MacPlay's booth may not have been the most ornate yesterday at the Expo (through fault of their courier, not their own), but their announcements were more than enough to compensate. The Mac games publisher showed off their upcoming titles and announced a deal with Activision.

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, named Game of the Year by MSNBC and Game Industry News, as well as RPG of the Year by GameSpot, is on display and available for pre-order. The big news on the game is that it will be published for both Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X.

"MacPlay is proud to publish its flagship summer release...for Mac OS X," said MacPlay president Diane Zammit. "We are dedicated to technological leadership in Macintosh gaming by supporting Apple's next generation operating system."

Dedicated, indeed, as Giants: Citizen Kabuto will be published exclusively for Mac OS X. MacPlay has retained the services of the Omni Group to develop the title in time for a release by this summer. Giants will be first game for Macintosh to support the pixel and vertex shader capabilities of NVIDIA's new GeForce 3 GPU, but imperfections with the card precluded a demo of this technology at the show.

Shiny Entertainment's Sacrifice is the third game to receive a first look at the show. Ported to the Mac by MumboJumbo, Sacrifice is a 3D real-time strategy game that allows players to act as both commander and combatant over huge, real time generated landscapes in single or multiplayer mode. Sacrifice was awarded Strategy Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World, and RTS Game of the year by Computer Games Magazine.

The surprise announcement was MacPlay's deal with Activision; bringing Heretic II, Hexen II and Zork Grank Inquisitor to OS X.

Heretic II sets you upon an epic quest across an entire continent to find a means to cleanse a world infected with a deadly plague. To succeed, you must perform a variety of acrobatic, swimming and climbing maneuvers to penetrate the mystery of the plauge. The award winning game will ship for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.

Hexen II transports players into four worlds, each of which is defended by one of the Four Horsemen of Apocolypse. Gamers much choose to battle as one of four classes in single-player mode, or fight against all four classes in multiplayer mode. Hexen II will ship solely for OS 9.

An epic adventure set in the famed Zork universe (originally created by the legendary and Moofie Award Lifetime Achievement recipient Infocom), Zork Grand Inquisitor centers around restoring magic to the ailing Great Underground Empire so its inhabitants may be freed from the Dark Ages of Zork. Along the journey, players time-travel back to classic Zork eras to restore three enchanted treasures to Zork. The classic adventure game will ship for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.

"We're pleased to be working closely with world class games publisher Activision to bring these frequently requested games to the Macintosh," said Zammit. "We're excited to be bringing them to the Macintosh community."

I was fortunate to spend quite a bit of time with MacPlay group yesterday, and will soon post more news on the company, their upcoming line-up, and their Macintosh strategy. In the meantime, Macworld visitors can stop by booth 2113 to pick up their currently released titles and get in their pre-orders.

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