Shred heaven!

Aspyr and Activision have announced that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will be released for the Mac (ok, ok, for the PC too) this fall. It’s no longer console-exclusive, and if you load it on a Macbook, you can shred on the road - it’s the first portable version of Guitar Hero ever.

From the official announcement:

Being developed and published exclusively by Aspyr, the PC and Mac versions will match their console counterparts with explosive new content and features including a multiplayer action-inspired battle mode, grueling boss battles, a host of exclusive unlockable content and visually stunning rock venues. With more than 70 songs in the set list, and more original master tracks than ever before, players will be able to shred from many of the freshest and hottest artists today, along with many of the most popular rock songs ever recorded. Expanded online multiplayer game modes will also allow PC and Mac enthusiasts to rip head-to-head against players around the world and across either platform, raising the level of competition for true legendary rock status.

Electronic Arts‘ bold promise to simultaneously release their titles on the Mac with the Windows versions seems to have been broken already. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 and NFL Madden 2008 have just been, or will be, released for XP/Vista (Tiger Woods last Tuesday, Madden on the 28th), but the Mac versions have been pushed back to “the September/October window”. The new company line is to release the Mac versions “as close as possible” to the Windows release dates.

Yum.

To be fair, most of the other games have been released together with their Windows counterparts: retail stores will have Need for Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Tuesday, and Battlefield 2142 and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars on the 28th, but these are already available on the Apple Store.

Oh, well. It was too good to be true anyway.

A kinda-sorta new version of a Nintendo Entertaiment System (NES) emulator for the iPhone (inexplicably dubbed the iPhone NES Emulator) has been released on the heels of the previously announced Doom port.

Dubbed Version 0.20.1, with the right ROM files you can get to relive 8-bit gaming glory with titles like the original Metroid, Super Mario, Megaman 2, Punch Out, Legend of Zelda and a host of other blasts from the past. Unlike Doom, this NES emulator has sound (although only through the earphones), and can be controlled with precision through a mock gamepad.

Like the DOOM install, it requires a bit more skill to install. If you must have it, get the NES Emulator and some games directly from here, and have more fun with it than you can with that Doom thing (proving once and for all that NES is more.)

It seems the inevitable has happened. The iPhone is doomed. Or more accurately, the iPhone has Doom.

The game, anyway.

Someone’s ported id Software’s classic FPS Doom to the iPhone, although “ported” is stretching it a bit. As of the moment it’s well nigh unplayable as we’ve come to know the game, has no audio nor controller response yet, and is more a demo than anything, but at least it points the way to where it’s eventually headed. (id Software denies any official porting.)

A WAD file is needed to get the game going, and requires a bit more than the usual level of game geekiness to install. If you still want a go at it, go get the iPhone version of Doom here.

Popcap has made Bejeweled available for free for iPhone users.

From the press release:

SEATTLE, Washington – July 30, 2007 — PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, today announced that it has launched a custom version of its flagship game Bejeweled® for the Safari® Web browser on Apple Inc.’s new iPhone® and is making it available at no cost to iPhone owners. Beginning today, iPhone users can log on to www.popcap.com via the iPhone’s Web browser and play the iPhone-specific version of the original match-3 puzzler Bejeweled for free. This customized version of Bejeweled leverages the Web 2.0 capabilities of Safari and the wireless capabilities of the iPhone, and has been optimized to take advantage of the iPhone’s unique display and input controls. PopCap developed the Safari-based version of Bejeweled in partnership with Polish developer Arkadiusz Mlynarczyk, one of the first programmers to take advantage of the Apple iPhone’s capabilities for video gaming purposes.

Photo from GameStooge.