Aspyr has released a Universal binary patch for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). The release is being offered as an open beta patch from Macgamefiles.com. The older 1.0.3c patch is still available for users who would prefer to use it instead.
In late June Aspyr Media programmer Brad Oliver confirmed plans to leave Aspyr for Apple, ending his long tenure at the popular Macintosh game publisher. Oliver worked at Aspyr Studios, coming to the company after working for long-time Aspyr partner Westlake Interactive.
Over the years Oliver handled a multitude of top tier Mac game conversions, including KOTOR. A self-professed Star Wars enthusiast, KOTOR had a special place in Oliver’s heart.
“And as God is my witness, I’ll make sure the Universal Binary KOTOR patch has been approved by our Support team for release by the time I leave in 2 weeks,” he posted in his blog.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a computer role playing game set in the Star Wars universe, published for the Macintosh by Aspyr Media. It was released well before the advent of Intel-based Macs, and while some other Aspyr games saw Universal binary updates to enable them to run natively on new systems, KOTOR did not. Middleware — third-party tools used by the original developer to create parts of the game — had not been updated for new Mac systems, holding up the conversion. True to his word, Oliver’s Universal binary patch was finally made publicly available late last week, albeit in “open beta” form.