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Microsoft UK has finally confirmed that the PAL version of Ninja Gaiden has been stripped of its gory decapitation routines, despite playing down reports to that effect earlier in the year.

11 weeks after its release, Sonic Heroes has returned Sega to the top of the UK software chart this week, deposing Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow after three weeks of covert dominance.

Capcom USA has finally announced Viewtiful Joe 2 for PS2 and GameCube, after reports of its development originally appeared early in March. The scrolling beat-'em-up sequel will appear on both platforms this winter, with a co-operative mode and various new VFX tricks amongst the new weapons in its arsenal. On bringing the game to the PS2 as well as the original Cube platform, VJ creator Atsushi Inaba said yesterday that he simply wanted more people to see the game. He also nipped speculation over platform-specific bonuses in the bud, stating, "The game will have the same content for both platforms."

Capcom Production Studio 4's interstellar PS2 prank-'em-up Panic Maker will be receiving a Western release after all, according to reports appearing in the US of States overnight pointing to an autumn release. Going by the decidedly less exciting title "Under the Skin", it's a slab of peculiar Day-Glo quirkiness that rather caught our eye when we first stumbled upon it earlier this year, and it's the sort of game we generally don't see outside Japan due to a lack of interest from us fickle Western types. Cuh.

Japanese developer Capcom have shown in the past that they're not too shy to re-use a winning formula. The hugely successful Street Fighter series of games have undergone many revisions and re-issues and still fall off the shelves at the games stores. Now they're trying the same trick with the popular Resident Evil formula by adding growling Jurassic-Park style dinosaur goodness to the zombie-fest to create an entirely new survival horror game.

The latest issue of Japanese Shonen Jump magazine has shed a bit more light on the cast of Square/Disney-themed RPG Kingdom Hearts 2, revealing that Hercules and Beast (of Beauty and the Beast) will return, and that Auron (of Final Fantasy X fame) and Hercules' main squeeze Megara will also make an appearance. They join the likes of Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck, all of whom have been confirmed since the first Tokyo Game Show trailer appeared last year revealing a much darker looking adventure.

If you reckon you're good at Project Gotham Racing 2, then you might be in with a chance of earning a free trip to the States next month. As part of a worldwide PGR2 Tournament, the European Xbox Live users who post the top three lap times on Princes Street East between now and midday (BST) on May 10th will be flown out to the NASCAR Speed Week in North Carolina next month to represent Europe against two drivers each from the US and Canada. All expenses paid.

LucasArts has confirmed reports that the forthcoming Star Wars Trilogy DVD box set, which is due out in Europe on September 21st, will feature previews of two upcoming Star Wars titles, including a previously unannounced Episode III spin-off.

Industry sources have suggested that the new Nintendo first-party title from British developer Kuju Entertainment will feature strategy-focused gameplay with some action elements.

With Take-Two's Global Star label set to release the budget-priced Serious Sam: The Next Encounter on PS2 and GameCube this Friday, the publisher is understandably trying to "big up the mayhem", pointing out that in a world of first-person shooters increasingly devoid of just-plain-shooting, The Next Encounter represents a return to the heady days of walking into a room and having to kill legions of really bizarre and stupid enemies with memorable catchphrases. Like "AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!" We were only too happy to help convey the message, so here's a recent Q&A the publisher conducted with the game's producer at Climax, Matt Cooper.

EA has officially announced Battlefield 2 after first details of the game appeared in the US press yesterday. BF2 is in development at Digital Illusions (DICE) as expected, and promises to follow Battlefield: Modern Combat's example by dragging the online conflict into the 21st century when it's released next spring.

Namco has released a new trailer for Ace Combat 5, the next instalment in the really rather good console flight sim series. Unfortunately, the publisher has only released it in the really rather bad streaming WMV format, but if your connection (and eyeballs) can handle such hideousness, get yourself along to the Ace Combat website where you'll find the new movie in the Download section. This is the first gameplay footage we've seen from the new game, and it looks great - with tons of licensed planes flying around, gorgeous graphics and the usual wide range of different missions that you expect from Ace Combat. It's pencilled in for autumn in the USA; expect it to appear over here sometime before Christmas, with any luck.

With the European release of Hideo Kojima's innovative GBA Action RPG Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand just weeks away, details of the sequel are starting to appear in Japan.

Japanese publisher Square Enix has adjusted its projected financial figures for the year ended March 31st, with net profit estimates rising 7.4 per cent while the expected figure for consolidated revenues is up 12.5 per cent.

Japanese developer X-Nauts has announced Assault Suits Valken Zero for PS2, due out on July 1st in Japan according to import folks Play-Asia. Although very little is known about the game at this stage, its relationship with the Valken series caught our attention.

While the jury's still out on whether Death by Degrees (starring Tekken's Nina Williams) will take its place alongside Ninja Gaiden or Mortal Kombat Mythologies in the grand history of beat-'em-up-related action-adventure titles, a new batch of screenshots sighted on Impress Game Watch this week aim to show that Nina's a girl with more than just dollar signs in mind.

EA has rather quietly sneaked out a PC demo of UEFA Euro 2004, its forthcoming footy title due out on every format except GameCube on May 7th - just in time to capitalise on the tournament of the same name this June. The 98.7MB demo is available from EA's FTP site, and the minimum specs are a 700MHz processor, 128MB RAM (256 on Windows XP or 2000), and a DirectX 9.0 compatible graphics card with 32MB video RAM.

Dragons! We all like the odd dragon now and then. Whether it's behind the bike sheds during lunch break or camped down at the bottom of the garden by torch-light, there's nothing quite like whipping out an eighty foot scaled reptile that breathes fire and showing it off to your mates. No wonder Square-Enix's Drakengard aims to combine our favourite scaly beasts and the developer's noted story-telling skills. In the following Q&A session, producer Takamasa Shiba, movie director Kazuya Sasahara, monster designer Taro Hasegawa, character designers Kimihiko Fujisaka, director Taro Yokoo, line director Takuya Iwasaki, art director Akira Yasui and lead programmer Masatoshi Furubayashi get together to try and establish why Drakengard (due to be published in Europe by Take-Two Interactive later this year) is that much hotter than other dragon related titles, touching on everything from the quality of the PAL conversion to the name change to how it plays. Enjoy, and thanks to Take-Two for providing the transcript...

With the exception of retina-searingly exotic visual effects, there's no surer way for a racing game to catch our attention than explosions, debris and heavily deformed cars. Carmageddon made that point with bloody aplomb, and it's been emphasised ever since by a succession of increasingly destructible ARRRGH-'em-ups. Empire is presumably hoping that FlatOut, in development at Bugbear Entertainment, can woo us in much the same way. And, in the absence of screenshots, shattering this and exploding that is all we really have to go on.

Sony has confirmed recent reports (including our own) that Jak 3 will be the last title in the critically acclaimed platform series, and put some of the leaked details we've been feasting on over the past few weeks into the correct context. Interestingly though, the wording of this week's announcement ("Jak 3 concludes the Jak and Daxter trilogy") arguably leaves it open for Sony to revive the franchise further down the line with another story, albeit without the guidance of Jason Rubin, who announced his plans to exit developer Naughty Dog at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose recently.

Muckybaby, a new developer focused on the creation of budget titles, reared its infant head today with its first project, a PC effort called Skool's Out.

As the saying ought to go, where there's a Jak, there's a Ratchet. No sooner had we finished exciting ourselves over new Jak III details this afternoon than we stumbled upon a similar haul from Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal, which has enjoyed a lot of publicity ever since those multiplayer details sneaked out last month. But what of the single-player adventure?

Last time we heard from Jak, he was celebrating the completion of a rather epic cycle that seemed to answer just about all the pertinent questions about his path through life, with his enemies vanquished and his new home of Haven City sitting pretty and free. But, of course, anybody expecting our hero to disappear quietly into the night was seriously misguided - he's disappeared from Haven City all right, but as we heard last month, his exit was rather more of an eviction than a dignified epilogue. As it turns out, Haven City rather went to hell following Jak's supposed victory, the loss of its nefarious rulers leaving a vast power vacuum that three rival factions immediately attempted to fill, thrusting Jak and Daxter into the wastelands and exile in the process.

Climax Brighton is developing a new driving game called Crash 'n' Burn, due out on PS2 and Xbox this autumn with online support for up to 16 players. The game will make an appearance on publisher Eidos' stand at E3 between May 12th and 14th, which probably explains the lack of screenshots. All we have for now is a rather fetching image [left], which could potentially be a screenshot but has almost certainly felt the warm hand of a Photoshop maestro slide over its supple bodywork.

As regular Xbox Live users will know by now, Microsoft is planning 24 hours downtime this coming Wednesday, April 21st, starting just after 6AM PDT, in order to perform a system-wide upgrade codenamed "Tsunami". Users are currently being notified of the downtime when they log on, and will be expected to download a small update when the service resumes.

EA will blow the lid on the tentatively titled "Battlefield 2" in the July issue of the American Computer Gaming World magazine, due to appear on newsstands around June 1st, according to reports. Speaking to Eurogamer this morning, EA UK would neither confirm nor deny that it planned to show the game at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in mid May, but the timing of the preview is very much in line with that sort of game plan, as veterans of the Half-Life 2/E3 2003 saga probably remember. EA is expected to officially announce its E3 plans in the coming days.

GameCube fans will be pleased to hear that Pokémon Box, the GameCube tinker toy that links up with GBA Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire title to make better use of their mutual Pokédex feature, will available as part of the Nintendo Stars Catalogue starting May 14th.

It's become apparent that a number of you are deeply concerned for the well-being of the PlayStation 2 we recently offered as a prize in our Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel competition, not to mention the five copies of Metal Slug X (PSX) we promised for the runners-up.

Spelling. Grammar. Punctuation. Brevity. What? Oh we're not lecturing you, gentle reader, we just thought we might put those words up there as we admire them greatly. Moving on - this week's reader reviews seem to swing between the surreal and the controversial, with semi-regular contributor Virgil Scott picking up the "Star Review" award (a copy of Whiplash for the PS2, if he wants it) after inadvertently reminding us of something funny we saw on the television last night. Meanwhile, a chap called Robo_1 extolls at length the supposed virtues of James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (for the record, our problem with the "freefall" sequence wasn't a lack of signposting, but a complete lack of any guidance whatsoever). Perhaps most interesting though is marilena's dissection of Knights of the Old Republic, which says, in short, that it's a bit empty and boring (despite awarding it 7 marks out of 10). And of course there's this week's contribution from the ever-prolific Kami. Expect more from him next week. And us.

A new system for providing information about videogames is set to be introduced in Japan shortly, with the Computer Entertainment Rating Organisation creating nine new ratings covering a wide range of mature or objectionable content.