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Nicaraguan-born former boxer Alexis Arguello is reportedly suing Electronic Arts, Nintendo and Sony in Los Angeles Superior Court over failing to secure his permission to use his likeness in two Knockout Kings titles.

American gamers' portable 8-bit fantasies have become reality. As last Friday was petering out, Nintendo of America announced the "Classic NES Series", consisting of a Game Boy Advance SP with a NES controller colour scheme, and a selection of eight NES titles to choose from: Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Ice Climber, Xevious and Bomberman. The Classic NES Series will launch in the States on June 7th, with games priced $19.99 (about a dollar more than their equivalent price in Japan).

French publisher Ubisoft has announced that multi-million-selling strategy series The Settlers will be returning for its fifth instalment before the end of 2004 courtesy of German developer Blue Byte.

Microsoft has slashed the price of the Xbox in North America to US$149 in a move which will take effect as of tomorrow, while certain evidence suggests that the cut may also be extended to other territories.

Dark side gossip emerges from GDC, with pundits pointing a very big finger at LucasArts and a Star Wars game to end them all. According to sources at last week's Game Developer's Conference in San Jose, California, LucasArts is currently hard at work on a game based on the villainest villain on Planet Star Wars, Darth Vader.

Although we'd left for the pub by the time it landed in our digital laps, Ubisoft did make good on its promise last Friday to release a 1.1 patch for Crytek's tropical FPS Far Cry, which includes a number of key additions (not least of which, in gameplay terms, are toggle options for the aim and crouch modes) and minor bug fixes. It's 26.5MB, but with an install footprint of 4GB for the main game you've probably already got the kit to cope...

Following a series of threats of legal action over the past weeks, Florida-based broadband console proponent Infinium Labs has finally filed a lawsuit against technology news website HardOCP over an article written last September.

The website for next September's multi-platform consumer games show at ExCeL, GameStars Live, has gone online, offering the public a chance to pre-book their tickets for the event.

After months of speculation over Resident Evil Outbreak's future in Europe, Capcom has confirmed that the game will not appear on PS2 Online in the region, despite initially failing to rule it out when we called this morning.

"Looks aren't everything". These supposedly comforting words are usually reserved for the geeky teenage loner on a downer. The quiet one with the dodgy hair and the wonky teeth that has trouble looking anyone in the eye without burning up with embarrassment that anyone's even looking in their direction. But try telling yourself that looks aren't everything when you fire up Far Cry. Try not to feel a ripple of excitement run through you when the Cry engine starts showing off how much better a PC game can look than anything else now.

The first-person shooter, a long-time staple of the PC gaming diet, has come quite a way since its humble roots in the sort-of-3D stylings of the revolutionary Wolfenstein 3D. Never mind such frivolities as the move to real 3D or the discovery of the possibilities represented by allowing the player to jump; the real evolution has been the addition of ever new and interesting ways to kill your friends. Yes, indeed, we have come a long way from games where your only option was to unload rockets into people's faces until their sprite corpses were festering mounds of broken flesh on the pixellated floor, as the imagination of developers has given us ever new and interesting ways to slice 'em, dice 'em, smash 'em and bash 'em.

While Nintendo and Sony continue to play down the potential GBA/PSP market overlap, we couldn't help but chuckle at the latter's decision to use the Grim Reaper as a basis for its first public demonstration of PSP software. A subtle joke? Maybe not, but there's still plenty in Backbone Entertainment's "Death Jr." that will leave the Sony crowd smiling.

Id's legendary founder John Carmack has delivered the first tantalising details of its next project at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, having assured the audience "we ship Doom (III) really soon now".

An Ubisoft representative has told the Far Cry faithful on the publisher's official forum that a proposed patch for the game is currently on track for release later today. The same post also draws attention to the various problems that the patch aims to fix, including support for server-finding utility All Seeing Eye, integration of Punkbuster anti-cheat protocols and various other minor issues. Far Cry is of course out today across Europe and has been picking up very respectable review scores.

That blasted Bandicoot is crashing back towards PS2 and Xbox later this year, VU Games announced today. Crash Bandicoot: Unlimited is currently in development at Traveller's Tales and aims to reinvigorate the series with a new dual-character mechanic and creative input from Jordan Reichek of Ren & Stimpy fame.

Konami recently popped the lid on the mechanics behind Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for PS2, pointing to a blend of new stealth-action ideas that excited even those dulled by the exposition-heavy experience of playing MGS2. But Hideo Kojima was never going to release a standard, run of the mill stealth action game without his trademark whimsical storytelling, and this week we've seen the first signs of it thanks to a posting on an American casting website searching for actors to handle some key voice roles.

"Never judge a book by its cover." We've all encountered that expression. We've all probably come across it the same way, too. At a young age, some cardigan-wrapt and condescending geriatric has peered down their nose at us, and reeled it off with the sort of pride you can only get by imparting borrowed wisdom to a clueless child. See? You're nodding your head. And yet, how many times have we all looked at a bunch of screenshots of a new game, and found ourselves reaching for the black cap and gabble before we've even had a chance to snort in derision?

Games are like buses. They really are. Although a couple that were due out this week have now run off the road in search of petrol (stand up R: Racing and Mafia Xbox), we do feel rather like plebs at a bus stop, overflowing with transport options after literally months camped in the shadow of Dawn of the Dead posters and old grannies chattering about the bingo. It's good to see all these buses, of course, but we do feel a bit like socking a few of the drivers in the gob. Where the hell were you when Looney Tunes: Back In Action was the highlight of our entire week? Eh?

Speaking to us at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft's global head of game content Peter Moore has ruled out the possibility of the company launching a mobile games console to compete with PSP or GBA.

The American edition of PC Gamer magazine has reportedly confirmed the identity of the first planned expansion pack for World War II themed FPS Call of Duty. The expansion is being designed by Return to Castle Wolfenstein developer Gray Matter Studios (so that's what they're up to) and will be called "Call of Duty: United Offensive". It's due out later in the year, and we'll eat our dog tags if it's the last we hear of the Call of Duty series on the PC.

As promised by Ubisoft, the Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow multiplayer demo has crept out from the shadows and nestled itself in reach of your probing mouse cursors.

The first details of the next N-Gage device, which is expected to be demonstrated at a press event in mid-April, have been revealed at GDC, with Nokia's developer relations chief discussing major revisions to the platform.

Valve showed new Half-Life 2 material at GDC yesterday, focussing on characters' facial attributes.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, which is quite literally due out tomorrow, reportedly suffers from a rather unhelpful Xbox Live bug that crashes the game irretrievably.

The "action division" of Kuju Entertainment is working on a first-party GameCube project, set to be unveiled in the near future, the developer told the London Stock Exchange yesterday afternoon.

The very first images of Croteam's Serious Sam 2 arrived hot from GDC today, showing sensational levels of detail on character models.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker director Eiji Aonuma yesterday confirmed in his GDC presentation what we told you on Monday: that we will hear a good deal about "Wind Waker " at E3 this May, where it is expected to take centre stage alongside Metroid Prime 2.

Given that PS2 console games are region-locked, and that the average punter is very unlikely to have a Japanese console tucked under the telly, it seems fair at this point to bid a fond farewell to those of you with no prior experience of Winning Eleven. What you want is Pro Evolution Soccer 3, which remains the pinnacle of footballing accomplishments in your local gaming shop, despite the efforts of 878,000 FIFA fans to convince us otherwise. Go and play PES3, and, by the time you can curl a Beckham free kick into the top corner every once in a while, you'll be in a position to appreciate why this one is better.

Far Cry is still a couple of days away from its European release, but, having shipped in the USA just t'other day, there's already talk of a patch. According to reports, the patch will repair multiplayer issues and sort some compatibility issues between localised versions. Publisher Ubisoft also plans to release an online tutorial for the game's Sandbox editor sometime today, as well as a quick-save patch in mid-April. Cuh, whatever happened to finishing games before releasing them?

Eidos will not be showing the new, and as yet untitled, Tomb Raider game in Los Angeles at E3 this May, sources close to the company confirmed today.