Feral Interactive’s forthcoming Mac conversion of “The Movies” will sport some Mac-specific enhancements. A new mini site on the company’s Web site provides many of the details.
The Movies was originally developed by Lionhead Studios, the company run by legendary game designer Peter Molyneux (creator of Black & White , Populous and others). (Lionhead was recently acquired by Microsoft.) In The Movies, you have to create a string of box office hits, controlling budgets, managing talent and more.
But The Movies more than just a studio simulation: You can step into the role of a movie director, writing and directing your own “mini-feature” films. When you’re done shooting, you can add scenes, music, sound effects and voice overs. You can even choose what genre you’d like to make — Action, Comedy, Horror, Romance and Sci-Fi.
Feral has made sure to add some Mac-specific tweaks to their conversion of The Movies, as well. They’re bundling the game with Flip4Mac WMV Studio, for example, which makes it possible to share your own mini-movies with anyone using the Windows Media Video (WMV) format.
They’ve also integrated iTunes for soundtrack support, so you can use music from your iTunes library. You can also use GarageBand and iMovie sound effects and samples in your movies.
System requirements will call for Mac OS X v10.3, G4/1GHz or faster, 256MB RAM, 32MB VRAM and hardware-accelerated graphics, DVD drive and 3GB free hard disk space.
Feral has stated that The Movies will be the company’s next release. Feral is working on Mac conversions of two other Lionhead releases, as well: The “god” game Black & White 2 and Fable: The Lost Chapters, an expanded version of the successful Xbox role-playing game. Feral is also developing Macintosh conversions of Colin McRae Rally, an auto racing game and Imperial Glory, a turn-based 3D strategy game.