Every week MacCentral endeavors to bring you the latest news from the world of Mac games, but there are always stories we can’t get to because of time or space constraints. So we bring you a recap of some of that stuff here, in a weekly retrospective called The Week in Games.
Diablo II v1.09 released
Blizzard Entertainment this week released a patch to Diablo II to bring it to version 1.09. Several bugs were fixed; the Standard blocking method has returned to the old method; damage and attack ratings of monsters in Diablo II Standard have been adjusted; and the global Physical Resistance for monsters has been removed in Hell difficulty in Diablo II Standard.
MacMAME 0.53a released
A new version of the arcade game emulator MacMAME is available for download — 0.53a is the latest revision. Brad Oliver said that the new version has re-enabled PPC 68K cores, which fixes problems with various games, and fixed some issues with incorrect text in the ROM audits as well. MacMAME no longer crashes on Macs running less than Mac OS 8.6, as well — it exits more gracefully. The OpenGL plugin for MacMAME works on OS X now, too.
Titus plans to install new management at Interplay
Last week we brought you the news that french multimedia company Titus Interactive has acquired a majority stake in PC game publisher Interplay. While Interplay no longer publishes Mac games itself, it does work with MacPlay — once an Interplay brand — to license various games to the Mac. This week, Titus announced plans to install a new management team to “take full advantage of the new cycle market.”
uDevGame 2001 — games programming contest
Registration for uDevGame 2001, the Mac game programming contest, continues. There are 15 entries so far, with more expected. The final submission date for games is September 16th, and gamers will be encouraged to download and play the titles for public voting to commence on the 19th.
Undying release pushed to October
Aspyr Media noted this week that its release of Clive Barker’s Undying — a 3D action game with gothic horror overtones — has been pushed back from August to October. The game makes use of the Unreal engine, and is set in a haunted mansion populated by legions of the undead and other nefarious monster. Master horror author Clive Barker was instrumental in the game’s production and story (he even contributed to the voice acting talent).
Warcraft III ‘Call to Arms’ MP3 released
If you’re interested in hearing the music from Blizzard Entertainment’s forthcoming release, Warcraft III, you can download a 2.1MB MP3 file entitled “A Call to Arms.” The file has been archived in .ZIP format, so you’ll need StuffIt Expander or something else that can read .ZIP archives to decompress the file.
Elsewhere on the Web
Inside Mac Games continued its series on Mac Gaming Gods with an interview with Graeme Devine, Id Software’s resident Mac expert and an accomplished game producer in his own right. iDevGames features an Airburst Postmortem, in which Aaron Fothergill gives readers some insight about the development of Strange Flavour’s latest shareware game for the Macintosh. MacGamer has re-posted its preview of Aliens Vs. Predator now that the Mac game publishing rights have been secured by MacPlay.
Closer to home
Westlake Interactive bidded Jesse Spears an unexpected farewell this past week and let folks know that they’re looking for a Mac game programmer. Blizzard producer Bill Roper suggested his company will announce a new game at ECTS next month, and seemed optimistic a Mac version will be produced as well. The Independent Games Festival deadline is fast approaching. MacPlay said that it will publish the long awaited Mac version of Aliens Vs. Predator next month, for both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. Disney announced the release of a new “Zoog” series of educational, game show-style titles for “tweens,” or older pre-adolescent kids. Aspyr Media announced plans to publish Star Trek: Voyager — Elite Force Expansion Pack for Mac. There’s more, too — visit our news archive page for details.
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