Every day MacCentral brings readers news about the latest goings-on in the world of Macintosh gaming. There are always a few stories that don’t make it onto our news page, however. That’s why we’ve come up with this weekly retrospective, called The Week In Games.
Bongo Boogie released
Patrice Krysztofiak has released Bongo Boogie, a new “next generation brick wall game” for Mac OS X. Involving monkeys and coconuts, the game tasks you with collecting symbols for powerups like “G-Blast” and “Extra Life,” while avoiding “Gravity,” “Freeze” and more. It has more than 200 levels in all. It requires OpenGL acceleration, too — and Krystztofiak said that it may work on Mac OS 9 too, though it hasn’t been tested.
Championship Manager for Mac site available
Championship Manager (from Feral Interactive) is the footie management game that’s enormously popular in Europe. The game attracts a lot of PC players, but so far there haven’t been a lot of spots for Mac Championship Manager fans to congregate. Now there is.
Geneforge 1.1 available, now for OS X
Spiderweb Software has posted a new upgrade to its fantasy role-playing game Geneforge to add Mac OS X compatibility; the new version also fixes bugs. What’s more, the company noted it’s working on Geneforge 2 and Blades of Avernum, two new RPGs it expects to release in 2003.
Hang3000 2.02, Brickles3000 2.01 released
Ken Winograd and Space-Time Associates have released Hang3000 2.02, the latest version of their Carbonized “secretly educational” Hangman game for Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. Dozens of categories will test your knowledge of everything from world geography to authors and composers. (In related news, a new Carbonized version of the company’s brickbashing game Brickles3000 is also available.)
Ponere 1.0 released
Degana has released Ponere 1.0, a new tile-based puzzle game in which you must arrange them to create closed rings like a circle or oval. The game includes 60 levels and is distributed as US$18.95 shareware. It requires Mac OS 8.6 or later and runs natively in Mac OS X.
Sim Theme Park patched for OS X
Zonic has noted that its Mac conversion of Sim Theme Park is now Mac OS X compatible, and has been fixed to support Nvidia cards and correct other problems too. Sim Theme Park, known abroad as Theme Park World, was published for the Mac by Feral Interactive (and distributed in the U.S. by Aspyr Media).
Solitaire til Dawn Mac OS X beta available
Semicolon Software is presently publicly beta testing their long-running shareware solitaire game for the Mac, Solitaire Til Dawn. The new version introduces Mac OS X compatibility for the first time. 1.0b4 is the latest version.
Squish! now available for play on IGN
Monkey Byte Development noted that its Shockwave-based arcade puzzler Squish! is now available for online play at play.ign.com. The game had been available for testing before now, but this is the finished version. In Squish!, players must rid themselves of jelly-like blob-monsters by grouping three or more together.
Starcraft: Ghost to be console-only
It’s not exactly Mac-related, but given Blizzard Entertainment’s long history of supporting the Mac, many Mac gamers viewed with interest a countdown on Blizzard’s Web site this past week that marked time to an announcement for their latest title. The game is called Starcraft: Ghost, and Blizzard plans to make this game for consoles only — so not only are Mac gamers left out of the loop, but PC gamers are as well. Focusing on just one soldier instead of troop deployment and resource-gathering, the game is not a proper real time strategy game sequel to Starcraft, but instead is a tactical action combat game that builds off elements introduced in Starcraft.
Stoenworks posts new flight sim tutorial
A new flight simulator tutorial at Stoenworks.com called “Hold it!” talks about what holding patterns are, how to fly them, and how to compensate for wind. Stoenworks.com has more than 30 other tutorials as well.
Xoggle 1b27 released
Drew Hamlin has released a new version of Xoggle, the open-source Boggle game. 1b27 is now available for download. The new version fixes bugs and adds a prefer dialog to auto-define the word list. Xoggle is distributed, including source code, under the GNU General Public License.
Elsewhere on the Web
MacGamer has reviewed Heretic II from MacPlay. Inside Mac Games has taken a look at e.p.i.c. interactive’s The Feeble Files. Apple’s Games site has taken a look at Cosmic Encounter Online, a new game coming soon.
Closer to home
Disney has shipped Magic Artist Cartoon Maker. ATI anticipates that its Radeon 9000 Mac Edition graphics card will be available for retail sale in the next few weeks. Pangea Software has posted new screenshots for Bugdom 2 and gave MacCentral readers a heads-up about what they can expect. Playnet and Cornered Rat Software say that World War II Online will be released for retail Mac sales in November. Scholastic has released a new game based on Clifford the Big Red Dog for preschoolers.
As always, we heartily encourage you to e-mail us if you have ideas for ways that we can improve our games coverage here on MacCentral, or if you have a Mac game or related service you’d like to see highlighted here.