Our sister site, Macgamefiles.com, is hosting the demo. Be sure to head over there to download the 11 MB demo.

GarageGames

Marble Blast Gold

MGF: Marble Blast Demo

Buy Marble Blast Gold

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Inside Mac Games has posted a review of 3DO's recently released strategy/rpg, Heroes of Might & Magic IV.

Here's a clip from the review:

The series is a fantasy turn-based strategy game where you begin with one hero and a town, which serves as your base. You travel across a map – or, in the case of a campaign, a series of maps – and gather resources, unearth powerful artifacts, conquer other towns, and vanquish monsters and opposing heroes. Your hero gains experience through combat, which will give your hero more power and skills. Gathering resources like wood and mercury allows you to upgrade your towns into formidable fortresses and build even bigger armies to annihilate your foes. While some games are won by completing a quest or meeting other criteria, more often than not you win through pure might by conquering all the enemy towns and heroes.

HoMMIII was an excellent refinement of the series-- the game’s producers refined an already great series. With 6 campaigns, 24 scenarios, 11 hero classes, 27 skills and 66 different creatures, HoMMVI looks to be just more of the same— not a bad thing, since HoMMIII was arguably the best in the series. HoMMIV was hailed as a predecessor that fans of the series would be familiar with, but a game that was going to see a few major changes. Did 3DO succeed?

IMG Review: Heroes of Might & Magic IV

3DO

Contraband Entertainment

Heroes of Might & Magic IV

Buy Heroes of Might & Magic IV

Today, Inside Mac Games released Game Doctor 2.0.1, the largest collection of hints, cheats, walkthroughs, and other game enhancements (called "prescriptions") available for the Macintosh.

Here are a few of the program's features:

Game Doctor is available either as a full download or, for those with slower Internet connections, as a smaller download without the strategy guides and walkthoughs. A Game Doctor registration is $10 and can be ordered through our online store. Game Doctor registration is also included if you subscribe to the MacGames CD.

For current users of the program, a January '03 update is also available to grab and import into your current list of prescriptions. This update contains new prescriptions for recently released Mac games.

The January '03 update is only needed for users with an older version of Game Doctor. Those downloading the full version 2.0.1 will get all of these prescriptions included. Head over to our sister site MacGameFiles to begin downloading.

Game Doctor 2.0.1

Game Doctor January '03 Update

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The fan site for turn-based strategy games such as Civilization 3 and Alpha Centauri, Apolyton, recently posted the second part of their in-depth preview of the upcoming space strategy game, Master of Orion III. This second preview mainly focuses on the many different customization options available in the game. Some of these include being able to set the size of the galaxy for the game, the amount of biodiversity, and even setting how mineral rich planets will be.

Here's a sample of the preview:

The “Random Event Generator” is the first component of the 'Start New Game' screen. Any race can be targeted for a random event so choosing the frequency of their occurrence will not only impact your but all civilizations. To that end, some random events affect all races although certainly the practicality of its impact will vary from race-to-race. These self-explanatory occurrences always lead off your 'SitRep' reports, which will be discussed in greater detail in Part 4 of this preview. We now come to the frequency aspect which is what you have at your disposal to control to a certain extent. In my game of Master of Orion III, I kept the level of random events at Normal. In the eighty-four turns that I saw come and go, just three came to pass. In these instances each one of them directly impacted my race only and all had positive intent and effect. I will look at each of these a little more closely in Part 4 as well. The Normal designation suggests the presence of Rare and Frequent also, and it is true on both accounts.

The “Difficulty” settings come in a trio: Easy, Medium and Hard. I admit I chose the first setting for my game, but remember I am just getting into the MoO of things (and pardon this terrible pun)! “Number of Computer Players” is an even less ambiguous setting. The range runs from one through fifteen. For me, I chose '8'… yes, the default value again. As for “Specials”, they are described in the game's manual as “galactic anomalies, such as solar winds, wormholes, black holes, and ancient space dust debris that can affect the galaxy and combat in a certain way for a random number of turns” (MoO3 Manual (Page 34) ). Although labeled differently than that of the “Random Event Generator”, the modes for this part of the game set-up are similarly Fewer, Average and More.

MOO3 Preview, Part II

MacSoft

Quicksilver Software

Master of Orion III

Buy Master of Orion III

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French Macintosh game developer DanLab Games has recently posted updates to all their games, addressing the Quicktime 6.1 update issue reported earlier this week.

The "black screen" problem is caused by Apple updating their full screen mode API, the low-level technology which controls how video and graphics behave on your computer. As of version 6.1, QuickTime now creates its blanking layer on a different video layer than it had previously. The end result is that when a program calls for full screen control, the screen fades to black, but then does not display anything further.

DanLab's software are not the only pieces of software that fell prey to this problem - as of press time, Zonic is working to update Feral Interactive and MacPlay's releases of Black & White and F1 Championship Season 2000.

DanLab Games' four shareware games Creepy Mines, Owari, Froggy's Songs and Twin's Cards, all written in TNT Basic, have all been updated to address this and some other minor issues. Click on the links below to download the new versions.

DanLab Games Updates

DanLab Games

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Resident Mac desktop guru Brad Custer has updated Custer's Desktops, a weekly feature at IMG that allows users to download high quality desktop pictures featuring some of today's hottest Mac games. Custer's latest creation features artwork from Macplay's Freedom Force, and is titled "Fireball". Here's a brief description from the man himself:

This great title from MacPlay has been a lively topic in my email. The last time I made a desktop for Freedom Force I focused on an individual hero and that was obviously very popular. I've been getting requests for all the cast from this game, but El Diablo seems to be leading the pack in the popularity race. Again I tried to capture the Silver Age feel of the official desktops with the help of the art CDs from MacPlay, my own illustrator art and the internet. I simply entitled it "Fireball" and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it. :)

Freedom Force is also available from IMG's very own online store.

Custer's Desktops: Fireball

IMG Preview: Freedom Force

Freedom Force

Buy Freedom Force

PlayMyth.net, the third party project to bring the multiplayer community back to Myth II: Soulblighter, has announced that the PlayMyth servers will be moving onto a new ISP sometime today, January 17th. Users will need to download a new version of the PlayMyth plugin in order to continue playing, and the developers have made it very clear that they will need to do so before January 18th or they will not be able to play on the servers. Besides fixing the server issues, the new plugin version also fixes Mac-oriented problems, as well as provides Mac users with an easy to use installer application. Here's the full announcement from PlayMyth's website:

Sometime during the day on Friday, January 17th, the PlayMyth.net server will be moving to a new ISP. This means you will need a new Myth 2 Plugin! OH JOY! I know we just switched plugins, but this should be the last time we update plugins for quite some time.

This plugin also fixes a few bizarre mac things on some people's machines...... the mac version now also has a custom installer similar to the one for the PC to make installing things a lot easier.

You MUST HAVE THIS PLUGIN INSTALLED BY JANUARY 18th, 2003 OR YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO LOGIN TO THE GAME SERVER. Just to make this download a bit more of a must have. You may wish to wait until the existing server closes before installing the new plugin ... doing so could leave you waiting to log on to the new game server which will be live sometime Friday.

Download: PlayMyth Mac Plugin

PlayMyth

Continuing the list of patches coming out that address Quicktime 6.1 compatibility problems, Monte Boyd interactive has released an updated version of Slope Rider, bringing it up to version 1.0.2.

For those unfamiliar with the title, Slope Rider is a snowboarding game that allows for trick combos off of jumps, rails, and half-pipes. Players who tire of the provided courses can also create their own with the included terrain editor.

Those interested in downloading the latest version can find it at MacGameFiles.

MGF - Slope Rider 1.0.2

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