It’s been rumored for months that Peter Molyneux’s god game, Black & White, would be coming to the Macintosh. No known Mac publisher has confirmed the news, however. Even Lionhead Studios, the company behind Black & White’s original development, stayed mum on the subject. Now fan site liongames.com has what seems like a tacit admission from a Lionhead company officer that the game will definitely be coming to the Macintosh.
Black & White is a complex mix of resource management, strategy, action and puzzle solving. In Black & White, players take the role of a sorcerer of Eden, an idyllic land populated by villagers rich in a life force needed to power the mystical abilities of the sorcerers themselves. Sorcerers are seen as gods by the local populace, and they possess the ability to raise Titans from the local fauna to do with as they please — either to terrorize their villagers into submission or to benevolently assist them with construction and defense from other sorcerers. The game has won rave reviews and comments ever since game media first saw Black & White at E3 several years ago. It’s also won legions of fans since its release on the PC as an Electronic Arts title.
Mark Webley, director at Lionhead Studios, reportedly gave liongames.com a status update on several different Black & White conversion efforts currently in progress. A version for Sony’s PlayStation is currently underway, along with efforts for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s forthcoming console, Xbox.
“The Macintosh version is most definitely underway and we hope to see something released before Christmas,” Webley is reported as saying.
The identity of the Macintosh publisher for Black & White is still not known, although UK-based Feral Interactive has been offered as one possible candidate. Feral was responsible for the Mac release of Sim Theme Park/Theme Park World (distributed in North America by Aspyr Media), as well as the Mac version of Championship Manager, a popular European football (soccer) management simulation.
For more info about what Webley said, visit liongames.com. For more info about Black & White or Lionhead Studios, visit the Lionhead Studios Web site.