Apple has announced exciting news for those attending the MacWorld San Francisco 2004 conference and expo at the Moscone center early next year. A new booth, titled Mac Games Arcade, will feature 42 of Apple's finest iMacs and Power Mac G5s, designed to showoff next year's hottest games and accesories for Mac.

Representatives from all the major game companies will also present to show off their latest realeases, and, as an added incentive, even some early builds of projects currently in progress, including a Macintosh-first hands-on look at Unreal Tournament 2004 from MacSoft. Below is the official announcement:

The holidays may be over by the time Macworld San Francisco 2004 happens, but we’ll still have plenty of gifts for your Mac at the show, including more great games. Join us at the Mac Games Arcade (booth #4434) in Moscone Center’s North Hall and get hands-on experience with next year’s goodies.

Apple powers the excitement with the latest iMac and Power Mac G5 computers at 42 stations that will also show off the best peripherals out there, including Logitech’s 500MX optical mouse, JBL’s Creatures and Invader speakers, and Belkin’s unique Nostromo SpeedPad n52, which packs a lot of gaming functionality in one small device. The Power Mac G5s will sport ATI’s Radeon 9800 video cards, which offer screaming frame rates and gorgeous video.

Your favorite Mac games publishers — including Aspyr Media, Feral Interactive, Freeverse, MacPlay, MacSoft Games, and many others — will be on hand to show off not only their latest releases but also sneak peeks at titles still in the works. Try out the new vehicles in MacSoft’s Unreal Tournament 2004 before anyone else (even PC players). Test your strategy skills in Aspyr’s Command & Conquer: Generals and get a leg up on other Mac players before the game comes out.

Mac Games Arcade

MWSF 2004

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Aspyr Media announced earlier today in an official press release that Wakeboarding Unleashed Featuring Sean Murray, the company's third Macintosh/Windows simultaneous release, is now shipping, and will be available soon at a retailer outlet near you.

Wakeboarding Unleashed continues the tradition of Activision's 02 lineup of extreme sports game, offering fun, fast-paced arcade action with some of the biggest names in the wakeboarding sport.

Below is an excerpt from today's press release. The full announcement can be found at the link below:

Action sports game fanatics everywhere are able to experience Activision Inc.'s (Nasdaq:ATVI) Wakeboarding Unleashed(tm) featuring Shaun Murray on PC and Macintosh(R). Aspyr Media Inc. announced that the game began shipping today. The game was licensed from Activision, and conversions were completed by Beenox Inc

PR: Wakeboarding Unleashed for Mac/PC Now Shipping

IMG Preview: Wakeboarding Unleashed

Wakeboarding Unleashed

Aspyr Media

Buy Wakeboarding Unleashed

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IMG has posted a review of Aspyr Media's arcade surfing game, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer. The review covers the usual bases; everything from how the game plays to the soundtrack. Here's a sneak peak at what's inside:

The “reality” of a credible surfing title would vanish without an outstanding method to portray water— and Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer really nails it. The water graphics are tremendous: wave s roll and break with realistic flair, reflecting sunlight and glisten in the day and the moon and stars during night sessions. Particles of water spit, spray and froth. The color of the wet varies depending on the beach you’re at, with vibrant blues, greens and even fluorescent orange adding to the visual texture and energy. If there are complaints, it’s a) the surface texture of the water can sometimes appear too uniform. And b) the water could appear more transparent, especially in the crest of a wave. More than once my surfer vanished inside a tube as the game’s camera took me outside, leaving no clue on where he was or what I should be doing.

IMG Review: Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer

Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer

Aspyr Media

Beenox

Buy Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer

BrokenZipper, a small, independent software developer announced the release of The Cheat, a free, open-sourced cheating application for Mac OS X 10.2 and above that lets users to literally hack any game's memory banks, allowing them to change any variable from available lives to ammo. From the official press release:

One type of program which has practically disappeared from the Mac since the release of Mac OS X is the general game cheater. Well, a game cheater has finally been released for Mac OS X called "The Cheat."

The Cheat does not use a set of defined scripts, so it will work with almost any game. It works by searching the memory of another program (something previously considered impossible by many because of Mac OS X's protected memory), and then allowing the user to change a variable to whatever they want. For example, The Cheat can be used to change how many lives you have or how much ammo is left in a game. And it will work with games that haven't even been released yet!

Similar programs have been available on other platforms for years, but this is the first full-featured one available for Mac OS X; probably due to the tricky business of bypassing protected memory. For a 1.0 release, The Cheat already contains unique features not found on any other similar utility anywhere. For example, remote cheating uses Rendezvous technology to allow games to be cheated across a network; useful if a game refuses to give up full-screen.

The Cheat

The Cheat Tutorial

Small Macintosh developer Tangible Dreams announced late last week the release of their latest title Tales of Lorea, a retro hack 'n slash roleplaying game exclusively for the Mac. From the official press release:

Tangible Dreams has released Tales of Lorea (ToL), a Hack'n'Slash Role Playing Game with a retro look and feel. As a young man determined to prove his worth, you travel to Lorea, a land torn apart by the ongoing struggle between the once peaceful inhabitants and the hordes of monsters that have invaded from the north and now occupy most of the land... ToL's character development system is exponential, which allows your character to keep growing consistently even at high levels, instead of reaching the typical "plateau" that similar games often reach after your character has gained 20 or so levels. Tales of Lorea is being distributed as shareware.Nearly half of the game is free, the second half is available only to registered users, as a way of repaying them for their support. Registration price is $15(US).

Tales of Lorea

Lux, a strategic online multiplayer game based on the classic Risk board game, has been updated to version 3.8. The latest update adds some minor new additions to the game, such as the ability for the host to specify how long players have for each of their turns. Here's a full list of changes from our friends at MacUpdate:

Version 3.8 allows the host to put a limit on the amount of time that users have to take their turns. It also adds the ability to only cycle through the saved boards in a selected directory.

Lux

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Shareware developer DanLabGames has released an update to their popular breakout-inspired action game, Creepy Mines 2. The new update, titled version 2.1.5, contains a handful of fixes. Here's a full list of changes from the game's homepage:

Version 2.1.5: Fixed bug causing monster to stay at home, Made level 2 brighter, Fixed level 2-22 and 3-13, Made cursor invisible, Fixed the bug causing the cursor to be in the wrong position in the window, Fixed a silly bug with the Ventilloo.

DanLab Games

Creepy Mines 2

The folks at Apple have posted a new game trailer of Freeverse's upcoming FireWire-camera based game Toysight. The trailer showcasts some of the game's many innovative features, including its grudge match multiplayer mode.

You can check out the trailer for yourself at the Games section of Apple.com. For more information about ToySight, be sure to go to the official webpage, and if you missed it, you can download a free demo of the game from the link below. Note that you will need a FireWire based video camera (such as Apple's iSight) in order to play both the demo and full version of the game.

Toysight Trailer

ToySight

Download ToySight Demo

Pre-Order ToySight

Trading card game company Decipher recently announced that their upcoming online card trading game based on the Lord of the Rings universe has reached the public beta stage. Both Macintosh and Windows users can participate by signing up for a new account on the game's official website.

Players will then be able to create their own customized decks, trade with other players, compete in battles, and more. Here's a short description of the game from the developer:

[The Lord of the Rings Online Trading Card Game] A collectible, turn-based strategy game, between two or more people, re-enacting Frodo's fateful quest to destroy the One Ring, eluding Sauron's minions and the treachery of Saruman while taking the Ring from Hobbiton to Mt Doom.

The game is played using your own customizable deck of cards, featuring scenes from all three The Lord of the Rings movies.

The Lord of the Rings Online TCG

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