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Making good on their original promise, Blizzard Entertainment yesterday released Mac OS X patches for their hit title Diablo II and its expansion, Lord of Destruction. Carbonized applications are available as 10.3 MB and 6.3 MB downloads for the original and add-on games, respectively. Mac OS X 10.1.2 is the minimum required system in order to play the game.

Here's more information from the "readme":

• Diablo II for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X, version 10.1.2 or later.
  

• Diablo II for Mac OS X should be installed on a hard drive that is formatted as Mac OS Extended. To find out how your hard drive is formatted, select your hard drive in the Finder and choose "Show Info" from the File menu.
  

• For the best color quality, it is recommended that you run Mac OS X's Display Calibrator Assistant. You can find it by choosing Displays in System Prefs. Select the Color tab and click the Calibrate button. Then follow the on-screen instructions to calibrate your display.
  

• Please do not lock any of the files in the Diablo II folder. This will prevent you from being able to connect to Battle.net.

For the full system requirements, be sure to read the included notes. Kudos to the Blizzard Mac team for getting this release out while in the middle of the beta for WarCraft III.

IMG Review: Diablo II

IMG Review: Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Diablo II

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Blizzard Entertainment: Patches

Buy Diablo II

In other news are shorter stories where anything goes. It includes game updates, not-so-game related stuff, and more. Help us out by sending us your news tips!

Total Annihilation 2 Q&A
According to the Q&A, a Mac version is being considered.

Neverwinter Nights FAQ Updated
"The BeOS version of Neverwinter Nights will not be completed. However, we are planning a simultaneous PC/Macintosh/Linux release for Neverwinter Nights, with all three versions to be included in a single box."

Another Bill Roper Q&A
Gaming Ground has posted an interview with Blizzard's Bill Roper and talks about Warcraft III.

UT2003 Forums Launched
Infogrames has launched the official forums for Unreal Tournament 2003.

Beyond Unreal's in-depth unofficial FAQ
"Ports of either UC or UT2003 to Apple Macintosh or Consoles (PlayStation 2, GameCube, ...) are likely to follow later if the game sells well (which is a given ;)), but this is not officially confirmed."

Neverwinter Nights Preview
"From the perspective of the player, the single-player story is as compelling as anything we've ever done in the past in the Baldur's Gate series," said Zeschuk. "We always worry that people overlook the solid single-player experience in Neverwinter Nights - it is a major focus of our development efforts and it is something we think people will really enjoy. We're shooting for 60 hours for the Neverwinter Nights campaign. One point to note - this can be played either single or multiplayer."

Myth III: The Wolf Age — MacGamer

Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen — MacGamer (it's about time Corey! hehe)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone — Applelinks

Space elevator’s prospects are looking up
"Make way for the ultimate high-rise project: the space elevator. Long viewed as science-fiction “imagineering,” researchers are gathering momentum in their pursuit to propel this uplifting concept into actuality."

Baffling black blob floating near Florida
"Researchers who have been studying a giant, mysterious area of "black water" in Florida Bay say it seems to be associated with a diatom, a type of algae."

Giant octopus caught off NZ
"Scientists have identified what they believe is the largest octopus ever seen, a four metre (13 foot) long giant hauled from the depths near New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands."

August Release for "Lord" of DVDs
"In a digital overload befitting Peter Jackson's super-sized Tolkien epic, New Line Home Entertainment has announced plans to release two separate DVD editions of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring later this year--which, all told, will feature six separate discs of Hobbit goodies."

Speedy Gonzales Caged by Cartoon Network
"Speedy Gonzales easily bested Sylvester the Cat, Daffy Duck and other assorted banditos in his nearly 50-year career. But the Fastest Mouse in Mexico can't seem to escape the clutches of the Cartoon Network. The rapid rodent has been deemed an offensive ethnic stereotype of Mexicans, and has been off the air since the cable network became the sole U.S. broadcaster of old Warner Brothers cartoons in late 1999."

Talk on cell phone without speaking
"DoCoMo's research and development center has taken the first step towards development of a technology that will allow people to talk on the phone without saying a word."

Apple's Hot New Market: PC Converts
"PC users beware: You just might find yourself drawn to the new iMac like a moth to bright light. It happened to Esme Vos, a Californian working as an intellectual-property lawyer in Amsterdam. She "broke down" and bought a new flat-screen iMac after 17 years as a diehard PC loyalist. "I never thought I'd buy anything from Apple, but I did," Vos wrote in an online piece for Europemedia.net."

iBeach QuickTime Movie
Check out this cool little movie of iMacs playing on the beach. It's pretty well done and worth a look.

A little bird told me that Medal of Honor is WAY ahead of schedule. So much so that I think we're going to start taking pre-orders early next month.

I'm heading to Firetoad Software later today. They're working on a cool new game called Fuel which is being developed for PC, Xbox, and Mac. It's been quite a while since I visited them so I hope to come back with some good news on the Mac version.

And finally... I'm planning on picking up Jedi Knight II for the PC today. I'm curious to see if it's as good as the original. I'll report some findings next week. — Tuncer

Got a news story you'd like us to post? Email us at news@insidemacgames.com.

Freeverse Software has updates two of its classic board games. CrossCards and X-Words have both been updated to version 2.1.

Here's the word from Freeverse's Colin Lynch Smith:

We've updated both CrossCards and X-Words to version 2.1.

Running natively under OS X, as well as OS 9, these games are family-friendly and fun.

X-Words is a crossword game like Scrabble, but allows you to customize everything from boards to wordlists.

CrossCards mixes a Scrabble-type board with poker hands. You need to make pairs, full-houses, flushes and straights for extra points.

These versions fix a bug that would cause menus on some machines running OS X to change color, and another bug that could cause crashes under OS 8.6.

Freeverse

MGF: CrossCards 2.1 (2.8 MB)

MGF: X-Words Deluxe 2.1 (2.7 MB)

Mac-centric web site Applelinks has announced the opening of voting for the 3rd Annual Applelinks Moofie Gaming Awards. For those unfamiliar with the Moofies, they are a series of 15 awards given for outstanding games in various Oscar-inspired categories, including Best Actor, Best Short Film, and Best Picture.

Nominees were chosen from what were deemed the best games released in the year 2001. Last year was a very good year for Mac gaming, and this year's nominees definitely show that with a wide spread of titles across the various categories. Voting this year should require a bit of thought.

To encourage voting, Applelinks will be offering various awards to those who submit their e-mail addresses:

Addresses will be collected by Applelinks and Mac-O-Rama only, and will not be sold to mortgage lenders, natural viagara substitute developers or fake companies offering fake diplomas to real universities (see Mac-O-Rama's mailing list disclaimer before submitting your e-mail address, but it's okay... you can trust them). Currently set to be given away are $200 worth of gift certificates to Mac-O-Rama, four games from MacSoft (Sid Meier's Civilization III, Jeopardy 2nd Edition, Q*bert and Breakout), and a special bonus of four iClocks. More prizes may be added as voting progresses, possibly including a special, autographed copy of a classic Macintosh game of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.

Applelinks: 2002 Applelinks Moofie Gaming Awards voting booth now open

Applelinks: Moofie Voting Booth

The May issue of Computer Gaming World has been released with a cover story revealing SimCity 4. The game has yet to be officially announced by Maxis or its parent company, Electronic Arts, so there is no information yet regarding the possibility of a Mac version.

To give you a better idea of what the game looks like, two page scans from CGW have been posted at WebDrift. While the game looks very visually impressive, it looks like the developers have been influenced by their other vastly successful series, The Sims:

So much of what is being put into SimCity 4 is a direct result of lessons learned from the enormous success of The Sims.

Computer Gaming World

Maxis

WebDrift: SimCity 4 Scans

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