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Aspyr Media, who seems to have hit a fast track in releasing a bevy of titles in time for the holiday season, has added yet another title to their queue. Announced only earlier this season, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 has officially hit Final Candidate status. The sequel to the long-running series of highly popular Tony Hawk skateboarding titles, THPS3 adds even more skaters, more levels, and an enhanced Create-A-Skater feature for even greater customization.

Some of the new locale details are as follows:

Players go high flying through some of the hottest skating locales in the world including Skaterís Island in Middleton, Rhode Island, Los Angeles, Canada, Tokyo and Paris. Skate in real-world locations, or create your own skate park, but watch out for pedestrians, changing weather conditions, and cars as they slam on their brakes to avoid you.

THPS3, which is currently in development by Beenox, bears an anticipated shipping date of early December. More information can be found at our first look preview. Also be sure to look out for our hands-on preview, which should be online in the near future.

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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - First Look

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Today, IMG has posted a review of Aspyr Media's RTS expansion pack, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns. Written by Michael Phillips, this review discusses the various benifits of the Clone Campaigns.

Here's a taste:

Each Campaign includes 7 missions told from the perspective of either the Confederacy or the Republic. It is best to play the Campaigns in the suggested order, as their stories overlap. For example, the Republic Campaign centers around undoing the evil deeds done in the Confederacy Campaign.

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IMG Review: Clone Campaigns

Level 9 Sound has announced another addition to it's multimedia speaker lineup, the PlanarMedia 14. Continuing in their tradition of flat panel speakers, this new 2.1 system utilizes Level 9's PFT100 Series planar ribbon transducers, which makes 200 watts peak power and 100 watts RMS. The Level 9 press release describes the advantages of the ribbon transducer:

The heartbeat of Monsoon's PlanarMedia series is the Level 9 Planar Ribbon Transducer, which uses a lightweight diaphragm that responds very quickly to the audio signal in the recorded material. As a result, users experience unusually crisp, clear and accurate reproduction of music, movies and 3D game effects. In most cases, even high quality cone and horn speakers can produce noticeable coloration when placed in a box. This fact can superimpose a "nasal" timbre to the performance, which robs the listener of the extraordinary fidelity found in most of today's high quality recordings. Planar Ribbon speakers require no enclosure and produce a wonderfully clear and open sound without the "boxy" effects sometimes produced by traditional competitive loudspeakers.

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The Gamesome Mac, the weekly Mac gaming radio program, tonight hosts the 2002 uDevGame Awards in association with iDevGames.

Hosts Sean Smith and Omaha Sternberg will be joined by iDevGames editor-in-chief Carlos Camacho in honoring the best in original, independent Macintosh game development. Forty-one entries are vying for over $15,000 in prizes in uDevGame 2002.

The Gamesome Mac can be heard on Mondays from 6 to 8 pm Pacific Time, 9 to 11 pm Eastern (Tuesdays at 0200 UTC) on MacRadio.com. You can tune in live at The Gamesome Mac's web page, where you'll also find complete archives of past broadcasts. QuickTime 5 or 6 and a 28 kbps or faster Internet connection are required.

uDevGame 2002

IMG News: uDevGame 2002 Coverage

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Fans of Macplay's hit first person shooter Soldier of Fortune II will be happy to know that the much anticipated 1.02 patch has been released for public beta testing. The patch makes some bug fixes to the multi-player application along with adding the cheater prevention program, Punkbuster. For those unfamiliar with Soldier of Fortune II, it is a covert ops first-person shooter that plays out like an action movie.

Here's the description from Macplay's website:

Reprise the role of John Mullins: Weapons Specialist, Anti-Terrorist Mercenary, and "Military Consultant." A new and insidious threat has arisen in the form of a bio-terrorist organization and their two-pronged Gemini Virus. Now, you're off on a transcontinental mission to stop the terrorists and destroy the virus before it's unleashed on humanity.

Full frontal assaults, stealth and subterfuge are your tactics. Sub-machine guns, assault rifles and grenades are your tools. The world is on the brink of disaster. Get ready for one of the most realistic military shooter gameplay experiences ever.

Download Soldier of Fortune 2 1.02 public beta

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A reader recently pointed us to a MMORPG that not only runs on both Macs and PCs, but is apparently also free of charge to use. Named First Star Online, this title features 2D graphics reminiscent of old-school console RPGs, player-run servers that can support from 50-1000 simulatenous players, and tools that allow players to create their own online games.

Some of the more notable features are as follows:

Featuring a cutting-edge protocol, FSO features 30 FPS top-down tile-based 32-bit color graphics/animation. Everything is high-speed and real-time. No turn based here. Move around in a world that never sleeps. Create guilds, war with rivals, join factions, vote, play poker, and a whole lot more is possible.

Those interested in more information, including on-topic forums and screenshots, can find all at FSO's official site.

First Star Online

Mac Shareware developer, DanLab Games has released their latest game, Creepy Mines. The game is similar to Breakout, but it also includes many add-ons and very stylized graphical elements that make it more than just another clone of the classic arcade game.

Here’s the description from the game's website:

You must remove all of the diamonds from the playing area by hitting them with the ball. Creepy mines has some surprises for you: Ventilo, big paddles, Mootshik, dropdowns to catch with the paddle. A very addictive game

For more information on Creepy Mine and DanLab Games, follow the provided links below.

Creepy Mines Released

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IMG has reported for some time on the anticipated Mac port of Dragon's Lair 3D, a re-thinking of the 80's arcade/laserdisc title from DragonStone to be published by UbiSoft. With the game's recent completion for PC/Xbox, it was expected the other platforms would be released soon as well. Unfortunately, Sean Smith from the GameSome Mac recently sent word that they contacted UbiSoft about the Mac port, only to find it will no longer be published by the company.

Here's the short reply from the UbiSoft representative:

Dragon's Lair 3D is not currently going to be released on the Mac.

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Game developer BioWare has updated the Mac status page for their immensely popular multiplayer RPG, Neverwinter Nights, bringing more news regarding the upcoming Mac version from MacSoft. This most recently weekly updates notes they have custom module content working in the game now, though not without sacrificing some of their development hardware:

This week's screenshots features the Mac running some custom fan content that was added using a Hak Pak. We loaded up a module that had been created using the Snow Orcs from Ming's Snow Orcs Hak Pak. Cool stuff! An interesting note this week - our Mac development folks were evidently so enthusiastic in their furious work that one of the Dev Macs stopped working in an abrupt and final-ish way. Work continues but with greater sensitivity for the quality of life for our Macs.

Neverwinter Nights: Mac Version

NWN Mac Forum Thread

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Liquid Metal Software recently slid us a press release announcing the release of MacPuyo 2 for OS X. Following up on the success of the original MacPuyo, MP2 adds new graphics and sound, a higher resolution (800x600), and a human-like AI.

The gameplay itself remains largely unchanged from the original formula:

The goal is to position the falling blobs so that ones of the same color are touching. When you form a group of four or more, they'll explode. This will increase your score (and also the speed) in single-player, or cause metallic blobs to be dropped on your opponent in multi-player mode.

Liquid Metal Software - MacPuyo

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In a recent email, gaming gurus MonkeyByte Games have announced updates or special holiday discounts for two of their games.

First off, MonkeyByte's online hillbilly combat game Billy Brawl has reached Alpha:

Billy Brawl is a web based multi-player game. You and your opponent take turns huckin' an assortment of 'munition at each other. First one to knock the other unconscious wins.

King of Dragon Pass is the saga of colonizing a magical land. You control the future of a ragged clan which has decided to settle the empty land of Dragon Pass. Your decisions determine whether they prosper over the course of a century, and whether they will be remembered forever as a great clan. Of course, yours isn't the only clan which has emigrated to Dragon Pass. You will have to cooperate and compete with other clans of your own people, as well as folk you know nothing about.

Monkeybyte Games

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The busy folks at Guild Software have just updated their game Vendetta. The Vendetta Test is a space-based Deathmatch and Capture The Flag game created using Guild's own WGAF game engine.

The update, bringing the software up to version 3.1.5, consists mainly of gameplay tweaks, as well as a couple bug fixes:

This version adds much of the functionality planned for 3.2. It is now possible for characters to own multiple ships. Additionally, there are now two new ships, a "free" vessel available to those without finances, and the "Prometheus", a heavy class ship of the Red Nation.

AI robots are now present in more sectors, including defensive bots in the Nation's home sectors. A new weapon has been added, the "heat seeker" missiles, which are considerably faster than normal homing missiles, but can lose their lock if their target leaves their field of view (180 degrees).

The invulnerability bug should now finally be fixed. The negative/extreme money bug has also been fixed. The key to open the console is now completely controlled by the bind menu. Other bugs, fixes, and miscellanious improvements.

If you're interested in participating in the test, you'll need to create an account and download their client software. System requirements are currently listed as any G3 or G4 based Mac equipped with 128 MB RAM, a 16 MB 3D-accelerated video card, and Mac OS X.

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PomPom's lead programmer Miles Visman has announced updates to their recently released, Robotron-inspired arcade game, Mutant Storm.

The update includes minor tweaks and bug fixes, including inclusion of an in-game help screen, and removing the game's dependance on an seperate installation of the Simple DirectMedia Library package.

Based on the classic arcade game Robotron, Mutant Storm features a fully-3D OpenGL game engine complete with evil space mutants, enhanced special effects, and animated psychedelic backgrounds. Through a top-down interface, players command a ship blasting its way through innumerable waves of mutant hordes in eighty-nine individual levels. A head-to-head multiplayer mode is also available for co-operative gameplay.

Players who have already installed the game on their systems can click on the links below to update both the demo and the full versions of the game.

Mutant Storm Demo Update

Mutant Storm Full Update

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Mac software developer Ambrosia Software has just released an update for their online one-on-one arcade game pop-pop.

The update fixes some minor software bugs, as well as incorporating changes that support new technologies included in Jaguar:

-- Added support for Rendezvous. Other pop-pop players on your local network appear in a special section in the Network Lounge.

-- Added support for HID on Mac OS X 10.2. This should resolve several outstanding bugs with mouse control as well as provide smoother mouse control.

-- Local 2-player games. Plug in a second mouse and have some fun.

For the uninitiated, pop-pop brings a new experience to breakout-style games:

pop-pop is a unique fusion of pulse-quickening arcade game action and Internetworkable combat that's more addictive (and more colorful) than a handful of JellyBelly jellybeans. Pick your character, then enter the bright happy world of fierce brick-bashing combat, where your paddle is your weapon, and your pop-fu must be strong to survive.

pop-pop has over 100 built-in puzzle levels if you want to play solo to sharpen your pop-pop'ing skills, or you can play against the viciously aggressive computer AI pops for a test of your mettle. The real challenge of your pop-worth, however, is when you enter the Internet arena to play against other pop-pop players all over the world!

MacGameFiles: pop-pop 1.0.2 Update

MacGameFiles: pop-pop 1.0.2 Full Download

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