Welcome back to another installment of MacCentral’s weekly retrospective of events and announcements in the Mac game industry, the Week in Games. We use this column to review some of the Mac game-related items and news that didn’t make it into our daily coverage during the past week. This week, Mac OS X dominated our news, and there have been several new game versions or game releases for OS X. That’s not all, though.
The Cow Catching Game 1.3 released for OS X
Martin Wengenmeyer has released a new version of his OpenGL-based Cow Catching Game, in which you have to fly an Unidentified Cow Catching Object and catch as many cows as you can in three minutes. The new version gains support for Mac OS X’s release version, and much more.
Mike’s Cards 1.7 for OS X released
If you don’t need all that OpenGL-related jazz to have a good time and you’re looking to kick back with some playing card fun, bear in mind that Mike’s Cards 1.7 is available for Mac OS X now. Mike’s Cards is comprised of 142 different card games, including many variations on solitaire and casino card games too.
Solitaire Till Dawn 4.0.1 released
It’s not an OS X release, but Semicolon Software’s shareware Solitaire Till Dawn is a cornerstone Mac card game. The software sports 40 different solitaire card games and has been around forever. This version fixes a crash and restores the Sample Games folder.
Mystery Island II pre-release released
Koingo Software has released a pre-release version of their forthcoming graphical adventure game Mystery Island II. It contains a handful of scenes rendered for the final game, but may give you an idea of what’s to come when the final demo is released later this month.
Legendary Lair public beta released
Robert Steely, a.k.a. Steelysoft, has released a public beta version of his REALbasic-crafted turn based strategy game Legendary Lair. If you’re a fan of old Ultima-style dungeon crawls like the Exile or Realmz series, you may want to give this a try for comparison.
Elsewhere on the Web
Apple’s own games section of its Web site has been updated with an in-depth look at Baldur’s Gate, the huge role-playing game brought to the Mac by the folks at GraphSim Entertainment. The Mac contingent at GamesMania has posted reviews of WaterRace from French Touch Software and MacSoft’s Jeopardy. Our pals at Inside Mac Games have taken a look at Labtec’s Pulse-424 satellite speaker system. And we’re sure the fine folks at MacGamer will have some new feature content soon — in the interim, check out their video archive of the game conference at this past Macworld Expo.
Closer to home
Last week we followed Casady & Greene announced plans to bring several “classic” games in their collection to Mac OS X (they’ve already posted a new version of Zone Warrior II); e.p.i.c. interactive announced plans to publish a Mac version of Knights & Merchants, the strategy game from TopWare Interactive; graphics card maker ATI posted losses; and Pangea Software released a Mac OS X version of Cro-Mag Rally.
Stick with us each day for more breaking news from the Mac gaming biz, and make sure to check in on the weekends for the Week in Games wrap-up. As always, we encourage you to e-mail us if there’s coverage you’d like to see or if you have ideas for ways we can improve our coverage of games-related news.