The week in games

MacCentral brings readers news and info from the Mac game business alongside other headlines, but there are sometimes stories that don’t make it onto our regular news pages. That’s why we have this weekly retrospective, called the Week in Games.

Freeverse Mac Card Game Week concludes

Freeverse Software’s Mac Card Game Week concluded yesterday; the company released updates for many of its best-selling card games to enable them to run on Mac OS X. Visit the site to download the latest versions.

Manic Minefields 2.1 now OS X compatible

Norbyte has released Manic Minefields 2.1, a collection of 12 minesweeper-style games in one. This version is OS X native, and also fixes bugs and makes minor improvements. It’s distributed as $10 shareware.

Master of Orion III screenshots posted

QuickSilver Software Inc. is currently in the late stages of developing Master of Orion III, a new strategy game that’ll be published by MacSoft once it’s finished. This week the company offered new screenshots of the game in action — specifically, how the game’s diplomacy features work.

WarBirds III updated for Jaguar

iEntertainment Network’s WarBirds III online aircraft dogfighting game has been updated for Mac OS X 10.2, “Jaguar.” The new version offers some other fixes and enhancements, and adds cockpit art for new aircraft. WarBirds is free for download, and can be played online if you subscribe to the gaming service.

Xenquin Software offers up OS X games

Shareware developer Xenquin Software this week offered up three new Mac OS X games: Blockforge, a Tetris-style puzzle action game, Reversi Unlimited, a strategy board game, and Cave Bombers, a 2D action game. More details and downloads are available from the Web site.

Xoggle beta 1C82 released

Drew Hamlin has released a new public beta version of Xoggle, the open source Boggle-style word game. This version gains many important enhancements, such as an expanded word list, better multiplayer networking, various changes, interface improvements and other enhancements.

Elsewhere on the Web

Inside Mac Games interviewed Aspyr Media’s Amy Torres to find out more details about the forthcoming game Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. MacGamer.com has posted a new editorial entitled Over-promise and Under-delivery that looks at games that ship with glaring bugs or features missing.

Closer to home

MacPlay is offering a “Shooter Pack” bundle that combines Heretic II, Hexen II and Sin Gold together in one package for $40. Aspyr Media offered up new screenshots of Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast in action. Graphics chip and card maker ATI Technologies Inc. posted its Q4 and FY02 results, and it said that FY03 will be dominated by revenues associated with its cutting edge Radeon 9700 card. MacCentral reviewed JBL Creature speakers, too. MacPlay updated Incoming and Alien vs Predator and also provided a status update about its forthcoming game Alien vs Predator 2.

As always, we encourage you to drop us a line if you have any questions we didn’t answer, or if you have ideas for ways we can improve our game coverage here at MacCentral. You’re also welcome to get in touch if you have a Mac game related product or service you’d like to let our readers know about too.