I have been playing a bit of SpyHunter since finishing up Darwinia. It was a PlayStation console game ported to PC and Mac several years ago. Aspyr hasn’t updated it in some time. It wouldn’t even run under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I had to play it under Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. It was a pretty decent modernization of the great coin-op classic of the same name. The original was one of my all-time favorite arcade games. I finished the first four missions out of a total of fourteen. I was just getting into the game when I hit a snag. Although I had completed the mission’s primary objective, I was one point short on cumulative secondary objectives to continue. I am unable to play mission five until I go back and improve on one of my prior missions. This game mechanic definitely feels much more appropriate for a console game than a computer game. I will probably go back to SpyHunter at some point. For now, however, I have put it on hold as I begin another season of North American League Baseball.

Introversion Software is a great small game developer. I previously played their first game, Uplink. For the past few weeks, I have been playing Darwinia, Introversion’s second game. Darwinia was a pleasant surprise. The game is set in a digital world with a 1980s retro feel. It was primarily a real time strategy game, but it included arcade elements and some puzzle solving as well. In addition to the unique visuals, the game mechanics were anything but ordinary. You control a very small number of units compared to other RTS games. Darwinia features a gesture based command system in which you draw symbols on screen to summon units and issue commands. Today, I finished the last level of the game. The virus infecting Darwinia was eliminated and the Darwinians were saved.