It looks like “old school” Mac gamers pining for a successor to the long-lamented game RoboSport may finally have a new game to interest them. UK-based Mac game publisher Virtual Programming Ltd. announced plans to publish MindRover — The Europa Project for the Macintosh.
Developed by Cognitoy, MindRover is billed as an “intelligent robot simulation/3D strategy game.” You’re given the opportunity to outfit robotic vehicles, which you equip with various sensors, movement components and weapons based on the challenge. The robotic vehicle can be a hovercraft, wheeled or treaded device.
Once you’ve fit out your robot properly for the task at hand, you must then program it — wiring the components together and setting their properties using a graphical interface. Then you let the device loose in the arena and see how well it does. Competitions take place in a 3D world in and around a space station.
Virtual Programming came to the attention of Mac gamers earlier this year with a Mac conversion of the popular PlayStation racing game, Wipeout 2097. More recently, the company offered up a Mac version of KickOff 2002, a soccer (football) action game. The company is also working on Mac conversions of Payback, a Grand Theft Auto-style action game; Tzar: Burden of the Crown, a strategy game; and Europa Universalis II, an empire-building strategy game.
Virtual Programming anticipates a Q4, 2002 release for MindRover. System requirements are yet to be determined.