iGame Radio

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Corey Tamas of MacGamer gives a review of GodFinger for the iPhone by ngmoco. Use your finger to be god. I mean, what else would you use your finger for? Make charming critters worship you, then roast them when you had a bad day. All for free!
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about the iPhone 4 first impressions. Despite over 1.7 million iPhones sold in 1.5 weeks, only 48 apps have been updated for iOS4. What gives? Omaha and Corey talk about what that means. Also, what do people think about the gyroscope, multitasking, and retina display so far?
• OnLive is live. But Omaha can’t connect. Find out why.
• Feral Interactive has announced a teaser for their next game announcement, and Omaha thinks she knows what it is.
• Virtual Programming reissued X3: Reunion as a native Mac port because they didn’t feel the Cider was “good enough”. Omaha and Corey talk about what the means, and whether this is the start of a trend.
• Contests! More contests than you can shake a crashed iPhone at!

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Matt Jarvis for featuring music from Osmos.
• Bobby “Glorian” Slavov and Victor Stoyanov for featuring music from Eschalon: Book 1.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• A review of Tales of Monkey Island, part 1 for the Mac by TellTale Games. A point-and-click adventure game of swashbuckling fun, danger on the high seas, talking demonic skulls, and manatee bile. Wait…what? And more visual bugs than you can stick a cutlass through.
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about the WWDC, the imminent announcement of the iPhone 4G, and the potential new games we might see on the iPhone and iPad.
• Aspyr is looking for Mac game developers for a new AAA title that they are bringing to the Mac from the PC. No one knows what it is yet, but Omaha and Corey make their guesses. What’s yours?
• Hand of Greed released an HTML5 web demo for the touch screen of their game, first of it’s kind. Check it out!
• NPD reported that 4% of gamers play in the Extreme Gamer category…48 hours of gameplay a week. Can you work and play that much?
• Looking to buy an iPhone or iPad soon? If the FTC has it’s way, you might just be paying 5% extra…to save newspapers.
• Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software talks about the inspiration for his new game, Avadon the Black Fortress. One word. Psychosexual.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Digital Droo for featuring music from Burning Monkey Solitaire.
• Rich Carlson for featuring music from Dr. Blob.

…To give them some feedback. On the GameAgent NonBlog, Aspyr asks the following:

Friends, foes, followers – we come to you to find out more about your favorite Mac games. We often are asked “Where is ___ game? The last one is one of my favorites!” or “why aren’t you guys doing _____.” The truth is, we’re probably working very hard on getting ____ to our friends and followers. To help our cause tell us why a native Mac version of the latest game is ESSENTIAL for our partners to support. We want to hear what you [sic] thinking

So, how about it, peeps? Hop onto the site and let them know why it is that you want to see a particular game on the Mac. Like Modern Warfare 2!

Along with the announcement of Secret of Monkey Island: SE, Aspyr has also announced the immediate availability of classic Star Wars titles for both retail and digital download.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Empire at War, Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, and Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast have all been updated to the latest version of the game, and upgraded with bug fixes, support for 10.6, and to run natively on Intel Macs. In addition, multiplayer for all Jedi titles has been updated and will also run natively on Intel Macs.

Fans can pick up the games via digital download immediately. Alternatively, retail bundles of these games are also available. Star Wars: Jedi Knight Gold Pack includes both Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and its sequel Star Wars: Jedi Knight: II: Jedi Outcast available on one disc for $29.99. Star Wars Mac Pack includes the RPG game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the strategy title Star Wars: Empire at War for $49.99.

In addition, Aspyr is running a sale wherein if you purchase Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition for the Mac digitally, you’ll get an additional %20 off any other Star Wars game.

Minimum system requirements for all four games:

• Mac OS X 10.5 (10.6 support included)
• 1.8 GHz or faster Intel Mac
• 512 MB or higher
• 665 MB free disk space
• ATI Radeon X1600/NVidia GeForce 7300
• 128 MB VRAM

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Empire at War are each $29.99 for digital download. Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast cost $19.99 each.

Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition for the Mac was announced back in March, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting it since. Well, wait no longer, because the game is now available for downloadfrom Aspyr Media on the GameAgent download service.

The game brings the original version from 1990 redone for the modern audience. The art-style has been re-imagined, hand-drawn for animation-level quality, but you can still hot-swap seamlessly between the modern visuals and the classic mode for the original artwork. The score has been re-mastered as well, with a full orchestra, as well as complete voice-overs using the original Monkey Island franchise cast.

There are a couple of new features to the game as well. A new game interface and control set promises to be more intuitive. Also, they have introduced a new in-game puzzle hint system.

Minimum system requirements:

• 1.8 GHz or faster Intel Mac
• Mac OS X 10.5 or later
• 512 MB or higher
• 2 GB free disk space
• ATI Radeon X1600, NVidia GeForce 7300
• 128 MB VRAM

Secret of Monkey Island: SE is available for digital download now for $9.99 from Aspyr Media.

Aspyr Media has released a new iPhone app called VooDude. I’m uncertain whether I would call this a game persay, though you can certainly make it into a game. Priced at $0.99, VooDude lets you create your own personal, portable Voodoo doll within your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Seeing as how I can think of a few people in my life who would, ahem, benefit from this feature, I checked out the features list:

• Use the accelerometer and touch screen to shake, pin, burn and toss him – he’ll respond to your slightest whim!
• Personalize Voodude by mapping any photo you want on his head.
• Ragdoll physics
• Touch screen interactivity puts Voodude at the mercy of your fingers
• Save each of your custom Voodudes to bring them out later for further enjoyment
• Email your creations to other Voodude users

They need to add to the features list “send curses through VooDude to those you despise.” I could deal with that.

Actually, I flew in from Macworld Expo 2009 a couple of hours ago. I just finished getting back from eating. Macworld was awesome, tiring, worrying, stressful, and full of surprises. Despite the fact that there wasn’t even a poor excuse for a game pavilion this year (game companies were scattered all over the place), and that several of the stalwarts that we associate with Mac games (Aspyr Media, MacSoft), weren’t there, there were still a significant number of gaming companies, both software and hardware, attending.

I chatted with CCP (EVE Online), Transgaming, Codeweavers, Freeverse, Feral Interactive, Software MacKiev, Ambrosia Software, and VMware. I also talked to some on the hardware side, including NEC about their giant curved screen (a new iteration is due out soon), and i2i Stream about the application of their technology to gamers.

All in all, I have a ton of interviews that you’ll be hearing over the next week or two, and Corey and I are set to do a recording tomorrow with a full overview of what Macworld was like…I’ll get it posted by tomorrow evening.

BTW, Feral Interactive, what was with the Feral t-shirts with the BioShock logo on the backs? They were all wearing them. I asked one of them why, and he said, “Well, we’re all just big fans of BioShock, we just wanted to wear our BioShock t-shirts today.” Yeah, and you’re publishing Black & White 2, but I didn’t see you wearing t-shirts with that logo on the back. Hmmm. A ton of food for thought there.

According to MTV Multiplayer, Activision|Blizzard (there’s something so very wrong about that mashup) have announced a bunch of games in the works, among them Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I’m hyped about that. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare rocked big time, and I would really, really like to see its sequel brought about to the Mac as well (you listening, Aspyr?).

 

I’ve posted Episode 69, in which Corey and I chat about DRM, the used games industry, and piracy rates. Oh, and benchmarks for the Macbook and Macbook Pro. Corey does a review for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, and I do a review of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Not World at War, as I called it once during the show…that’s what happens when you have the two versions available in the marketplace at once).

Oh, and I’m very sorry about the mess-up with Episode 68…that being that I accidentally swapped the URL for Episode 67 into the RSS feed item for Episode 68. That’s all been fixed now.

BTW, I’m playing around with a podcasting plugin. My eventual intention is to post all of my podcasts using WordPress hosted through MacRadio, but for now I’m running some tests. So I’m actually posting my podcast link to Episode 69 below, complete with player, to see how it looks.