Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

A monthly feature we have here on Aeropause, Ones to Watch is a bit of a task to pull together. I’ll gather information from a number of places on what games are expected for my self-assigned platform to release in that particular month, try to find some representative footage for the title online, and jot down some bits of data, usually from memory, about the game that make the particular title interesting to someone who owns the platform. As you might have read, I recently replaced my extremely dated PC with a new iMac, so I figured, hey, why not also put together a “Ones to Watch” for the Mac, since I now have a capable Mac gaming machine? Well, here’s why not: there aren’t any games. I’m not even exaggerating.

It’s been the case for quite some time that Macs are multimedia and design machines, not gaming machines. While criticism has come in for a general lack of hardware muscle, it really hasn’t been a huge issue unless you’re looking at really extreme gaming cases. So what would usually happen is, you would get the great developers like Bungie and Blizzard who really committed themselves to providing their quality software for the Mac as well as the PC… something that seems alien today with Bungie in Microsoft’s pocket, but I digress… you would get your great Blizzard games at least, usually on the very same disc as the PC version of the game. Other mega-hits like The Sims would be ported to MacOS by companies like Aspyr, and as I understand, Epic’s big ones like Unreal Tournament would fall to Macsoft’s coders for porting duty. Anything that was a little less known would likely miss the Mac entirely.

So when Apple unveiled their revolutionary MacOS X years ago, those of us who were using the platform were completely convinced that the integration of OpenGL into the operating system, along with some strong sales, could strengthen the library of gaming software for Apple’s Macintosh product line. Alas, just as Apple’s sales really were starting to fall together for them, partly on the iPod’s halo effect, Boot Camp appeared. With Apple’s own Boot Camp software, which is a highly competent beta right now, Mac users can dual-boot their Mac between MacOS X and Windows XP. XP is not emulated, it runs natively, right on the hardware, and it reportedly does it with full gaming capability on the newest line of speedier Macs.

With Boot Camp, Mac holdouts, or recent converts, can truly have the best of both worlds: a reliable, stable operating system to work in, and an operating system that their games are built for to play in. And in the end, that is the smart choice that Apple made, and it can’t have been an easy one. Admitting that they simply could not compete with the Windows installed base for gaming was really a big step, because they had to know they have given up by doing so. It leaves developers even less reason to continue coding games for the Mac.

In my case, it gets even stranger. Working in MacOS has made me hesitant to go back to Windows again. I was going to put Boot Camp on here, and I keep putting it off. I’ve started selling off my old Windows-only games, such as Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, and Warcraft II, while keeping the ones I can get running on here, such as Diablo II and Warcraft III. I find myself hoping Diablo III comes to Mac just as I and II did, even though I already have a copy of Windows XP and Boot Camp is free.

Epic’s Mark Rein apparently said that Gears of War is coming to the Mac shortly, according to GameTrailers, via Macworld magazine. Macworld? It’s one of those things you start reading when you switch. You do that, and you go to Apple’s website to watch the commercials. Even though you already own one.