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The free, stand alone multiplayer game, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, has been released for the Macintosh. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory enlists players to battle across multi-level WWII campaigns as one of five classes, gaining skills and promotions, constructing strategic assets, and battling with weapons ranging from tank-mounted machineguns to mortars.

The release of the Mac version was made possible thanks to the release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) back in late January. A group known as ETPro mod team and Aspyr's own Brad Oliver were involved in the making of the Mac version of Enemy Territory.

The free game, which weighs in at 258 MB, is available for download as a Bittorrent download from Macgamefiles.com. Traditional download servers will be available shortly.

Update: Aspyr Brad Oliver notes that the major factor in allowing a Mac version (aside from the enthusiasm from id and the rest of the folks involved) was the decision to go ahead with a new PC/Linux patch. This gave us a way to introduce the necessary Mac changes in a clean way that allowed both pure servers and PunkBuster to work across all platforms.

Aspyr Media

Westlake Interactive

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

MGF: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory 2.60

Buy Return to Castle Wolfenstein

IMG has posted an interview with Swoop Software whose previous creations include Swoop, Bubble Trouble, and Deimos Rising. The company recently released a new solitaire game called Kitty Spangles Solitaire and IMG's own Stu Willis sat down with the husband and wife team of Swoop for an interview.

To check out the interview, please follow the link below.

IMG: Interview with Swoop Software

Aspyr Media have posted their March monthly newsletter, bringing Aspyr fans up to date on the company's latest changes. Additions to Aspyr's lineup this month include Doom 3 and True Crime: Streets of L.A., as well as sneak peeks at Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse. Also included in the message is a preview of Delta Force – Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre from the project lead. This add-on pack will soon be available to pre-order.

From the newsletter:

One of our biggest games of 2005, DOOM 3, should be arriving in stores as you read this! The development of DOOM 3 was an interesting and challenging process, bringing a game to the Mac that pushes the boundaries of technology wasn't easy. Aspyr Studios worked very closely with id Software on the DOOM 3 Mac project, and enlisted considerable help from Apple, ATI and nVidia as well. While the game was up and running on the Mac by the time Aspyr Studios became involved, there was a lot of work to do to polish up the Mac version and optimize it for OS X.

Aspyr Media

Aspyr March 2005 Newsletter

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Aspyr Media today announced True Crime: Streets of L.A. (Mac) has arrived in retail stores. The game was developed by Activision, and its Macintosh conversion was completed by Trihedron.

Drive, fight and shoot your way through a massive array of unpredictable missions. With stealth techniques, vicious martial arts moves and impressive new weapons, as Nick Kang you experience the gritty, seedy underbelly of a vicious Los Angeles crime wave. Cruise the city taking down or harassing the scum of the streets. Bust drug dealers and prostitutes, shakedown informants and confront gang members to get the job done.

True Crime: Streets of L.A. requires:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later (10.3.7 recommended)
CPU Processor: PowerPC G4/G5
CPU Speed: 1GHz or faster
Memory: 256 MB or higher
Hard Disk Space: 3 GB free disk space
Video Card (ATI): Radeon 8500 or better
Video Card (Nvidia): GeForce2 MX or better
Video Memory (VRam): 32 MB or higher
Media required: DVD Drive

The IMG Store is currently shipping True Crime: Streets of L.A.

Aspyr Media

True Crime: Streets of L.A.

Buy True Crime: Streets of L.A.

In a bit of financial news that probably comes as no surprise to gamers, Eidos has accepted a buyout bid. According to an article at Reuters UK, the company making the winning bid, a U.S. company known as Elevation Partners LP, has made the accepted offer of 71 million pounds cash.

"The board firmly believes that shareholders' interests are best served by a sale of the company," John van Kuffeler, chairman of the board of Eidos, said in a statement.

Best known for its Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief series of titles, it's unclear what plans Elevation has for Eidos at the moment, though it should be noted that Eidos has several titles in its lineup for release, not to mention the recently released Project: Snowblind, which has received favorable reviews in the gaming community.

Reuters UK - Eidos accepts Elevation bid

Eidos

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Ambrosia has announced the availability of EV Nova Civilian Thunderhead Mousepads. Currently ready for order, the mousepad design used was selected via a fan poll, with the Thunderhead winning the overall vote.

The mousepads feature a rubber base, high resolution prints, and a matte finish to facilitate mouse tracking. Each one goes for $3, but Ambrosia adds that supplies will be limited to one run. A photo of the design can be seen at Ambrosia's site.

They also add that, due to its popularity in the poll, the Auroran Thunderforge may be making its way to mousepads as well sometime in the future.

Ambrosia - EV Nova Civilian Thunderhead mousepads

Ambrosia Software

Escape Velocity: Nova

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Laminar Research has released a new beta version of its popular flight simulator, X-Plane. The new beta version, 8.10b1, boasts dozens of changes from the previous release version of the program. Among the more interesting changes are the following:

• New feature in Plane-Maker... all the WING editing screens now have a "snap to" feature, letting you snap any wing to any other wing, exactly, with a single selection of what wing you wish to snap to!

• World-Maker can go into 3-D mode... pretty cool!

• You can now have custom LIT panels, and custom LIT instruments.. every one of the 4 layers can have a LIT version!

• New Angle of Attack gage: stall reference... this is an easy way to tell if you are about to stall... it is conveniently labelled with arcs for desired approach angle of attack, and stall angle of attack!

• New Directional Gyro type: LINEAR. This is a really old-style type that looks like a compass.

• New Compass type: ROUND. This is a really old-style type that looks like a directional gyro!

X-Plane 8.10 Beta is here!

X-Plane 8

Laminar Research

Buy X-Plane 8

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Swoop Software has released Kitty Spangles Solitaire, a new solitaire card game for Mac OS X. The game features a full scoring system, a high score table, a built-in help system, and over a dozen colorful animated backgrounds to choose from.

The game is being released as shareware and can be downloaded from the Swoop Software web site. The full version can be registered for $19.95. Kitty Spangles Solitaire requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later.

Swoop Software

Kitty Spangles Solitaire

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