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Today IMG released the twenty-third edition of the Inside Mac Games Podcast, the official podcast of Mac gaming. Each week we'll be covering all the news in Mac gaming in one tight package. This week's show is a tour de' force of Mac gaming, featuring Blake Buck, a writer for IMG, William Miller, an artist for Freeverse Software, Justin Fic, author of Kill Monty, and Tuncer Deniz, founder of the Inside Mac Games Network.

On the show this week's show:

On the this episode of the IMG podcast, Tuncer Deniz makes a triumphant return! Along with Blake, William, and Justin, the IMG Podcast guys lay down the week's mac news, William pouts over listener emails, Blake discusses The Sims, and we make a prank call Freeverse!

Weekly News

• Jets'n'Guns Arcade Shooter Released
  
• Apeiron X Updated To Universal
  
• Carmack on Next-Gen Graphics
  
• Lugaru 2 Development Log Update
  
• RIP Released For Mac
  
• Pixar's Cars Movie Game Coming To Macs
  
• Quake 4 Patch Adds Intel Dual-core Support
  
• IMG Posts Hands-On Call of Duty 2 Preview
  
• Quake 2, 3 Updated

Weekly Features

• Listener Emails
  
• Contest
  
• Stump Buck?
  
• Freeverse Prank Call

IMGP Episode 23 Homepage

Macgamestore.com today unveiled digital download coupons. When customers orders any digital download product through the store, they are automatically emailed a coupon toward a future purchase through Macgamestore.com. What's more, the more digital download products you order, the bigger the coupon.

For example, if you order 3 digital download products, customers will get a $3 coupon in an email that can be used toward a future Macgamestore.com purchase.

Macgamestore.com now carries over 100 digital download products including hit games such as Jets'n'Guns, Airline Tycoon Deluxe, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa and more. The complete list of digital download games is available in the link below.

In other news, two new digital download products are now available for Macgamestore.com including Mystic Inn and R.I.P. Both are available for $19.95. Demos of both games are available for download.

Mystic Inn - Playing as Daphne, the unfortunate hostess ensnared by the enchanted Mystic Inn, you serve all of the patrons in order to get magic to upgrade the inn. Once you have fully upgraded the establishment, the spell that locks Daphne within her confines can be broken. Five chapters with 50 levels take the user through the game with beautiful art and addictive play, making Mystic Inn immersive and exciting. Play the potion building mini-game to create power-ups. Unlocking juggling frogs, a charming harp, your own take-out owl and other items make the game experience enriching.

R.I.P. - Not afraid of the Death? What if he is accompanied by Halloween and Rock'n'roll? Play the part of these antiheroes and go to war in this great action experience!

Macgamestore: Digital Downloads

Macgamestore: Mystic Inn

Macgamestore: R.I.P.

IMG has posted a review of Nexiuz. Here's a clip from the review:

Nexuiz is a first person sci-fi (non-realistic) type shooter that, as the Nexuiz readme puts it, focuses on bringing deathmatch back to the basics. It's based on an advanced version of the Quake 1 engine called Darkplaces, and while it doesn't have the detail of the latest games, it certainly looks and feels more advanced (and of course requires a more powerful computer) than a shooter from ten years ago. It's probably more at the level of Quake 2 with some of the more advanced lighting and effects features of today's games. But what separates this game from most currently developed shooter games out there is that it costs…nothing! The team does ask for donations to continue development, but because it's developed under the GPL, the game is freely playable, modifiable, and distributable (among other free projects). How can you beat that?

IMG Review: Nexiuz

CompUSA has deals on a wide variety of Mac compatible products including; Epson Stylus Photo  RX700 All-In-One printer for only $299 after $100 mail-in rebate!; Canon Pixm iP6210 color inkjet photo printer for only $69.99 after $30.00 mail-in rebate!; see the big picture with the SonyHS75/B 17" LCD display for only $279.99 after $40 mail-in rebate!; need a bigger picture? Get the SonyHS95/B 19" LCD display for only $349.99 after $40 mail-in rebate!; need to project a strong image? Use the InFocus LP640 LCD XGA projector for only $1299.99 after $500.00 mail-in rebate!; go wireless with the Qwest DSL Starter Kit for only $64.99 after $5.00 mail-in rebate!; and more.

O'Reilly Media, Inc has Hot Deals exclusive pricing on a variety of Mac related books; Explore AppleScript 1.10 from the ground up with AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition for only $27.99!; get iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, 4th Edition and get the most out of the two for only $17.49!; if you are new to iPhoto or just want learn more iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual is just the ticket for only $20.99!; switch to the Mac with the help of Switching to Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition for only $17.46!; learn the basics as well as the hidden talents of AppleWorks with AppleWorks 6: The Missing Manual for only $13.96!; and much more.

White Elephant has released their latest game, RIP: Strike Back for Mac OS X. Here's a description of the game:

In 2222 cruel dictator – General Wildboar conqured the World. His guardsmen, cyber-mariners and war robots are keeping in awe the whole planet and destroying everybody who dared to disobey. By special decrees Christmas and Haloween were banned. Books with fairy tales and stories were burnt in huge ovens. Dreaming in any form became a crime, banned on pain of death. There were no heroes left in Our world who would manage to beat mechanized army and its leader. But the help came from where it wasn’t expected… Once at midnight, in the wild desert of Sahara there opened the gates to the Other World. The super heroes of the Other World – Death, Halloween and devil Rock-n-Roll came to Our World to overthrow the dictator and remind people, that magic creatures could hold in their arms not only scythe and magic wand, but also could they use the shot gun, plasmic rifle and machine-gun.

MGF: RIP: Strike Back

2Sublime Design has released GameLauncher 1.2, a small Macintosh gamer utility designed to to solve the unsightly problem of quitting all your applications every time you want to relax and play a game.

Who wants to use a game launcher? It's fine to just double click on the icon from the Finder right? But most games need as much processor power as they can use. So before launching the game you need to quit as many programs as you can, and of course you have several days worth of work open, and 15-20 applications running, and it would take you several precious gaming minutes to close and save all these applications, let alone open them all up again after you finish... Who needs the hassle, right? ...Well this is where GameLauncher comes in handy.

GameLauncher first requires that you select your game and, once selected, if you press the "Launch" button, will quit as many applications as you have running, launch the game, wait patiently until you are finished, then return the applications to your desktop good as new. Less time wasted, more game-play time maximised. Neat right? Right!

MGF: GameLauncher 1.2

GamersInfo has posted a short preview of Dofus, the flash based cartoon-style MMORPG by Ankama Studio. The preview goes through the basic elements and availability of the game.

Dofus’s combat is not the traditional hack ‘n slash that you expect to find in most MMOs. The people at Ankama have gone the strategy route instead. Once you engage a group of enemies, the isometric game view pops up with all sorts of movement and combat options. The game uses the common action/movement point system to control how far a player can move and how much they can do in each turn. There are various classes for players to experiment with, each of them close to standard archetypes but different enough to make them part of the unique Dofus world.

Dofus Preview

Dofus

Ankama Studio

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The Wolfire Blog has been updated to reflect the addition of shadow rendering in Lugaru 2, the upcoming fighting game by Wolfire Software. Lugaru 2 is the sequel to the popular shareware game, Lugaru: The Rabbit's Foot, and you can follow its progress through the Wolfire blog.

Shadows are now working in-engine! They use a modified shadow mapping technique, and are blurred based on distance from the shadow caster due to diffraction and ambient lighting.

Wolfire Blog

Wolfire Software

Lugaru 2

Macworld's Game Room has posted a review of Laser Pirate Squad's Lumox 2, a match-the-blocks puzzle game similar to Tetris. Players must keep the screen clear of blocks by matching groups of four in 2-by-2 squares. The Game Room gave Lumox 2 a score of 3.5 mice.

In short, Lumox 2 is breathtaking just to look at, and very, very engrossing to play. There are literally thousands of variations of visual styles—it’s a bit like turning Apple’s own iTunes visualizer into a game.

You can adjust graphics settings to match the capabilities of your Mac—well equipped systems can handle some advanced visual effects like “smokey block” particles, score-filled particles and other effects. Game mechanics are simple to use—you can configure the controls yourself, or use the defaults, which map block direction, movement, and rotation to the arrow, control, and option keys. An option lets you play the game in windowed or full screen mode, and a “three color” mode adds another hue to the blocks on screen, for experienced players.

Macworld Game Room: Lumox 2 Review

Lumox 2

Buy Lumox 2

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Mac Joystiq recently posted a short preview of The Burning Crusade, Blizzard Entertainment's upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. The preview examines the racial abilities of the Blood Elves and Draenei and offers some new screenshots of the game in action.

We've played the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion -- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade -- exploring both Draenei and Blood Elf starting areas. Anticipation is running high at the show, with many gamers flocking to the Vivendi stand as soon as the show opened.

The expansion was running smoothly on a Mac, with no visual UI changes, though there is the new Outland area to explore.

Mac Joystiq: Hands On Burning Crusade

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Buy World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

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