There have been a few minor gems since the iPhone 3G arrived and Steve Jobs made his bold claim, but the Boing Boing Gadgets crew seem rather taken with action/strategy title Galcon.

The game is a conversion of the desktop title for Windows, OSX and Linux and offers fast-paced Risk-like gameplay with an emphasis on short-burst battles - just the thing for a quick bus journey but with solid enough strategy element to keep you coming back.

The game costs just $5 (compared to $20 for the desktop incarnation) and there is a 'Lite' version available as a free demo through the App Store.

A few hours with Galcon, the first killer game for iPhone [BB Gadgets]

The latest iteration has even more stats to juggle and features an overhauled 'more realistic' transfer system with transfer rumors now playing a role in negotiations. No word on illegal

The PC and Mac versions come with an all-new fully 3D match engine, although PSP owners will have to soldier on in 2D for another year.

Mac & PSP screens after the jump.

Mac OSX


PSP

PC users will benefit too with the the GameTap player's updated, streamlined interface. I mean, you're not getting any new games or anything. But you've already had your fun while the rest of us were pouting in the corner, acting interested in our iPods.

The GameTap client for Macintosh will rely on Cider, the "wrapper" that allows Windows-based games to play on Mac OSX. That means some of GameTap's offerings won't be immediately available to Mac gamers, including releases like Sam & Max, Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Far Cry.

GameTap for Mac users will, however, have access to over 500 classic games, including titles released for the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast when the full service is launched. Michael McWhertor

GameTap to bring classic gaming service for Mac [MacWorld]

Steve Jobs just announced during his keynote that Electronic Arts is "returning" to the Apple.

What's that mean? It means that Apple gamers will finally get some games meant for their system. Starting in July Electronic Arts will be brining Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to OS X.

Also EA Sports Games, like Madden 08, Tiger Woods 08 will also be brought to the OS X in the Fall-ish. Brian Crecente

Live blogging Jobs [Gizmodo]

EA BRINGS HIT PORTFOLIO TO APPLE MAC OS X

New Releases Demonstrate EA's Commitment to Deliver
Key Titles on Apple's Mac OS X

Redwood Shores, Calif., - June 11, 2007 - Electronic Arts Inc., (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced a commitment to bring its portfolio of hit games to Mac OS X. The first EA Mac titles slated to ship this summer include the wizarding adventure Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix™, racing sensation Need for Speed™ Carbon, military action thriller Battlefield 2142 and the real-time strategy hit Command &Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars™. Being the first Mac OS X games published by EA, these blockbuster titles are being ported to take advantage of the Mac's performance to run with stunning visuals and signature gameplay at blistering speeds. Later this year, EA will ship Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08 in sync with their worldwide launches.

Frank Gibeau, EA's Executive Vice President of Publishing commented, "These four games are just the beginning. We're excited to deliver key EA franchises such as Harry Potter, Madden Football and Need for Speed to Mac gamers."

"We're thrilled that the world's number one games company is making this major commitment to the Mac," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Game fans are going to love playing these new EA titles on a Mac."

The four Mac games set for release this summer include:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, licensed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Harry returns for his fifth year of study at Hogwarts only to discover that much of the wizarding community has been led to believe that the story of the teenager's recent encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort is a lie, putting Harry's integrity in question. Worse, the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, has appointed a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, the duplicitous Professor Dolores Umbridge. But Professor Umbridge's "Ministry-approved" course of defensive magic leaves the young wizards woefully unprepared to defend themselves against the Dark Forces threatening them, so at the prompting of his friends Hermione and Ron, Harry is convinced to take matters into his own hands. Meeting secretly with a small group of students who name themselves "Dumbledore's Army," Harry teaches them how to defend themselves against the Dark Arts, preparing the courageous young wizards for the extraordinary battle that lies ahead. With the ability to play multiple characters, including Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Sirius Black, the videogame of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix offers fans the opportunity to wield a wand, explore all around Hogwarts, and experience one of the most exciting and dangerous years in the life of the Boy Who Lived.

Need for Speed Carbon - The battle for the city is won in the canyon as Need for Speed Carbon immerses you in the world's most dangerous and adrenaline-filled form of street racing. As the police turn up the heat and force the races to the outskirts of the city, the battle ultimately shifts to Carbon Canyon, where territories and reputations can be lost on every perilous curve. Racing has never felt so dangerous where every turn is a matter of life or death. For the first time in a Need for Speed game, build a crew and race in an all-out war for your city against rival crews and opposing car classes. You'll risk everything to take over rival neighborhoods one street at a time. With online racing and the most advanced graphics and car customization tools ever, Need for Speed Carbon is the ultimate Mac racing game.

Battlefield 2142 - The year is 2142, and the dawn of a new Ice age has thrown the world into a panic. The math is simple and brutal: The soil not covered by ice can only feed a fraction of the Earth's population. Some will live, most will die. In Battlefield 2142, players will choose to fight for one of two military superpowers in an epic battle for survival, the European Union or the newly formed Pan Asian Coalition. Armed with a devastating arsenal of hi-tech assault rifles, cloaking devices and sentry guns, players will also do battle using some of the most imposing vehicles known to man. Massive battle Mechs wage fierce combat on the ground, while futuristic aircraft rule the skies. When facing one of these new behemoths, players will need to use their wits and an arsenal of new countermeasures like EMP grenades to level the playing field. Team play features allow up to 64 players to enter the action on the front lines as part of a formal squad, or work behind the scenes in Commander Mode to direct the strategic assaults of their teammates.

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars - The critically-acclaimed Command & Conquer™ series returns with Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. This highly-anticipated next chapter takes the popular series back to its roots in the Tiberium Universe and features the fast, fluid gameplay that Command & Conquer is known for and an epic story that will redefine storytelling and set the standard for the single player experience for Real-time Strategy games. It is 2047 and the stakes could not be higher. Tiberium-a self-replicating alien substance that has infected the Earth-is spreading like a radioactive ice age. The Global Defense Initiative, a high-tech alliance of the world's most advanced nations, is fighting to contain Tiberium, but Kane, the megalomaniacal leader of the Brotherhood of Nod has other plans for Earth. Kane's secret society turned superpower is bent on using Tiberium to take control and transform humanity into his twisted vision of the future. All-out

UPDATE: the18thletter wins with his sugestion to hold alt during boot, and select the mac partition! Congratulations, and special mention goes to Dan for the mouse button force eject.

Last night, after receiving a review copy of Sam & Max Episode One, I attempted to install Windows XP on my MacBook Pro. Boot camp did its thang, I created a ten gig partition and stuck my XP disk in and hit OK. The Book restarted itself, booting into Windows Setup. It crooned, Hit ENTER to continue. I did so, dutifully.

Nothing.

Okay, that wasn't really Enter, it was Return (silly Mac keyboards), so here's Enter.

Nothing. F3, ESC and aklfhsfgrjkeghksdjhfk;dh likewise.

Fine, have it your way. I reboot. Right back into Windows Setup. I reboot while holding down various reboot modifiers (X, shift, command-option-shift-f, etc. etc. etc.). No dice. I drove all the way to godless, christpunching Auburn, Washington to their hideous "SuperMall" because it was the closest open Wal-Mart. I purchased a USB keyboard and drove back home at four in the morning. Windows Setup everywhere I turn, thus exhausting my technical knowledge of this subject.

This is where you come in. Let's review, for the TL;DR crowd:

• Boot Camp successfully created a 10-gig partition
• Boot Camp rebooted the machine with the XP setup disc in the drive, thus booting to Windows Setup
• This is an old copy of Windows XP Home
• This disc probably does not have Service Pack 2 on it, which Boot Camp said it requires
• My copy of OSX is up to date
• Windows Setup is not responding to keyboard input of any kind
• Using a USB keyboard doesn't work, either
• Mac no longer has a manual ejection hole, where formerly one was able to jam a paper clip and eject a stubborn disc
• I don't think I've actually lost any data, since nothing has been installed/formatted/deleted yet. So OSX is presumably still in one piece, on the other partition

The first person to give me a working solution (and isn't a dick about it) will get an original, full-color digital illustration of themselves in a top hat, fending off a swarm of giant hornets. Or, instead of a top hat, a very pretty tiara. Your call. Eliza "oh god help me" Gauger

MISSIVES FROM THE FRONT LINES:
- Thanks, Dan. holding mouse button while booting successfully force ejected the Windows XP CD. Now the Book can't find a bootable disk, period. I assume this means it's blind to the OSX partition. Next step is switching in a newer XP disc to see if the Service Pack thing is the problem.

Cathode Tan's a blog that doesn't like us; yet, just like women, the blogs that hate you are the only one's worth loving. Furthermore, Josh is passionate about Apple's failure to get the Mac together as a viable gaming platform, and he links and excellent post from Jeff Tunnell of Garage Games, who shakes his head in despair over what Apple's doing wrong for gamers:

Since they control all of the hardware, they could easily add in controller support. Standardized controllers annointed by Apple would quickly become ubiquitous and cheap. Apple could make sure their computers ship with better graphics hardware than the built in GPU of the recent Mac Mini, so developers are assured of a minimum graphics standard that will not go down. Apple has wonderful design and awesome software engineers. They could easily add game download support into iTunes. What is more important, games or podcasts? I love podcasts, but the answer to the question is obvious.

I'm not really sure I see the logic that "standardized controllers annointed by Apple would quickly become ubiquitous and cheap." When has anything annointed by Apple been cheap? Rather, my understanding the real hold-up is any sort of consistent push by Apple to appeal to game developers, which Microsoft's been trying to do for a decade now with Direct X.

It is absolutely ridiculous though that a major computer manufacturer that is gaining market share by the minute after years of being the underdog is still recommending its direct competitor (Windows XP through Boot Camp) for those looking to game on their machines. Florian Eckhardt

Should You Make Games For OS-X? [Make It Big In Games]

Tunnell: Why Code Games For OS X? [Cathode Tan]

GayGamer has nice news about MacGaming, it seems.

I have good news for Mac gamers. TransGaming Technologies recently introduced Cider, which will enable publishers to quickly bring PC games to the Mac. The conversion process used to be a messy ordeal, taking months. Now Cider takes care of the code conversion, which will eventually enable publishers to release a PC game and the cider-ized Mac version simultaneously.

I grabbed a MacBook Pro recently, and haven't installed BootCamp yet, so any news on this topic is good news. Unfortunately it seems people are being a little overzealous, as the app looks like it functions largely as an emulator.

"We are delivering a transparent Mac game play experience to the end consumer," Mr. State said. "Cider-enabled titles are just as native as any other Mac game on an Intel-based Mac. There is no virtualization or similar step involved — Cider loads the game directly into memory and executes the code, which means it is running directly in Mac OS X. The game simply relies on Cider's implementation of the Win32 and DirectX APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), instead of those found in Windows."

I'm not a coder by any stretch, but this sounds akin to emulation to me. I'm extremely dubious. Eliza Gauger

Cider [GayGamer]

It isn't just emulation: publishers will need to support Cider and will sell copies of PC games that are Cider enabled. However, where the ease of use comes in is that they will supposedly not have to port the games to OS X... they can just slap their Windows game on a Cider installer and ship it out.

If TransGaming is successful, Mac gamers should start seeing Cider-enhanced games as early as October. The aim is simultaneous release of both Mac and PC games. About half the staff here at Kotaku are Mac users: we're all crossing our fingers on this one. Florian Eckhardt

'Cider' makes Windows games run on Intel Macs [Yahoo News]

This will be cool the first time you use it; after that, you won't be able to headbutt the keyboard fast enough to turn the damn thing off. Or at least that was my experience when I tested out the Mega Man Effect, a Windows/OS X accessory that plays the Mega Man fanfare and shows a scrolling screen of stars every time you launch an app.

This isn't useable unless you're willing to sit through a thirty second shrill, grating mp3 that will make you want to pluck the teeth out of your head with your thumbs every time you launch an app. But worth a one-off experiment and a grin? You betcha. Courtesy of Destructoid. Florian Eckhardt

MegaMan Effect for Windows
MegaMan Effect for OS X

One surprising thing is exactly how beefy the system requirements are: a 2.0 GHz processor, a gig of RAM and a beefy video card. These requirements are actually higher than the ones for Doom 3 for the Mac. Macs are definitely getting more and more powerful and with Boot Camp, Mac owners can happily game by just loading up Windows XP. But it defeats the point of a port entirely if a game running natively on OSX requires twice the resources that it would require if you installed the XP version. Florian Eckhardt

Edit: Ooops! My bad. Eric Duncan over at Aspyr Media wrote to inform me that I'd quoted the recommended specs, not the minimum, which are a 1.8 ghz processor, 512MB of RAM and 64MB of video RAM. He assures us it plays pretty well even at those. Swell!

Civilization 4 for Mac [Apple Store]

...the MacBook running Apple's official XP drivers is a robust, stable gaming platform capable of playing software from either side of the OS wars. While some are predicting this will be the beginning of the end for the Mac platform, the opposite seems to be true, at least anecdotally. At least a dozen platform fence-sitters have told me that the Mac's newfound ability to play PC games has broken down the last barrier to their buying a Mac as their next computer.

Is this news going to make any other long-time PC owners invest in a Mac? We know we're sorely tempted.

Oblivion: Macintosh Game of the Year? [1UP]