The week in games

Every day MacCentral brings readers the latest news from the world of Mac games along with our other headlines and info. There are always a few items that don’t make it onto our regular news pages, however, so we’ve come up with this weekly retrospective — the Week in Games.

Blizzard bans cheaters

Warcraft III maker Blizzard Entertainment banned 14,000 people suspected of cheating while playing Warcraft III on their Battle.net online gaming service. The ban isn’t permanent — players will be able to play again in a couple of weeks. The cheat the gamers exploited enabled them to see into opponents’ territories.

Brickles3000 Carbonized

Ken Winograd and Space-Tome Associates have announced the release of Brickles3000 2.0, a new version of the brickbashing ball-and-paddle game. It’s been Carbonized for Mac OS X.

Dominions coming to Mac OS X

Illwinter Game Design noted that it will soon be shipping a Mac OS X version of Dominions — Priests, Prophets & Pretenders. It’s a fantasy-based strategy game that enables players to create their own gods and wage war against other players. Look for it sometime this month.

Geneforge released for OS X, Avernum 3 in beta

Avernum Software has released a final version of its Mac OS X conversion of Geneforge, the role playing game. What’s more, the company is now publicly beta testing a Mac OS X conversion of Avernum 3.

Jinni Zeala updated

LittleWing Software’s fantastic solid-state pinball simulation Jinni Zeala has been updated to 1.1.7. Available initially as an electronic release from Little Wing and later as part of MacPlay’s low-priced Value Series line, Jinni Zeala is from the same folks who made Angel Egg, Crystal Caliburn and other realistic pinball games. The new version corrects “minor errors” in gameplay. Available for download from Macgamefiles.com.

Koingo Software CD available

Josh Hague has announced the release of the Koingo Software CD, a collection of all the shareware publisher’s games, fully registered, on a single CD. The collection would otherwise cost more than $75, but the CD costs only $29 instead.

Squish goes beta

Monkey Byte Development has noted the beta release of its Shockwave-based online game Squish, playable for free (with registration) from Vendornation.com. Originally announced as “Jelly Drop,” it’s a fast-paced arcade style puzzler with similar elements to Bejeweled or Tetris.

TacOps v4 ships

As MacCentral previously reported, Battlefront.com planned to ship TacOps 4 — the latest major version of the popular turn-based strategy game of modern warfare — by the end of last week. TacOps developer Major H. confirmed the news — the game is now shipping.

Elsewhere on the Web

Inside Mac Games interviewed Jeff Morgan of GraphSim Entertainment, who talked about his company’s forthcoming development plans. MacGamer.com has previewed Master of Orion 3, the forthcoming space strategy game from MacSoft. Apple has posted a preview of Aliens vs. Predator from MacPlay.

Closer to home

Dungeon Siege is headed our way, thanks to Bold and Westlake. A new game for early learners in the UK has debuted called Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Virtual Programming’s KickOff 2002 has been brought to the US by Freeverse Software; it’s a fast-paced arcade style 2D soccer game. The Mac version of Unreal Tournament 2003 is indeed in development — and Epic Games is working on it.

As always, we encourage you to drop us a line if you have ideas for ways we can improve our games coverage here on MacCentral. If you have Mac games or related services you’d like to see listed here, get in touch with us too.