Valve to release Half-Life 2 for Mac on Wednesday

To promote the release, Valve, the developer of the Half-Life series, released a video Tuesday echoing Apple's iconic "1984" commercial, which introduced the Macintosh platform to the world in what many have heralded as the greatest television advertisement of all time.

Valve's take on "1984" features the character Alyx Vance throwing a crowbar — a trademark weapon in the Half-Life series — through a screen projecting the image of another character, Wallace Breen, playing the role of "Big Brother" from the ad. The short clip, rendered with the Source Engine that powers the game, ends with the message "Half-Life 2 on OS X, 5.26.2010."

As part of the staggered rollout of Steam for Mac, Valve plans to release new titles every Wednesday, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of the Steam platform on Apple hardware. The first collection of titles included Portal, which was available to play for free for a limited time.

Portal was be the first of Valve's Source engine based games available on the Mac. Valve has also made native OS X support for the Source engine available to licensees for use in their games. The company has also made its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform, including product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more.

Steam is digital game distribution platform which has more than 25 million users and offers access to 1,100 games on the PC. Valve has said it will treat the Mac as a "first-tier" platform, meaning new major titles developed for the PC will release day-and-date with the Mac.

For more, see AppleInsider's additional coverage of Steam for Mac:

First look: Valve's Steam, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for Mac

Valve, Apple worked closely to bring Steam natively to Mac

Game developers eye the Mac after Steam's jump to Apple

Valve announces Steam for Mac, games will allow Mac-PC online play