Be one of four to win a copy of either Myth II: Worlds or Green Berets in The Mill's new contest. Here are the details:

The Mill, in conjunction with evihcra.com, is sponsoring a Myth related desktop image contest from Today October 19th to midnight Sunday October 28th. Do you have a cool original graphic that is dying to get out and meet people? Now is your chance to give your creation its 15 minutes of fame and to be seen by thousands of gamers, some of them naked! Four winners will each receive a Myth game, their choice of either Myth2 Worlds or Green Berets , and everybody else will be put to death and their heads mounted on a pike... wait, did I read that right? Maybe you had better go over to the contest page and read the rules for yourself.

Note that there are only ten more days to submit your desktop image. Get workin'!

ax on RHL is once again the man, pointing out that Andrew Meggs from Mumbo Jumbo has once again updated his .plan file. The summary is that the PC version should hit stores on October 25. The Mac version is being worked on by Meggs, Bill Heineman and Chris Jacobson. They're working on OS 9 issues; they say OpenGL performance under OS X is great, so good they suggest everybody update even if it requires buying more RAM (which it just might). The demo will be out after the Mac version is done.

On the subject of rankings:

We simply need more records of more actual games played by more real-world players to figure out exactly what our metrics should be and the relative weights to assign to them. Games played in ranked rooms are being reported to the master server and your stats will be tracked from day one, and hopefully within a few days of the game's street date we'll have enough raw data to figure out the best way to condense all of that data into a single number for each player.

Meggs also says that they had hoped to include some art material with the editors, but that it wouldn't fit on the CD, so it'll be a separate download instead.

MWA has posted a link to a new international Myth III preview. Written in Italian, the preview is fairly lengthy and has some good but old screenshots accompanying it. Who knows if any of the information is new though...

Inside Mac Games has reported that they are accepting Mac Myth III pre-orders in their online store. It looks like you have to be a MacGames CD subscriber to take advantage of the deal, but in case you are, then you can pre-order Myth III for $35 plus shipping charges. You can find out more details in IMG's online store and expect the game to be released in mid-November.

MythVillage has noted that the official site for the Green Berets game, based on the Myth II engine, has posted a walkthrough for the first five levels of the game. Apparently more levels are coming later.

EastWind of MWA contacted MacSoft support inquiring about Myth III's status for the Mac and he received a response that said that its tentative release date is November 13 and it will cost $49.99. You can read the entire e-mail in MWA's forum.

iggy just sent us a stunning 1600x1200 collage that showcases twenty-five breathtaking images from Myth III, many of which haven't been seen before. To download the image, go to my iDisk and click the download icon next to myth3collage.jpg. Then put your eyes back in their sockets.

UPDATE: Or you can view the image right here (will open in a new window).

ax also pointed us to this article on Inside Mac Games, which states that only the PC version of Myth III has gone gold as of yet:

As you probably know, the Mac and PC versions are being made [and] distributed by different companies, so there won't be a hybrid box like with past games in the series. Donges has explained to IMG that the Mac version is very close behind its PC counterpart, though, and should be heading towards GM in the next week or so.

So PC users will be able to play Myth III a short while before Mac users, but there should only be a period of two or three weeks between releases.