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Electronic Arts' Euro 2004 climbed to the top of this week's UK games chart, sealing the games giant's fourth number one of the year to date, holding off the challenge from Nintendo's Pokemon Colosseum, which debuted just behind at No.2. According to Chart-Track, the latter has been the Cube's fastest-selling title since Mario Kart: Double Dash emerged last year, and is the eighth best sales week for any Cube title in the UK.

Details of the hotly pursued Need For Speed Underground 2 have appeared on the game's official website, giving us a better idea of how EA/Black Box plans to improve on last year's chart-topping chav racer wet dream. In short, it sounds like the experience of driving around Los Angeles for a week without using brakes.

Although when we first heard about it we envisaged something a lot stickier and picnic-oriented, Capcom Fighting Jam is apparently a new 2D beat-'em-up for PS2 starring characters from a number of Capcom fighting games. According to reports it lets you pick two characters and then choose one to fight with prior to each bout, and maintain the fighting styles (and indeed sometimes the same sprites) from previous titles with a six-button setup any SFII fan ought to be able to handle. Characters we've seen mentioned so far include Ryu and Guile from Street Fighter II, Demitri and Felicia from Darkstalkers, Guy and Sakura from Street Fighter Alpha, Leo and Hauser from Red Earth, and Yun and Chun Li from Street Fighter III. Chunners obviously appears in other SF titles, but apparently she's in the SFIII camp in this instance.

As you may have gathered, they've all (literally all of them) naffed off to the West Coast of the United States to go to E3, and left me on my own here in Blighty. It's not all bad, though - the sun is shining brightly outside, I'm not jetlagged, and unlike Tom, I don't have a restraining order imposed by a Californian court that prevents me from going within half a kilometre of Shigeru Miyamoto. Or a broken nose from shouting "oi, baldy!" at Vin Diesel (true story - well, apart from the broken nose bit).

So. Do you know why it's called GoldenEye? Let's get that out of the way just in case. Short version: you are a naughty former MI6 agent working for Goldfinger, you lose an eye in a battle with Dr. No, and Goldfinger's technicians fashion a golden replacement (which happens to improve your abilities like Geordie from Star Trek).

UK-based Climax is handling the Xbox port of NovaLogic's Delta Force - Black Hawk Down, adding Live support and co-operative missions along with various new maps, modes and tweaks to the arcade-oriented shoot-'em-up ahead of a planned late 2004 release.

"San Andreas is not a city - it's a state." Those words from Rockstar's Dan Houser more than anything ought to inspire the Grand Theft Auto loving crowd (which is 95 per cent of us, judging by the sales figures). Comprising Los Santos (Los Angeles) where you start out, San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturra (Las Vegas), it's an epic environment allegedly six times the size of Vice City, unlocked gradually over the course of the game, and besides the cities it also features all the roads in between, allowing you to race through the desert, countryside, and even over a mountain...

Fans of Konami's output were hardly left wanting at E3 this year (as you may have noticed), but enemies of the publisher's rather awful Turtles scrolling beat-'em-up will probably groan at news of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, which is due out this October on every format under the sun.

Having mentioned it in a financial report recently, Activision officially unveiled Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Underground 2: World Destruction Tour at E3 this year, albeit in trailer form only. PS2, Xbox, Cube and GBA seem to be the target formats.

We've had snatches of info about it already (including a "November" release target), but the E3 last week finally saw Sony's official unveiling of this year's WRC title, WRC 4, or "WRC 4: The Official Game of the FIA World Rally Championship" for long-winded types.

Sega of America plans to release an English version of Hitmaker's Cube title Island of the Kaiju in the States, giving Americans and FreeLoader-owning Europeans the chance to create monsters and run around competing for ways to upgrade them. Boats (assuming your couch is some form of seafaring vessel) will be leaving for Amazing Island later this year, and it sounds like a peculiar beast. (Sorry.)

Ubisoft has announced European release dates for the PS2 and GameCube versions of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, and revealed that the titles will each benefit from exclusive content, and share a few others variations on the Xbox and PC code which was released at the end of March.

Square Enix recently sent out an email inviting a number of its European fans to participate in a closed beta test of Final Fantasy XI for Windows, which is "potentially on [its] way to Europe" following its successful launch in the States.

Rockstar's biggest game of the year isn't due to be shown off to the world's press until next month, but that hasn't stopped the company from releasing a few tantalising details about its next Scots-developed criminal tour de force during the E3 show this week - along with a few screenshots.

Download the movie from our Eurofiles service!

Monolith's massively multiplayer title The Matrix Online is now to be published worldwide by Sega, the company has announced at E3 - quashing speculation that it would be handled directly by IP holder Warner Bros.

Konami has launched the promised Metal Gear Solid 3 "Camouflage Campaign" this week, and announced plans for a Metal Gear Solid comic book later this year, all the while the game has been wowing audiences in both trailer and playable demo form at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles.

We knew it was meant to be there. But as Nintendo's hugely detailed conference crept into its fortieth minute, we were beginning to wonder if it would actually show up - our cramped legs, in particular, were starting to complain bitterly. But of course it did. It started with a shot racing over valleys and water, before flicking to a shot of giant horse-like creatures and warriors creeping over the fiery horizon to dramatic pangs of music. Then we glimpsed the castle, and saw flashes of somebody galloping past the camera on a horse - and suddenly there he was, and we had our first lingering shot of Link, reunited with his horse Epona and tearing across the front of a horde of enemies.

Japanese developer Tecmo - the chaps responsible for the rather excellent Ninja Gaiden, which all you Xbox owners will undoubtedly be picking up on its European release tomorrow - has revealed that an Xbox version of its survival horror title Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly is in the works.

Download a video of our entire interview with Valve Software's Doug Lombardi from Eurofiles, and hear the man himself discuss the process that brought Half-Life 2 together.

Download a video of the entire Nintendo pre-E3 press conference from Eurofiles (113MiB). Including first ever footage of Zelda sequel, Advance Wars on the Cube, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the GBA's The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cup, and of course the long-awaited unveiling of Nintendo DS!

You've probably heard lots about the Sony pre-E3 conference - you know, that little event in LA where Ken Kutaragi invited around some close friends and showed them his new toy, the PlayStation Portable, and a stack of new software. Now, thanks to our wonderful magical Eurofiles Service, you can grab a video of the entire conference for your viewing pleasure.

The legendary online FPS Counter-Strike is to receive a Souce-engine makeover and re-released this summer, Valve boss Gabe Newell revealed at E3 this morning.

Given the enormous popularity of all things Half-Life, it's a given that a movie will be made of the game eventually. Indeed, several attempts at getting such a project off the ground have been firmly rejected, Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed in a recent interview, but the developer behind the Sci-fi shooter phenomenon hasn't ruled out the possibility of extending the franchise to the silver screen.

Valve has revealed it has several Half-Life 2 expansion packs planned which will tell the stories of several key supporting characters in the soon-to-be-released PC blockbuster.

Konami's stand at E3 this year is, by the sounds of it, quite a noisy one. Possibly quite a sweaty one as well; the Japanese company is showcasing crazy dancing titles like Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME and Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2, and anyone who's had to stand near one of those machines for a while knows that the smell of jiggling nerd flesh can be quite overpowering after a while. I wonder if Konami are planning to sell own-brand deodorant as well?

Nokia's E3 press conference has revealed that a number of new publishers are set to support the N-Gage game deck, including Atari and Capcom, with eight new software titles for the system being unveiled.

There was a time when "arcade perfect" was one of the most abused phrases in the games journalist's arsenal, guaranteed an airing whenever a good-looking game required thought-free hyperbole at short notice. And it certainly captured the imagination. Arcade quality visuals in the home! Technology that we could never possibly afford emulated to within a fraction of its former brilliance!

Although we only currently know of one Sega EyeToy game in production - the encouragingly game-like SuperStars - representatives admitted to Eurogamer recently that the company could decide to continue developing for the breakout peripheral.

Nintendo of Europe has announced plans to release Animal Crossing in Europe in typically understated fashion, sliding a printed press release into our freebie bags at today's press conference in Los Angeles confirming the news. Cube owners will be able to pick up a PAL copy of the game on September 24th.