It’s time for another weekly retrospective of some of the news from Mac gaming; here are items that we didn’t get to with our regular daily coverage.
Alpha Blaze educational game released
John Mauro Software has released a new title called Alpha Blaze; Mauro bills it as “an educational word game for one to four players.” Players place their pieces on a grid containing letters to form words.
King of Dragon Pass swag available
Are you a fan of A Sharp’s Runequest-based role-playing game, King of Dragon Pass? A Sharp boss David Dunham says the company is now selling T-shirts, sweatshirts, and coffee mugs emblazoned with King of Dragon Pass designs. “Two designs were picked by popular vote: a raid by the beastfolk, and a scene of peaceful duck farmers,” said Dunham.
Mystery Island II released for Mac OS X
Koingo Software has jumped on the OS X bandwagon with its announcement of a Mac OS X version of its graphic adventure game Mystery Island II. The new version, 1.1, is being Carbonized for OS X and features a few improvements over previous releases. Koingo president Josh Hague says to stay tuned for more details.
Vortex NG updated to 1.03
Feline Entertainment has released an update to its interesting mix of Tempest and Breakout, which it calls Vortex NG. The new version, 1.03, fixes a couple of problems with previous versions, depending on whether you’re using it in OS X or the “classic” operating system. More details are available on the Web site.
Yiminee brings Cribbage to Mac OS X
If you’re a fan of the card game Cribbage and you’re using Mac OS X, you might be interested in Yiminee Software’s newest release, Yiminee Cribbage for Mac OS X. They call it a preview release, since all features are not currently implemented (specifically, networking support).
Elsewhere on the Web
Inside Mac Games features an interesting analysis of the new Apple retail stores called Gaming and the Apple Store. MacGamer has taken a closer look at Civilization III, in development at Firaxis Games and coming to a Mac near you thanks to MacSoft. iDevGames has posted an interview with Westlake Interactive president Mark Adams. And Gamesmania has reviewed Oni, from Bungie Software and Gathering of Developers.
Closer to home
On Saturday we reported about a recent addition to Virtual PC which provides joystick support; graphics card maker ATI says that its Radeon gives the best OS X performance available; Blizzard Entertainment said that Warcraft III is coming to Mac OS X and gave us screenshots to prove it; Graphics chip maker Nvidia is listed on the Nasdaq-100 index; Blizzard also released updates to Starcraft and Brood War; Aspyr Media plans to cash in on the Tomb Raider movie phenomenon this summer by publishing Tomb Raider: The Trilogy. There was much more, too — check our archives for details.
As always, we encourage you to drop us a line if you have suggestions for ways we can improve our Mac game-related coverage. We also strongly encourage you to e-mail us at that link above if you have games you’ve been working on you’d like to see us profile on the pages of MacCentral.