Every week MacCentral strives to bring you the latest details on what’s happening in the Mac game world. This week was no different; despite that, there’s always a few items that get away from us. That’s what The Week In Games is for — it’s a retrospective of some of the game news we didn’t get to the first time around this past week.
Austerlitz 1805; a new Napoleonic-era wargame
If calvary and cannon appeal to you more than tanks and bazookas, then you may want to take a look at By Design, Inc.’s newest wargame for the Mac, Austerlitz 1805. The game covers the battle between Napoleon and the Austrian/Russian alliance, and it uses a similar engine to the Waterloo Campaign. You get to control battalions as you command troops on an historic battlefield. System requirements are modest, too.
Brickles 3000 released
Space-Time Associates has released a new brickbashing game called Brickles 3000. If you’re a fan of Breakout-style games where you have to bash bricks using a paddle and ball, and you’re looking for something fully configurable and customizable, this may be for you.
Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab gets network fix
Freeverse Software has released a new version of its excellent action puzzle game, Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab. The new version sports better stability for multiplayer games in GameRanger and fixes a bug that impeded net play through Freeverse’s own HMS Freeverse game server.
Clan Lord OS X client now available
Delta Tao’s own answer to multiplayer online role-playing games, Clan Lord, has been around for a while and has a loyal legion of followers. We’ve heard from Delta Tao’s Donna Maindrault recently, and she tells us that the company now has an OS X version of the software ready, too. Check out the link for more info.
Cro-Mag Rally music ready for download
Mike Becket of Nuclear Kangaroo Music has released MP3 versions of the soundtrack he composed for Pangea Software’s newest 3D Mac game, Cro-Mag Rally. The music is now available for free download from MP3.com.
Deimos Rising progress log updated
Last week Ambrosia Software programmer David Wareing updated his progress log on Deimos Rising, the sequel to the 2D top-scrolling action game Mars Rising. He said that work on the game “proceeds at a steady pace” and also indicated that he’s ditched InputSprocket, the Apple Game Sprocket component, in favor of “a much more traditional, custom setup that is much more portable to Carbon.” More details can be read at the link above.
Escape Velocity: Nova desktop wallpaper available
In other Ambrosia Software news, many Mac gamers are waiting with baited anticipation for Escape Velocity: Nova, the “threequel” to Escape Velocity currently in development. As a way to whet people’s appetite for the new game, Ambrosia just issued a collection of desktop wallpaper images for download from their Web site.
Star Wars Gaming Survey still underway
This was in last week’s Week in Games as well, but we heard from so many MacCentral readers about it that we decided to include it here, too. LucasArts said in its most recent e-newsletter that it’s running a gaming survey that may help the company decide the future direction of some of its game titles. Among the questions asked are what kind of system you play your games on and what kind of system you’d like to see them support — Macintosh is listed. Go vote!
Elsewhere on the Web
Our friends at Inside Mac Games have posted a preview of Vortex Next Generation, a Mac-only title nominated for an award at this year’s Independent Games Festival, which takes place as part of the Game Developers Conference. The fine folks at MacGamer have posted screenshots of Marathon Rubicon, the new Marathon: Infinity mod. And Bungie’s Web site has been updated with new info and artwork related to Halo, the game coming out later this year for Xbox, and sometime later than that for PC and Mac.
Closer to home
Don’t think we at MacCentral were slacking off this week with info related to game news, either. We took a look inside the GeForce3, the hot new graphics chip coming very soon from Nvidia; brought news about the release of the Sound Blaster Live! for Mac audio card; got details from Westlake about games that will support the Sound Blaster Live! for Mac; confirmed news that Rune: Halls of Valhalla is headed to the Mac; detailed changes to GeForce2 MX drivers for Apple’s new video cards, and more.
As always, we encourage you to drop us a line if you have ideas for ways we can improve our Mac game coverage. If you have a game or game product release you want us to cover, by all means send it along too!