Feral Interactive has announced plans to release The Movies: Stunts & Effects, an expansion pack for their Macintosh conversion of the game The Movies. It will cost $25, and Feral is currently accepting pre-orders.
The Movies turns you into a Hollywood movie mogul, responsible for creating a movie-making dynasty. You start in a dusty Los Angeles backlot at the dawn of the movie era and you gradually build your studio, creating new movies, hiring new talent, buying props, sets and equipment and investing to keep pace with your competitors and become the best studio in the world.
The Movies plays out a bit like a Sims game; it’s a real-time strategy game originally developed by Lionhead Studios, founded by legendary game designer Peter Molyneux. But calling this a straight-up PC game port would be giving the Mac version of The Movies short shrift, because Feral has added some Mac-specific features, such as a free copy of Flip4Mac WMV Studio, so you can create WMV video files you can share with other users, the ability to use your own iTunes library (the unprotected songs, at least) in The Movies soundtracks, and samples from GarageBand and iMovie, including samples from GarageBand Jam Packs.
The Movies: Stunts & Effects expands the scope of the original game with new capabilities and functionality. It adds more sets, costumes, props, vehicles and backdrops for your movies, and it also introduces the stuntman, a new employee type who you can hire to create even more spectacular features. You can also use new special effects in your movies, such as explosions and gun-play.
You’ll need the original The Movies installed, plus an extra gigabyte of hard disk space to accommodate the additional content provided in Stunts & Effects.