October 9th Meeting Highlights
By Keith Cooper
Fun & Games at FinMUG October
By Keith Cooper
If you think organizing a Macintosh User Group Event is all fun and games, well,
sometimes you might be right. The Fingerlakes MUG held its first ever games night
on Wednesday, October 9, and it was a blast.
Once again we congregated at Watkins Elementary School, this time wearing our best
game faces. In addition to the six in attendance on site, a few members joined in
remotely via an iChat chat room (another first for the group).
Since Kathy and I are far from gamers (and since Matt Roe was unavailable to lend
his expertise on the subject) we relied on the savvy of Keith Slater and Kevin Gomez
to demonstrate some interesting and fun Mac-compatible games during a meeting that
was all about the fun.
Keith Slater set up some his iBook first and after abandoning a stalled Harry Potter
installation, he showed off a few demos including some he supplied to the group on
CD. First we got a shot at Wingnuts, a fun flight-n-fight game complete with a German-accented
heckler. You get to dogfight your modern Jet fighter in a mismatch against some classic
war birds. Check it out at http://Freeverse.com.
Then Keith showed us Deimos Rising, a futuristic fighting game that pits your aircraft
against spinning obstacles and ground fire. You can test drive the demo. Go to http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/dr.
Next we took a look at a fun game called Bubble Trouble, which is a Pacman-style
game where you pit fish against fish to survive to the next level.
Kevin then linked his TiBook up to the projector and let us preview a masterful warfare
game called Medal of Honor. This game is a super realistic combat game that is network
compatible and includes a variety of situations and battles. One great module we
test drove is a ‘”Saving Private Ryan”-type scenario that allows you a frighteningly
authentic view of a dangerous beach landing. This and other great games are brought
to you by Aspyr. This game retails for about $50 and is a must for hardcore gamers.
Find out more at http://www.aspyr.com.
Next we took a look at a couple of strategy games: Bejeweled, JewelToy (similar to
Bejeweled) and Alchemy. Keith hooked back in and showed us OttoMattic, an alien game
that came pre-loaded on the iBook.
You can find these games and other Mac friendly games at http://download.com, http://www.versiontracker.com, or to .Mac members by logging into the .Mac site.
Thank you again to Marianne and Watkins Central Schools for hosting us. Thanks to
Keith and Kevin for the exciting demos. See you at the next meeting.
Keith Cooper
Finger Lakes Macintosh User Group
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