Chessmaster 9000 Is Now a Universal Binary

Feral Interactive has released a Universal Patch for players of its Chessmaster 9000 game for Mac. Up until this point, only owners of a PowerPC-based machine could run the game. Thanks to this patch, Intel Mac owners can also play Feral's chess game, while the system requirements now ask for at least 10.4 to play.

"The universal patch for Chessmaster 9000 is out now! This update to the game allows Chessmaster to run at full speed on Macs with Intel processors… and that's very speedy indeed. We've also fixed a few graphical glitches that occurred while running the game on OS X Leopard," Feral says. "As with all of our Universal patches, this update also includes Sparkle auto-updating, so the next time we release an update, Chessmaster can download and install it for you. So unless you know your En Passant from your Threefold Repetition, what are you waiting for? The patch can be downloaded by clicking the link below," the company notes on its web site.

And HERE it is.

Chessmaster 9000 now has the following updates over and above the previous PPC only version:

- Universal Application - Now runs native on Intel (and PPC) processors.
- MacBook X3100 Support - Game no longer crashes on newer MacBooks.
- Sparkle - Game uses Sparkle auto update to update the game.
- New Icon - Very Shiny 512px icon supports "Quicklook" at full resolution.

Also, Feral notes that Chessmaster 9000 has dropped support for OSes below (earlier than) 10.4. The game now requires at least 10.4 (Tiger) to play.

After installing the Chessmaster 9000 Universal Patch, your version should be 1.1.2. You can check your current version number by looking at the number that appears next to the game name in the About tab. You can see a few highlighted examples in the animated picture. If your version number matches the one in the list your game is up to date. If they don't match download the patch to upgrade.