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A report in Japanese business publication Nikkei Journal has confirmed that Nintendo is set to enter the film business with the creation of an internal studio focused on animated movie production.

Publisher Midway Games has announced the acquisition of yet another development studio, with California-based Paradox Entertainment becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the firm in a pure stock deal.

Given that it seems to have been around so long that it's bedded itself in a number of British magazines, let alone sprung up on websites, we do feel a little silly being the last people to point out its existence, but having witnessed Grand Theft Auto: Lego City from seemingly stop-motion loving outfit "Brick Flicks" first hand, we couldn't just let it pass. Besides, you'd rather read about someone's Lego-based GTA parody for the umpteenth time than you would about patches or financial results, right?

As promised, Valve has surprised us all with the unexpected bonus supplied along with the Source SDK this week. It's Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, and you can download it over Steam right now and start chucking things around with the gravity gun across a pair of maps based on sections of the single-player game.

You know, Team Rainbow are so goddamn elite, even their press releases sneak up on you in the dead of night. That's right, fans of squad-based combat, it's that time of year again; a new Rainbow Six is on the horizon, and apparently "This time it's personal."

Former Sega producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi is set to head up a new game publishing label at Bandai, which plans to release three to four games a year created by his new studio Q Entertainment.

Bored, are you? Well, that depends when you read this. By Sony's reckoning, though, if you're reading this at 4:25 in the afternoon then you are at the lowest point of the day; a black hole that consumes your capacity for motion, creativity, or even vague interest in anything. You're bored, in other words, and nothing can sate you.

Electronic Arts' street racing sequel Need for Speed Underground 2 has knocked Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from the top spot in the UK charts this week, leaving the battle for Christmas No.1 wide open.

Half-Life 2 creator Valve Games has announced that a legal complaint filed against publisher Vivendi Universal Games in August 2002 has been upheld by a US court, but several other cases remain outstanding.

Low initial shipment figures for Sony's forthcoming PlayStation Portable are down to a decision to focus on manufacturing the profitable PlayStation 2 hardware, according to a spokesperson for the Japanese giant.

Although you'll be hard pressed to get an answer as to what it actually is, Square Enix has hinted at a new game project in a fairly nondescript trailer bundled with the Japanese version of Dragon Quest VIII, which is currently doing the retail dance in the Far East.

British development group Climax has announced that its London and Solent divisions are to be rebranded as Climax Action, and has denied rumours that a number of staff have been laid off at the Solent office.

Postal 2 has been banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in New Zealand, where it's now illegal to own or sell the game with various fines and even prison time for offenders.

Writing intros to Reader Reviews is starting to feel like making up new rules in the playground. As soon as we feel we've settled into a rhythm, something like the autumn of games - or an extended lunchbreak - springs up to derail us. Fortunately for you, it only takes a few hundred kicks to our collective backside to deliver, so here today we're publishing around half of the backed up submissions, and we'll endeavour to put another load up in due course. We actually will. We're also looking into ways of letting you post your own reviews with some form of easygoing authentication procedure for us to make sure you haven't said anything naughty in the process. Like the Peter Molyneux of old, we'll let you know what happens to that idea just as soon as we've had time to break the news to our tech guys...

Blizzard plans to give certain users an extension on their free trial period for massively multiplayer title World of Warcraft, which launched in the States last Tuesday and became available for pre-order in Europe on Friday.

UK-based developer Data Design Interactive has signed a deal with Phoenix Games, who will publish the firm's Monster Arenas racing title for PlayStation 2 at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future.

Russian developer K-D LAB has announced that it's extending its relationship with British publisher Codemasters to cover the first project from its new subsidiary KDV Games.

Namco is working on a sequel to innovative, um, "roll-'em-up" Katamari Damacy and plans to release it in Japan on the PlayStation 2 during its 2005 financial year, according to a report on IGN.

And so November draws to a close with something of a bang - at least for console owners. Besides those of you getting excited about DS imports, each under-the-telly format has a worthy champion this week, and it's only really the PC gamers among us who have reason to moan. Although with Half-Life 2 still rocking most of your machines and World of Warcraft available to import, not to mention a backlog of top PC titles that you probably haven't had a chance to tackle yet (Rome: Total War, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault to name just three), you can probably forgive a week where the most exciting PC prospects are CSI: Miami and Joint Operations expansion pack Escalation.

Comments attributed to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto in this week's Famitsu magazine indicate that the company is planning to bring its systems online within a three to four year timescale, with DS leading the way.

The latest Tom Clancy based military title from French publisher Ubisoft has been rejected by South Korea's Media Rating Board, forcing the company to drop its plans to launch the game in the region.

Atari is to publish SimBin's GTR - GIA GT Racing Game next year, one of the first games announced for the company's 2005 line-up.

Championship Manager 5 will not be released until the first half of 2005, Eidos said today, confirming its prediction in mid October that the game might not be finished in time for Christmas.

French publisher Infogrames has announced its results for the first half of FY 2005, revealing in the process that the firm has sold off the lucrative Civilisation franchise to an as-yet unknown purchaser.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords will be the droids you are looking for from December 6th, LucasArts said this week. And if you didn't get that: the American version's coming out on the Xbox on December 6th.

A new regulatory filing from Florida-based firm Infinium Labs has revealed that the company needs to find fresh funding of around $11.5 million if it is to launch its Phantom game service next year as planned.

Nintendo isn't saying much about any of them, but as well as releasing three new screenshots of the next GameCube-bound instalment of The Legend of Zelda, the platform holder has also released shots for three previously unannounced Cube titles: Mario Baseball, Donkey Konga 3, and an as-yet untitled Kirby game.

Rome may not have been built in a day, but what of Egypt? We contacted the last known Egyptian Pharaoh yesterday, only to be informed the mummified monarch "does not comment on rumour and speculation". (At least, we think we got the right number; we hit "M" for "Mummy" in our phone contacts, and we don't know too many other institutions whose names begin with "M"...)

Final Fantasy XII won't be out before the end of March 2005, according to comments attributed to Square Enix president Yoichi Wada in the Japanese Asahi Shimbun, although it should be out before the end of 2005.

Ah. Many of our Yankee brethren are busy playing fully finished copies of World of Warcraft, which shipped to stores over there earlier this week. And some of you are a bit peeved. Either that or a disproportionate percentage of dissenters just happen to enjoy using our contact form. "Blizzard hates Europe!" they tell us (which is strange, since those Blizzard chaps seemed so nice when we last saw them), "and they never tell us anything."