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Ahem. Yes. Well. I was going to mention this on Friday, but I got a little sidetracked watching Kristan play Transformers Armada. You understand. Anyway, the point is that Electronic Arts registered the domain name "needforspeedmostwanted.com" on January 27th, and of course following Need For Speed Underground's bizarrely long reign at the top of the UK Charts, lots of folk are running around flapping their hands in the air or decked out in inconceivable mini-skirts stroking beastly automobiles while Vin Diesel prowls around growling at rookies. You NEVER had me. Or something.

Following its unmasking in Famitsu this week, Capcom has revealed more details on Panic Maker, the next game from Viewtiful Joe producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi and Production Studio 4, via an almost completely incomprehensible Japanese website that thankfully we've been able to translate with the help of a friend of a friend.

Following Midway's confirmation earlier this week that Mortal Kombat: Deception is the name of the sixth game in the long-running beat-'em-up series, we've managed to get our sneaky little hands on some rather luscious looking screenshots of the game, which by our reckoning nobody else has posted online. Coo! As we said at the time, the game is due out on PS2 and Xbox - with online features for both - later on this year.

Mastertronic has announced the addition of several new titles to its "PC Gamer Presents..." range of budget games. As you may recall, these titles all retail for £9.99 and all received 80 per cent or more in PC Gamer UK, putting them in the top tier of titles in Future's main PC magazine.

Making games is a risky business. It seems that for a title to be successful these days, it needs to fulfil one of two requirements. It must be either a) attached to a franchise, in order to lure the unsuspecting masses, or b) simply outstanding. Unfortunately, even the latter option doesn't seem to guarantee success any more, with last year's Rez and ICO being obvious examples.

More than ten million GBA handhelds have been sold on this continent; more than three million of which were cast from the superior SP mould. Despite this, there are surprisingly few true adult games available on the platform. Oh there are enough, sure - we've had two Castlevania games (now with Visible Graphics Technology), two Advance Wars titles, a pair of Golden Suns and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - but traditionally publishers and developers have recoiled at the very prospect of telling grown up stories, pumping primary colours, disappearing corpses and toonish innocence into the crimson vacuum of so-called action games.

Take-Two has been in touch about a game they clearly forgot to mention in their financial report t'other day; none other than Serious Sam: Next Encounter, which you may recall we told you about at the start of February.

Sequels to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon should be out in time for this Christmas, Eurogamer learned this week. Actually, it wasn't very hard to "learn" about the POP bit, since Yves Guillemot mentioned it in February, and Ubi's vice president of marketing Tony Kee confirmed yesterday that the game could be on its way in time for this Christmas, subject to slippage of course.

All better now, thanks. Well, apart from a cough, but I'm not that much of a girl that I'm going to complain about grating my windpipe with a rusty nail every few minutes. However, I do feel I owe you all an apology. Obviously anticipating my absence, a number of publishers have put their games back in order to get the authentic "What's New" treatment at a later date, lest they wind up prodded and poked at by some squirming impostor like Reed or that Fahey bastard. Yeah. So. Sorry about that. I wish I was still dying too - then I could sit and play Mario RPG all day.

It's hard to put into words just how good Capcom/ ROBOT's intro movie to Onimusha 3 really is. They've always been stunningly good, but this one's like a mini action movie all of its own and regardless of whether you're interested in the latest in the hackandslash adventure series, you could do a lot worse than to sit back for six minutes of your life and gawp at what's going on before your eyes.

Staying with yesterday's Eidos conference call, CEO Mike McGarvey also addressed the current state of Crystal Dynamics' first steps in charge of the Tomb Raider franchise. Although McGarvey didn't comment on bizarre reports that Warren Spector could be parachuted in to try and reinvigorate the series creatively (something we'd dearly love to see, incidentally), he did have some encouraging words about Ms. Croft's latest rebirth in a San Jose development studio.

In order to actually get the game out this year, Lionhead and Big Blue Box have collectively decided to axe the multiplayer element of their forthcoming Xbox-only RPG epic Fable.

Following news of Eidos' financials and the publisher's acquisition of IO Interactive, CEO Mike McGarvey responded to questions from investors in a conference call this week by confirming that Hitman: Contracts, the third instalment in the esteemed clean-'em-up series, will be released on target this April, and that another sequel is inevitable.

Vin Diesel has formed Tigon Studios, the videogame company he first mentioned during a promotional tour to support the theatrical release of xXx, and is already intrinsically involved in the development of The Chronicles of Riddick on Xbox.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow emerges from its stealthy shadow on March 26th on Xbox and PC, and while it will continue to polarise opinions among those who either find the whole hide-and-seek mechanic tedious, or - like me - incredibly atmospheric and absorbing, from what we've seen of it so far also it looks likely to become one of Ubisoft's biggest ever hits.

News website HardOCP has filed a legal action against broadband console proponent Infinium Labs, in a move which it says is aimed at "clearing the air" following a number of demands and threats made by Infinium in the past weeks.

Bringing to mind Jay Wilbur's incongruous outburst of "DO YOU WANT SOOOME!", Atari has loudly announced that Unreal Tournament 2004 has gone gold, and is on track for release in Europe on March 19th.

Codemasters has announced the follow-up to last year's Club Football series of sports titles. Having secured the exclusive rights to videogames based on the England football team, the Britsoft developer/publisher is now planning to deliver England International Football on both PS2 and Xbox - complete with Xbox Live support for two players.

There aren't many game series that stretch to a fourth sequel, and, of the ones that have, Mario Party is perhaps the least understandable. While the Final Fantasies of this world could feasibly go on forever, reinventing themselves once every couple of years, consistently growing and harnessing new technology inventively to satisfying effect, Mario Party is a perpetual board game where event icons throw up mini-game challenges for an immovable cast of familiar Nintendo characters decked out in sugary Fisher Price coating. All the same, here we are with Mario Party 5, which offers yet another selection of vacuous mini-games, a board game to justify them and a few more perks for single players than its predecessor. It's top of the charts in Japan as I type, and it's not at all obvious why.

Nokia has received a slap on the wrist from Britain's Advertising Standards Authority for its N-Gage advertisements, and has been told not to repeat several of them following complaints that they promote violent behaviour.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time looks set to follow the likes of Resident Evil and Street Fighter onto the big screen, according to a report on Variety.com that Jerry Bruckheimer Films is negotiating a seven-figure deal to buy the rights.

It's that time again, folks! Time for another slice of Take-Two's secretive release schedule thanks to another quarterly earnings report laced with intrigue. This one starts off by mentioning something about $375.5m compared to $411.0m in the equivalent quarter last year, before hammering on about diluted net income per share guidance or something. You should find a detailed report on all the financial guff on GamesIndustry.biz shortly. We are of course more concerned with the games.

SCEA has announced that it has sold over 25 million PlayStation 2 consoles in North America to date, with 2.6 million of them enabled for online play and a million gamers using PS2 online gaming services.

Viewtiful Joe producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi's next project is to be a PS2-exclusive action-adventure called Panic Maker, Famitsu reports this week. Due out this summer in Japan, Panic Maker allegedly has a healthy sense of humour and should see players struggling to fight off an alien invasion of Earth with amusing consequences.

British publisher Eidos Interactive has announced its intention to purchase Danish development studio IO Interactive, creator of the Hitman series of games, along with rising profits in the first half of its financial year.

The Hollywood Reporter, er, reports that American Pie and Final Destination producer Warren Zide has acquired the film rights to Namco's Soul Calibur beat-'em-up series, which coincidentally just won a BAFTA for the second game's introductory movie.

Monolith's TRON 2.0 will appear on Xbox and Xbox Live this Christmas under the whimsical guise of TRON 2.0: Killer App (see what they did!), Buena Vista Interactive announced last night.

Atari has announced that RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 will form a key component of its Christmas 2004 PC schedule, and by the looks of it we're in for less of a cynical rehash this time in light of the fairly disappointing RCT2.

There's always been something of a post-Christmas lull for new game releases. It's only to be expected; we're all skint, our credit card's up to the max, payday's not ‘til the end of the month, and, oh joy, there's a few inconsiderately placed birthdays to plan for. But when you consider that this year's lull is entering its fourth month, you can begin to see why we're getting a little bit exasperated with it.

"LucasArts has decided to stop production on Sam & Max," the publisher has remarked in a tersely worded statement on its website last night, thankfully confirming that there are no plans to reduce staff as a result, but otherwise shattering our hopes for the insanely funny buddy-cop point-and-click adventure's resurrection. That's not hyperbole either - this was one of our Most Wanted of 2004.