United Developers LLC subsidiary MacPlay on Wednesday announced that it’s reached a multi-title agreement with JAMDAT Mobile Inc. to bring some new games to the Macintosh.
The first three games announced as part of this new arrangement are Kasparov Chessmate, The Emperor’s Mahjong and Hard Rock Casino. MacPlay expects to ship the games in the fourth quarter of 2003, in time for the holiday selling season, according to MacPlay president Mark Cottam.
Kasparov Chessmate featuring chess knowledge from chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. It features varied game length modes and computer or Internet-based multiplayer modes, 2D and 3D views and more.
The Emperor’s Mahjong puts players on a quest for six gems that will make them emperor of ancient China. Players must acquire five gems by mastering the five spheres of knowledge represented by mahjong boards with different themes. After they’ve completed that task players attend the Meeting of the 12 Emperors, where they complete for the final gem. The game touts 72 different layouts, an editor, 3 game modes, 3 difficulty levels, an online ranking system and other features.
Hard Rock Casino is a casino game collection based on the popular Las Vegas gambling attraction. Players have a soundtrack featuring music from the 50’s to today, and can play a variety of high-rolling casino games either against the computer or against each other online.
All three games feature the ability for users to compare and track statistics and review personal histories. What’s more, each package includes a Palm OS version you can use to play on your Palm-based PDA; you can start the game on your Mac, sync to your Palm version, then resume playing on your Palm and back again.
Each game will carry a suggested retail price of US$19.99. Look for them to hit store shelves in the fourth quarter of 2003.