MacCentral brings readers the latest news and headlines from Mac gaming every day, but there are always a few stories that don’t make it onto our regular news pages. That’s why we have this weekly retrospective, called the Week in Games.
Blizzard bans cheaters en masse
Blizzard Entertainment takes a dim view of hacking or cheating while playing their games online. To that end, the company this week deleted more than 12,000 Warcraft III accounts and more than 131,000 Diablo II accounts for cheating-related infractions. The company also banned more than 7,000 CD keys from ladder play for one month and more than 1,000 Warcraft III CD keys from ladder play permanently.
Combat Mission: Afrika Korps coming
Battlefront.com Inc. has announced a new game from Big Time Software — Combat Mission: Afrika Corps. The latest version of the 3D strategy game series brings players to the Mediterranean Theater during World War II. Alas, this game still uses the same engine as previous Combat Mission titles, which means it’ll work on OS 9 only (it depends on Apple’s defunct RAVE technology to do 3D on the Mac). Battlefront.com promises that work has started on a new engine that will support OS X, however; that will be employed in future Combat Mission games.
iConquer 2.0.1 available
KavaSoft has released iConquer v2.0.1, a minor update to its Mac OS X-native Risk-style strategy game. The new version improves support for downloading plug-ins — a major feature of the 2.0 release.
MacMAME 0.66.2 released
A new version of the Mac arcade game emulator MacMAME is available. The new version, 0.66.2, fixes joystick and HID-related issues, rotates screenshots properly, and more.
MacMohaa offers free multiplayer map
The Medal of Honor: Allied Assault fan site specifically for Mac users, MacMohaa, this week offered up its first DM multiplayer map called The Falls. Check it out for more info.
Retro 1.2 released
Z Sculpt Entertainment as released Retro 1.2, a new version of their 2D arcade-style action game. The new version adds Jaguar compatibility, adds analog joystick support, makes bug fixes and more.
Spiderweb offers ‘April Sadness’ sale
Spiderweb Software is offering an “April Sadness” special this month. The deal takes 10 percent off the price of all its games, including the Avernum series, Geneforge, the Exile series and Nethergate.
World War II Online updated
There’s a new version of World War II Online, the online action game from Playnet and Cornered Rat Software. The new version corrects problems that manifested after the last update involving keyboard controls. It’s available for download from Macgamefiles.com.
Elsewhere on the Web
This week Inside Mac Games took a look at Pangea Software’s forthcoming puzzle game Enigmo, while MacGamer posted a preview of SimCity 4, the new game coming from Aspyr Media. Apple’s Games site posted a preview of Dungeon Siege, the new game from MacSoft.
Closer to home
MacCentral brought readers news about a demo of Medal of Honor: Spearhead. Piet Mondrian meets Tetris in Dracosoft’s new Cube It! game. Aspyr Media announced plans to publish Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 for Mac and Windows both. Aspyr will also publish a Mac version of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. Apple is now shipping built-to-order Power Mac G4s with ATI Radeon 9700 cards. Xgaming will ship in June the X-Arcade Trackball, a three-button trackball modeled after the ones you find in arcade games. Aspyr’s BloodRayne has gone gold master after being reported at final candidate earlier this week, and Tiger Woods is nearing completion, too.
As always, we encourage you to let us know if you have ideas for ways that we can improve our games coverage on MacCentral; questions we didn’t answer in this week’s roundup; or games that you’d like to see covered on these pages.