If it’s Sunday, it must be time for another Week in Games review. The Week in Games is MacCentral’s retrospective of all the “little stuff” that happened in Mac gaming this week — news items that are relevant to gamers, but for whatever reason didn’t make the cut for our regular daily news coverage.
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Androkids debuts
Retro game maker Phelios has released Androkids, a new title aimed at kids 4 to 8 years old. The game is available for Mac and PC, and requires Mac OS X and an OpenGL-compatible graphics system with at least 16MB of video RAM. The game puts you in charge of saving Princess Goodgrade from the Scribble King, avoiding the King’s guards and traps along the way through Notebook City.
DeepTrouble $1 demo deal announced
Monkey Byte Development’s VendorNation has announced a $1 demo deal on DeepTrouble, the sub-hunting action game made by CodeBlender. The deal recognizes that some folks may be put off by the large download size, so VendorNation offers a $1 CD-ROM that includes a “RegCode Ready” version of DeepTrouble, plus demos of VendorNation’s other Mac-compatible games.
Dominions 1.15 released
Illwinter Game Design has released a new version of its strategy game Dominions, v1.15. The new version corrects two minor bugs, according to the developer, who hopes it’s the last patch to Dominions before Dominions II gets released. An update and a playable demo is available for download.
Hang3000 update adds Astronauts category
Ken Winograd and Space-Time Associates have released Hang3000 v2.05, a new version of their Hangman word-guessing game. The new version adds an Astronauts category to test players’ knowledge of space explorers.
GameRanger 3.1.2 released
A new version of the popular Mac-only online gaming service GameRanger is now available for download. GameRanger 3.1.2 adds auto-detection under OS X, validates e-mail addresses, fixes issues with certain games, and more. You’ll be automatically updated to 3.1.2 the next time you log on, presuming you haven’t connected since the release on Wednesday.
Neverwinter Nights Mac development presses on
Bioware Corp. has updated its Mac status page for its conversion of Neverwinter Nights with small details this week; efforts focus on bug fixing and integration of the forthcoming v1.28 patch. Neverwinter Nights will be published by MacSoft when it’s done; MacSoft recently switched to new owners (Destineer).
Oni OS X patch updated
The Omni Group has updated their Mac OS X version of Oni to 1.36, to correct some bug fixes. The Omni Group has no official connection to Oni, which was developed by Bungie Software and published by Gathering of Developers; instead, they did their own Cocoa-built Mac OS X conversion simply for the love of the game.
RHEM to appeal to Myst fans
Looking for a graphical adventure/puzzle game to take the place of Myst in your collection? Got Game Entertainment is working on RHEM, a new game in the same sort of genre, to be published for Mac and PC. In RHEM, you must uncover the secrets of a mysterious letter.
SmartShader demos now available for some ATI cards
Have an ATI-based video card in your Power Mac, like a Radeon 8500 or 9000 series? ATI has released some developer demos you might be interested in, if you want to show off what your card can do. The demos show off some of the chips’ advanced rendering capabilities, with demos that replicate fur, bubbles and more.
WarBirds III updated
iEntertainment Network has updated its subscription-based online World War II-era aircraft dogfighting game WarBirds III to the 02.04.03 version. The new version fixes a number of obscure bugs and corrects issues with previous releases. If it’s been a while since you played WarBirds, WarBirds III adds OS X-native support and hardware-based graphics rendering, along with numerous other features.
Elsewhere on the Web
This week German Mac gaming site Macinplay has posted an interview with Tom Anthony from Ambrosia Software, who offers details on upcoming Ambrosia efforts like Uplink, Redline, Siege and Rockfall. MacGamer.com’s Shareware Center turns its attention this week to Chex Quest. Inside Mac Games has posted a CPU Upgrade Shootout. Apple’s own Games site looks at The Feeble Files and Bugdom 2.
Closer to home
This week on MacCentral, we noted that Aspyr will release a patch to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 to support force feedback and multiplayer gaming via GameRanger (within two weeks). ATI has settled a shareholder lawsuit to the tune of about $8 million. Nvidia and Microsoft settled legal arbitration over how much the Xbox maker is paying for its graphics chips. UK-based Mac game maker Virtual Programming has updated its (Safari-incompatible) Web site with details on its 2003 lineup. Open source resource SourceForge.net has appointed Crystal Space its project of the month — it’s an OS X-compatible 3D game engine.
As always, we heartily encourage you to get in touch with us if you have questions we haven’t answered; have ideas for how we can improve our games coverage; or want to see your Mac game-related products and services featured on these pages.