[Little_C]

I was curioius if the Mac Mini 1.42 GHz G4 (599$ model) would be sufficint enough to run online multiplayer games.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
What title specifically would help greatly?

[Peter Cohen]

I haven't gotten any hang-time with one, but from what I can see, the Mac mini will be adequate, though unremarkable -- as long as you've got it well-equipped with RAM, and don't expect it to keep up with the latest and greatest games that are coming down the road later this year.
The Radeon 9200/32MB VRAM is just enough to get most games of recent vintage to load, though you may have to "dial down" graphics effects to low levels to get adequate enough performance to be happy.
On paper, anyway, the Mac mini is enough to keep up with recently released titles like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942 and many others (in fact, you can download Aspyr Media's Game Agent software if you'd like to have a gander and the list of their games that they say will run on the Mac mini).
Where you're likely to run into problems is with games coming soon like Star Wars Battlefront and Doom 3, that demand even beefier processor power and/or more heavy-duty graphics systems than the Mac mini can manage.

[Little_C]

The specific titles that i wish to play are BattleField 1942, the upcoming BattleField2, Age of Mythology, and the upcoming Age of Empires III.

[VeggieBeefcake]

I honeslty don't think the 9200 will handle those titles very well (except BF1942 and AOM) without resorting to pretty low details.

[Peter Cohen]

Battlefield 2 and AOE 3 haven't been announced for the Mac yet, so it's only a guess. But BF2's projected PC system requirements call for a 1.5GHz system with a video card with 128MB VRAM, to handle the shaders. Given that's the case, I think it's probably well beyond what a Mac mini will be able to do. The Radeon 9200 can't handle a lot of pixel and shader stuff, and with 32MB VRAM, certainly won't be able to keep up with a game that expects to have 128MB VRAM on hand.
Unfortunately, Battlefield 2's physics engine is partially based on the Havok SDK, which isn't available for the Macintosh -- as I've previously reported, Havok's absence on the Mac platform put the kibosh on a planned conversion of the Myst game "Uru," and is also hampering efforts to bring other games to the Mac. So I wouldn't get your hopes up about that particular game just yet.
And as for AOE 3, Ensemble Studios hasn't even announced the PC system requirements for that, so it's anyone's guess -- presuming a Mac version is ultimately in the cards.

[yikes650]

I don't think the Mac mini will handle BF1942 very well. Aspyr's minimum requirements are a little too optimistic for that game. In reality, with a 32MB Radeon 9200 you can indeed run it but only at 50% draw distance. This means you'll be getting sniped and shot at from enemies you can't even see. That's more frustrating than anything, especially if you plan to play online.