouse Pro and its suitability for gaming. Apple has posted a preview of what to expect at next month’s Macworld Expo in the games area, too.
Closer to home
What a week for games news on MacCentral! QuakeCon registration begins. GameRanger 3.0 preview release is OS X compatible and now available. The Apple Store is selling GeForce4 Ti card kits for Power Mac G4s. MacSoft announced that Max Payne has gone gold and will ship next month. Blizzard Entertainment noted that WarCraft III has gone gold and will ship in early July. Nvidia introduced Cg, a new high-level graphics language to help game makers program its vertex and pixel shader technology. MacSoft will publish Neverwinter Nights for the Mac. Kids ages 3-6 will get a new Curious George game. Aspyr Media is shipping Clive Barker’s Undying for the Mac. Westlake has added V.A.S.T. and Track 1 to its list of projects in development, but what are they? MacSoft and Westlake have released Civilization III 1.21f open beta to help shake down a new version in development. MacPlay will publish Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix for the Mac. Aspyr shipped The Sims Hot Date. Blizzard has posted a workaround for a problem with Starcraft and Mac OS X 10.1.5.
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 or services you’d like to see highlighted here.