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SEGA may have long since given up challenging Sony in the gaming hardware stakes, but the Japanese developer/publisher's newfound multiplatform subservience hasn't stopped subsidiary SEGA Toys from tackling the PS2 platform holder on other ground. Last week the company revealed it planned to launch a robotic dog which can be used to compose and play music and dance to the beat.

Japanese developer qb's pair of next-gen handheld puzzlers are in the spotlight this week as rumour spreads that Ubisoft will publish PSP title Lumines in North America while qb has decided to hold off the release of DS title Meteos in order to apply some last minute polish.

Pint sized indie developer Introversion has released a demo of Darwinia, weighing in at 11MB, and this morning we've mirrored it on Eurofiles.

Having spent the last couple of days getting excited about F.E.A.R, we're delighted to finally have some screenshots of the multiplayer mode to show off - so much so that we got up this morning (it's a weekend!) and still felt compelled to pop them up when they arrived in the post.

The second part of GamesIndustry.biz' exclusive interview with Blizzard Entertainment creative director Chris Metzen and VP of business operations Paul Sams is now available on the site.

Konami appears to have patched Pro Evolution Soccer 4 on Xbox this week, hopefully bringing to an end a lot of frustration for fans of the Japanese team's footballing opus.

Team 17 is the kind of developer that needs no introduction. Once upon a long ago they also used to be regarded as the best publisher around, too, winning multiple awards for its ability to turn out classic games like Alien Breed, Project X, Superfrog, Body Blows and eventually the Worms series - the latter having seen Team 17 through a rough period for British game developers, which sent many of its contemporaries to the wall.

A Japanese woman has taken ultimate revenge on a former beau by accessing his account for a massively-multiplayer game and deleting data including weapons, according to a report on GameSpot sourced from Mainichi Daily News.

Players of Pandemic Studios' forthcoming GTA-ish Mercenaries for PS2 and Xbox, which is due out in Europe on 18th February, will reportedly be able to unlock a couple of classic characters from the LucasFilm canon along the way.

Electronic Arts has released a PC demo of its UEFA Champions League 2004-2005 title, which is due out on PS2, Xbox, Cube and PC from 14th February. Lovely.

Sonic the Hedgehog (didn't he used to be a videogame character?) is on his way to both GameCube and Nintendo DS this year according to Yuji Naka.

Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly will be released on Xbox on 4th February, and followed a fortnight later on the 18th by Dead or Alive Ultimate, Microsoft announced today.

Free Radical Design's underrated [lies! -What Ronan Would Say] levitate-'em-up-and-them-'em-at-people-'em-up Second Sight will arrive on the PC CD/DVD/Whatever-ROM in February, publisher Codemasters tells us today, and just in case you'd stopped being excited, PC owners, there's a video out on the official website to accompany this revelation. You'll have to sign up for Codies' online "club" to get at it, but that's not going to take you more than a few seconds, and the video should give you a good idea what to expect if you're not yet sure. Or you could just read Kristan's review of the PS2/Xbox/Cube versions that came out last year. If you like these psychic shoot-'em-up types you might also like to investigate Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, which overcame the not inconsiderable obstacle of being a Midway game to win our affection at around the same time. It too is out on the PC in February, oddly, when it'll be published by ZOO Digital. Unless it slips again. It might - who knows? We're not mind readers.

ZOO Digital has acquired the publishing rights to independent developer the Behemoth's hand-drawn 2D side-scrolling shoot-'em-up Alien Hominid, the publisher revealed this week.

Publisher Activision has announced that it has bought out yet another of its long-term development collaborators, with New York State based Vicarious Visions becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the firm.

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia remains "completely committed" to the N-Gage, a spokesperson has said in response to speculation that the company may be about to discontinue the mobile console range.

Microsoft still hasn't told us when we can expect to sample the delights of Xbox Live Arcade here in Europe, but we do now know that when we do we'll be able to look forward to more than overpriced ports of retro titles like Defender and Robotron at $10 or $20. The addition of PomPom Software's Mutant Storm shooter to the Arcade canon makes a big difference.

Sony has confirmed that it will publish FreQuency/Amplitude developer Harmonix's EyeToy: AntiGrav in Europe in the first quarter of 2005 on PlayStation 2.

Hip Games has announced more details of its first game based on the work of renowned horror director George A. Romero.

Vivendi-Universal Games and developer Monolith revealed the multiplayer component of hugely impressive first-person shooter F.E.A.R for the first time in Paris yesterday, featuring a slow-motion power-up and all that entails.

You don’t see games that do this sort of thing anymore. That’s not saying that it’s in any way an example of visionary game design; but rather than you don’t often see high-quality examples of a game which are blatantly trying to take another’s crown. To take on another big brand-name on its own territory is something that just doesn’t happen anymore, let alone work. The last example is Call of Duty being a straight step on from Medal of Honour: Allied Assault, and usurping everyone’s affections while the original line fell into disrepute… and that had the considerable advantage of actually being done by the vast majority of the team who made Allied Assault in the first place.

Directing a blob of liquid metal around 3D mazes is such an obviously brilliant idea that describing it any further seems almost pointless. Fortunately for us then, we've got you a handsome young trailer to examine courtesy of Archer Maclean and co. at Awesome Studios. You'll find it on Eurofiles here and it's about 30MB.

Previously on PSP Games To Watch in 2005: Racing games, Sports, Extreme Sports and Puzzlers, and The One That Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else...

Previously on PSP Games To Watch in 2005...

We're guessing Ken Kutaragi kept the beermat. Sony staffers privately joke with us that he probably came up with the idea on the back of one and then papier-mâchéd up a prototype in time for E3 2003, but whether it was a beermat or a big piece of paper marked "Masterplan" or an internal memo or whatever, it was clearly a good idea. The PSP is a lovely piece of kit with a delightfully huge screen, enough power to allow us to play PS2-quality games on the go, and an array of wireless and multiplayer features that make it highly desirable on a lot of levels - and most importantly it's also going to introduce us to a vast array of games that we really want to play.

Californian publisher Crave has announced its first Nintendo DS game, World Championship Poker: Deluxe Series, which is currently available on PS2, Xbox and GBA in the US of States. The DS effort features "over 12" poker variants including Texas Hold'em, Five Card Draw Baseball and Hi-Lo, six-player muliplayer (which is presumably WiFi-based), four themed casino environments (with blackjack and video poker distractions), and a career mode with Casino Lane, Tournament Tables, a loan shark and a gift shop. Which, as you can tell from our regurgitation of the press release bullet-points, we're very excited about. A US release on April 5th is, er, on the cards.

Publisher Take Two, whose plans for its sports game franchise have been hard hit by a string of exclusive license deals announced by rival Electronic Arts, may be in talks to sign a similar exclusive with Major League Baseball.

Bioware's latest Xbox-exclusive RPG, Jade Empire, has reportedly been delayed by a month in the States, but there's been no change to the game's European release target of Q2 2005 according to a Microsoft UK rep we spoke to this morning.

Blizzard has apologised profusely to fans of World of Warcraft who experienced huge delays joining servers over the weekend and on Monday's nationwide American holiday, implemented a stop-gap fix to try and assuage fans' anger, and pledged to credit players' accounts with an extra 48 hours of paid-for play-time to compensate.

Given Splinter Cell's Xbox origins, it's always been a bit of a task for Ubi to squeeze all the visual trickery onto other consoles; not so much of an issue for the Cube, but certainly the PS2 versions.