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Macintosh game publisher Aspyr Media has updated their website to officially announce their newest product, Stars Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns, an expansion pack for the real-time strategy game. While the add-on was revealed as coming to the Mac back at Macworld New York, this is the first information to be posted on the company's web site. Along with the expected new units and structures, Clone Campaigns will also feature new upgrades and powerups, a larger force at your disposal (up to 250 units per player), the ability to replay old campaigns with new features and units, added goodies to the scenario editor, and more. Here is a list of included features:

Features include:

New units and locales from Star Wars: Episode II as well as other Star Wars films and expanded universe.

Increase the population limit to 250 units allowing you to field much larger armies than before.

Mix and match civilizations from Episode II with those from the original Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds game when playing in single player skirmish or multiplayer mode.

Replay the original campaigns from Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds with air cruisers, power droids, and all the new upgrades and effects from the Clone Campaigns expansion pack.

Featuring numerous enhancements for this release-including upgradeable shields, power cores, new effects and new units for scenario editor.

The Aspyr page notes the system requirements for the expansion are slightly higher than for the original. Preliminary recommendations include OS 9 or OS 10.1, 128MB RAM, and at least a Rage 128 or GeForce2 MX graphics card.

You can order the original Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds from the IMG Store for $43. You do not have to be a member of the MacGames CD in order to take advantage of this special price.

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns

Westlake: Clone Campaigns Is Coming

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds

Aspyr Media

Buy Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds

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Birdie Shoot, the fast-paced shooter from Macplay's new Value Series, has hit store shelves, and IMG's very own Galen Wiley has the inside scoop, in a full featured review. Here's a sneak peak of what's inside:

First of all, and probably my favorite feature is Birdie Shoot's "AI", referred to as "Bird Intelligence", or "BI". Basically, the Birds are very well aware of your plans to stop their invasion, and they know all your tricks. So, when you put your cross hair over their poor, defenseless bodies, they will try to avoid you by means necessary. They speed up, and they don't stop "running" (can Birds even do that?), until they're safe and off the screen. This is where hand-eye coordination really comes in handy. If you're not quick with your shots, you'll end up wasting ammo, and having to reload, missing important targets. Although this is merely a somewhat simple programming trip, that basically increases the acceleration of a bird once your cursor goes over it, I still think it's a nice feature that adds some challenge.

IMG Review: Birdie Shoot

MacPlay

Birdie Shoot

In our continuing effort to keep our loyal MacGames CD subscribers informed, we thought we'd pass this little bit of information along. Yesterday we began shipping out the eight MacGames CD to subscribers, so be on the look out for the CD soon.

We're also working throughout the day to ship all those who ordered free games as part of the free game offer when they subscribed to the MacGames CD.

If you haven't subscribed to the MacGames CD, there's still plenty of time to subscribe. Be sure to visit our IMG Web Store for more details on ordering a subscription and exclusive special deals just for subscribers.

Inside Mac Games

Games Studies has published an interview with Will Wright, the video game designer known for mega-hit titles games such as SimCity, and of course the best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims. The interview does not cover what new Sim games are coming out, or even what Sims games have just come out. Instead, the interview focuses solely on philosophical wonderings and insights. Readers will get to really understand Wright's passion for creating "infinite possibility games".

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

CP: I notice that when I play, I usually don’t necessarily start out with a main character. But I find that invariably one of the characters in the family becomes the main character in my mind, and they become the person that I’m concentrating the narrative around.

I’m sure that people have different ways of doing it. I move between the characters and the houses and stuff, but I always find there’s one house, and one person that ends up being the main person that I’m wrapping things around.

WW: Well, I think that’s the more theatrical approach, because that’s the protagonist of your story. The other characters are important, but really that’s the one that you’re empathizing with the most. You’re really getting into their head. I’m kind of surprised that that works out so well, because when we were originally doing the game, there was a lot of debate about whether there should be one significant person in the game, or whether it should be the whole family. But we started playing the game and watching people playing, and people seemed to have no problem with jumping from character to character, and then having the ones they weren’t playing just become autonomous.

Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata God and Go

Maxis

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NCSoft, the company responsible for the popular MMORPG, now available for Mac users, Lineage: The Blood Pledge, has announced that they will be hosting a special opportunity for its fans, a user-created, Employee Q&A. Users will be able to become a part of and help compile a Question and Answer database concerning the employees at NCSoft. It is made quite clear that acceptable questions should not relate to gameplay, but rather the company itself and information about questionable employees at hand. All you need to participate is an account at the Lineage Messageboards and some questions in mind.

Q&A Sessions will be divided into different installments, each corresponding to a different Employee. The first and current installment features Lance "CaptSturm" Stites, US Lineage Producer.

Be sure to check out the forums in order to register an account (if you haven't already), and for information on future installments.

Q And A With NCSoft

Lineage Messageboards

NCsoft

Lineage

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Aspyr's action title, Spider-Man, based on the comic bearing the same name, has recently been updated to version 1.0.2. This latest update will bring any of the previous versions up to date, and includes some fixes and additions:

• Improved audio performance on dual-processor machines under OS X.
  
• Removed the command key as a valid choice in the Keyboard Configuration screen. When the command was assigned to the web action, Spider-Man would constantly fire webs.

MGF: Spiderman 1.0.2 Update

Neversoft

Aspyr Media

Westlake Interactive

Spider-Man

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Though gamers have reported their satisfaction with the gameplay in the recently released Links Championship Edition, several have pointed out that the lack of a course converter for older Links LS courses is something of a disappointment. In a bid for further information, an IMG reader contacted Bold about this situation, and sent us the results of his investigation:

Just talked to the support people at Bold Games, who told me the course converter for old Links LS courses wasn't included on the CDs, but should be released on the boldgames.com web site in the next 2 weeks or so.

Bold

Links Championship Edition

Buy Links Championship Edition

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Following up their announcement earlier this month regarding the porting of some of their titles to OS X, Spiderweb Software has released a beta of a Carbonized version of Geneforge for the general public:

You can now download the public beta of Geneforge, newly Carbonized to be fully compatible with Mac OS X. It will also run on Macintosh System 8.1 and up. This is beta software, so it may not function perfectly.

For those unfamiliar with the title, Geneforge is an isometric RPG with an open storyline that allows players to create various creatures for use in battle as they try to determine their purpose in the world. More information can be found in IMG's review of this title.

Spiderweb - Geneforge

IMG - Geneforge Review

Spiderweb Software

Geneforge

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