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Use the Force, LucasArts (1/19/99)
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Not that we've conducted a formal scientific survey or anything, but it sure seems like there's an inordinately high percentage of Star Wars fanatics within the Mac-using community. Suppose that might have anything to do with the, shall we say, "familiar" theme of a hopelessly-outnumbered band of rebels struggling against overwhelming odds to defeat the Evil Empire? At any rate, your AtAT staff loves Star Wars, just as we love to play games. That's why the latest news about LucasArts is so exciting.
See, if you've been paying any attention at all to the Mac games market for the last few years, you know that things got pretty grim. Indeed, with Apple's financial troubles and the Mac's Incredible Shrinking Market Share™, fewer and fewer games developers were willing to bet that a Mac version of their software stood any chance of making any money. So developers left in droves, and one of the biggest bummers to us was seeing LucasArts, purveyors of such fine Star Wars-themed games as "Jedi Knight" and "X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter" put their Mac development efforts indefinitely "on hold" until the market grew to a financially feasible size. But last Friday, the Mac Gamer's Ledge reported that LucasArts was finally won over by the consumer success of the iMac, and they plan to release a new game for the Mac later this year.
Then today the news got better still, as MacCentral reported that LucasArts' long-awaited return to the Mac platform wouldn't even involve the porting of an existing popular PC title; instead, rumor has it that LucasArts is working on a whole new game based on the Star Wars: Episode One movie coming out this May. When that game (still unannounced for any platform) shows up sometime later this year, it'll be available for the Mac, as well as for the Dark Side. So warm up your lightsabers and get ready to rock.
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SceneLink (1277)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/19/99 episode: January 19, 1999: It's taken a long time, but LucasArts plans its return to the Mac platform. Meanwhile, Apple prepares to juice up the sound in its upcoming Macs, and one man's struggle to avoid paying for his unused, unwanted copy of Windows is an inspiration to us all...
Other scenes from that episode: 1278: Listening and Responding (1/19/99) There have been a lot of changes at Apple over the last couple of years, to be sure, but one of the most significant is that they finally seem to be listening. They listen to what customers, developers, and resellers have to say, and they even seem to be heeding some of that advice... 1279: Blood from a Stone (1/19/99) While it's not strictly relevant from a Mac perspective, we've just got to point out the fantastic story of a Linux user who tried to return the copy of Windows that came with his Toshiba laptop. See, Microsoft's got these deals set up with many computer manufacturers, Toshiba included, that requires all computers to include a copy of Windows pre-loaded on the system; we've discussed in the past how it's extraordinarily difficult to buy a PC without a Microsoft operating system these days...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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