News Round-up: November 10 - December 5
In Apple and Mac gaming news, iOS 4.2 was released two weeks ago, bringing “multi-tasking” functionality to the iPad; a Steam hardware survey suggests that most Mac gamers are using laptops; Feral Interactive has released a Mac port of popular action-RPG Borderlands; Aspyr’s Mac port of Civilization V has landed; Telltale has released a poker game, Poker Night at the Inventory, with Max (from Sam & Max), Strong Bad, The Heavy (from Team Fortress 2), and Tycho Brahe (from Penny Arcade) as the opponents; id Software’s Rage has hit the current generation of iOS devices; and the Grand Theft Auto 3 trilogy has finally made its way to OS X.
Atari 2600 VCS emulator Stella received a big update last month. Version 3.3 lists around twenty bug fixes, improvements, and additions to graphics display, application performance, debugging, and more. See the official Stella news page for release notes and the main site for the latest download link.
Cycle-exact and Cocoa-native NES emulator Macifom has been updated to version 0.15. This new version adds support for games that use the MMC3 mapper on TxROM boards and games that were designed for SUROM boards, in addition to providing various other improvements. See the official site for full details.
More updates after the break.
A new official build of Nintendo 64 emulator Mupen64Plus has been released. This release (version 1.99.4) offers a wealth of improvements that were apparently dealt with months ago in the source code, including numerous bug fixes in the core emulator library, the Audio-SDL plugin, the Input-SDL plugin, the Rice Video plugin, and the RSP-HLE plugin. See the release notes for a run-down of the changes.
Development on Sony PlayStation emulator PCSX-Reloaded continues at a steady rate, and SpeedofMac is working tirelessly to provide Mac builds that are in-sync with the latest source. Check out the official PCSX-Reloaded website for source code or information about the emulator, and be sure to grab the latest build from SpeedofMac’s website.
DOSBox front-end Dapplegrey has received a minor update. Version 2.18.1 fixes a NilObjectException error when cancelling an “Add Disk image” action. Get it here.
Open-source x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualisation tool VirtualBox has been updated to version 3.2.12. Another maintenance release, this version provides a large number of bug fixes -- including several crash bugs. See the Changelog for full details.
In news we missed last month, there is a new emulator on the scene. Q-emuLator, a Sinclair QL emulator, has been released for OS X. The current version supports sound, host file system access, keyboard and mouse input, interrupts, and built-in ram disks. It also provides partial Gold Card emulation. See the official site for full details and a download link. Unfortunately, Q-emuLator for Mac OS X is not free -- registration is US$45.95 for the Mac version only, or US$55.95 for both Mac and Windows licences. (A trial version is available upon request, however.)
Got any news tips? Let us know on the forums. I’d also like to know if there’s anything else you’d like me to cover, such as (retro-themed?) game releases, productivity software, or iPhone Apps. Hit up the comments if you have any suggestions or requests.
Comments (0)