Thrusday, September 11

Just In: Duke it Out in DC should be out by the end of the month!:

Duke It Out In D.C. for Mac OS is in duplication at MacSoft, and should be in the stores by the end of the month. For those who don't know what Duke In D.C. is, its an add-on pack (9 huge new levels in a complete episode, plus a secret extra level) for Duke Nukem 3D with all new art, sounds, and cut scenes. The game takes place in and around Washington D.C., and you fight aliens on the steps of the White House, at the Lincoln Memorial, at FBI headquarters, and the Smithsonian, to name a few place.

I played Duke In D.C. a bunch while testing, and its very cool. The Smithsonian level is one of the coolest (and biggest) Duke levels I've ever seen. All the levels are very well designed, with tons of new art and theyr eally push the Duke technology.

Mark Adams

Maverick Software http://members.aol.com/mavsftwre/home.html

Blue Byte's The Settlers 2 shown at ECTS:
Yet another report from the European Computer Trade Show in London, England this week indicates more Mac gaming news. Yesterday, we heard that Blue Byte was showing a fully running version of its strategy/adventure game, The Settlers II. This game is expected to be released in the fourth quarter and offers several attractive features:

• Create elaborate settlements from over 30 different building types
• Direct you animated subjects throughout your kingdom where thousands may be active on-screen simultaneously
• Construct a fleet of ships to explore uncharted waters and supply provisions to new lands
• Zoom in and follow any one of your subjects as they perform their assigned tasks
• Enjoy digitized speech, highly-detailed, hand-painted graphics, on-line help and more

source MGL

ECTS Coverage!
ECTS is the largest interactive media trade show in Europe, and Max was there. Max is a great UK-based Mac games site. With Tikkibik's blessing, they used Tikkabik's press credentials to try to get in the door and look around.

Max has Mac-related news about 3D Labs, Disney, Dorling Kindersley, Activision, Red Orb/Broderbund, Maris and Anark. Please check out their coverage of the event!

source Tikkibik

MacSoft reports strong Civ II sales
Anyone who is concerned about the general health of the Macintosh games market should take heart in this note that MacSoft's Peter Tamte sent to Tikkibik and a number of other Mac game resources yesterday:

As many of you know, we were ecstatic about the success of Duke Nukem 3D for Macintosh. Duke was profitable for us on its first day of sales, and it caused many retailers to tell us how pleased they were by its performance. The initial success of Duke Nukem not only proved to the country's biggest retailers that the Mac games market is healthy, it also proved to them that there is a huge base of people just waiting to spend money in their stores for great new Mac products.

Well, here's more good news. As outstanding as the sales of Duke were during its first two weeks of sales, retailers are reporting that Civilization II has sold 73% more units during its first two weeks of sales than Duke did. Wow!

Peter Tamte
Executive Director, MacSoft

source Tikkibik

Myth demo not this week
Our "friends" at Inside Mac Games have confirmed with Bungie Software that while a demo of their forthcoming strategy/RPG game Myth is in the works, it won't be out this week, as reported by Next Generation Online. Bungie expects to make the announcement on its own Web site as soon as the demo is ready.

source Tikkibik

Blizzard making Diablo II
Although Mac gamers haven't seen Diablo yet, Blizzard Entertainment announced at ECTS that they would be producing Diablo II, the sequel to their enormously successful realtime RPG game.

Diablo II will feature:

• Four different, fully populated towns complete with wilderness areas.
• Multiple dungeons, caverns and crypts in every town for players to explore.
• Monsters and non-playing characters.
• Techniques and spells.
• New Battle.net options including increased multiplayer support, an online trading post and worldwide rankings.

Sorry for the lack of news today, I didn't have much time this morning, I'll make it up tomorrow.

Monday, September 8

Shoqwave Multimedia begins Portal voting
Shoqwave Multimedia has announced tha voting has started to determine the format for their forthcoming immersive adventure game, Portal. Voting will last until Monday the 22nd, and results should be available later that week. The ballot will allow Mac users to select from three different formats for the game: wide screen, full screen, or a new technology called "Ambient Animation," which you can read more about from Portal's FAQ.

source Tikkibik

Aspyr Media to publish Bonkheads
Mac Gamer's Ledge reports that Aspyr Media is going to publish Bonkheads Deluxe from 1 A.M. Productions. If the title sounds familiar, it's because 1 A.M. self-published the original Bonkheads a couple of years ago. Bonkheads Deluxe is based on the same game- a platform-based action game that puts you in the role of trolls set to defend their subterranean world from invasion from surface-dwellers.

The game features 190 levels of action, and includes a level editor so you can make your own! A demo is expected to be available today at Aspyr's FTP site.

source Tikkibik

DukeEdit 1.0.1 released
A new version of DukeEdit is available. DukeEdit is a level editor for Duke Nukem 3D. Changes in the new version include:

• A bug in the sector creation code that happens in the 2nd tutorial (ramp).
• A possible bug in the 'reset' button code of the stratum window.
• Numerous changes for people using 640x480 screens.
• OS 8 stylistic changes in the floating windows.

Mac 3D Total Action has the editor available for download. There's also a patch available for users of v1.0.

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