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Panzer Dragoon Orta is one of the most entertaining games on Xbox - one of the reasons why everyone on the team here at EG owns a copy - and last week we offered three of our readers the chance to win their own. Well, the time has finally come to draw the winners, and according to our magic, Dragon-run selection machine, the three lucky recipients of this delicious shoot 'em up will be Gary Norton, James Russell and Jani Klingberg. Congratulations to them, and thanks to Infogrames for donating the prizes!

Konami is feeling the need to reassure us that it really likes PCs and Xbox, honestly, and has committed itself to developing Apocalyptica in support of its convictions. Developed by Telford-based Extreme FX and overseen by Konami's new European studio, the game is said to be a third-person action title that charts an epic tale of good versus evil.

Gamers.com are reporting on the somewhat bizarre idea that Namco has developed an arcade version of online tactical shooter, Counter-Strike. Yes.

The murmurings of a special edition orange GameBoy Advance SP made their way to our office on April 1st, and so the rumours were met with some consternation as to whether to report on it or not. We'll we're now able to tell you what most of you already knew: Yes, there is an orange GBA SP, and yes, we want one.

Doors. Resident Evil fans know only too well what a door means. It means a few seconds to sweat blood, mop brows and generally panic about what's on the other side, because apart from a few staircases in the RE remake, virtually every door in a Resident Evil game since the days of the Saturn has incurred a loading screen.

When Donkey Kong Country snuck onto a recent Nintendo release schedule, we weren't 100 per cent sure it was a port of the GBA game. After all, Nintendo has been failing to name its first party Cube projects distinctively. F-Zero, anyone? But according to IGN today it's very much confirmed that DKC is a GBA port of the SNES classic.

GameSpot is reporting that Microsoft has started its search for "America's Biggest Halo Fan". We had to restrain ourselves from replacing "Halo Fan" with something completely different, but we won't get into that for fear of repercussions. Anyway, we digress.

Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII (aha) has been announced today by EA and DICE. The multiplayer expansion pack will introduce new weapons and vehicles (hold the bloody phone!), many of which never made it out of German and Allied labs into real-life combat. SWOWII will also introduce elite German troops and British Commandos, along with a new objective-based gameplay mode, which sounds a bit like Assault from the original Unreal Tournament.

PopTop Software and developer Frog City Software have announced that Tropico 2: Pirate Cove is gold. The game is the sequel to Tropico (obviously), a game which we lapped up like seadogs a couple of years ago. We seem to end up explaining what it is every time we write about it, so we're not going to do that this time. No. You can just read this instead. There's a demo through that link too, so you probably want to go and look.

Would you like to be vaguely famous, in a not-very-famous sort of way? Well Eidos and Elixir Studios are offering you the chance to take up permanent residency in Novistrana, the setting for forthcoming strategy-simulation title Republic: The Revolution.

Driver 3 has slipped until spring 2004 according to InfogramesNotAtari. Developer Reflections has apparently asked the publisher for more time. "Driver 3 is a complex game that comes with amazingly high expectations," according to the developer's managing/development director Martin Edmondson, adding that it was important for both firms "to dedicate the time and resources necessary to ensure that Driver 3 meets our own goals for exciting gameplay and next-gen performance laid out by our ambitious design document."

Sega has indicated whenabouts in May and June its first three self-published games will be released. According to a lovely glossy PDF file we received just after lunch, Phantasy Star Online: Episode I & II for Xbox is due out on May 16th, Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution for PS2 is due out on June 20th and Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut for GameCube is due out on June 27th. Which is nice.

Sports Interactive's Championship Manager 4 has officially had the biggest opening weekend of any PC game in the UK, and is the third fastest selling game of all time on any platform.

One of the great things about the Internet is that everyone's a goddamn comedian, and this April Fools day was no exception. We've been working hard to pick through all the jokes, spoofs and rubbish to bring you actual news, although we've probably fallen for something. Anyway, since it's a slow news day we thought we'd clue you in on some of the more obvious April Fools jokes, because sometimes, particularly in this industry, truth is stranger than fiction.

Mindware Studios has announced its development of a promising-looking stealth-based action title named Cold War, and furnished us with some shots of the game in action. The main protagonist is an independent journalist and former-CIA agent called, ahem, Razor Kane. Seriously. "Razor Kane is a journalist with an edge, or three," says the press release. Ahaha! Kane is apparently a kind of journalistic version of Indiana Jones, who was disowned by the CIA and now writes articles about his exploits as a sideline to being a thrill-seeking adrenaline junky.

Blizzard has kicked off its War on Cheating by blanket bombing more than 12,000 WarCraft III accounts and 131,000 Diablo II accounts because their owners are accused of using cheats and hacks, GameSpot are reporting. Furthermore, over 7,000 CD keys have been banned from ladder play for one month, and about 1,000 CD keys have been banned from play for good. The company is warning that repeat offenders are likely to have their accounts blacklisted on Battle.net in its entirety, which will completely cripple their ability to play the games online.

There was no surprise at the top of the UK sales charts this week, as Sports Interactive's Championship Manager 4 went straight in at number one during the busiest week for the games industry this year.

French publisher Wanadoo has released a 47-second MPEG of Rygar: The Legendary Adventure, the latest PS2 adventure to come out of Tecmo, and thanks to the wonders of the Interweb, you can watch the video embedded in your browser window or just download the brummin' thing direct. It's about 3.5MB.

Digitalo's Unreal-engine FPS Devastation, a tale of rebel street-fighting, gang-running and mercenaric rampage, is rapidly closing in on its April 17th release date, and to celebrate the fact, publisher NovaLogic is giving away a state-of-the-art BMX bike in association with our good selves and Launch Magazine - a free gaming magazine available at various independent retailers up and down the land. All you have to do is answer one question from the magazine and this one from us:

After bringing forward the Cube release of Splinter Cell in the US to coincide with the PS2 release, Ubi Soft has decided to drag it forward over here as well, which is nice to see. As of today, Ubi plans to release Splinter Cell on GameCube and GBA - thus completing its assimilation of every willing gamer there is - on May 9th. Interestingly, a release date it originally slipped to in January. OK that wasn't interesting. However, news of Cube and GBA Cell mating rituals clearly is.

Picking through a sizeable plate of tasty Jedi Knight 3 news on IGN, we managed to pick out some of the juicy morsels to save you from having to wade through an unfortunate amount of hot air. To summarise:

Jonathan Woss time, folks. The wild, wacky, World of WarCraft website has been updated with information on the various creatures which inhabit the lands of Azeroth, complete with biographies, Flash animations and whopping great sound effects, reserved for those foolish enough to visit with the volume turned up.

GameSpot are reporting that Midway currently has SpyHunter 2 in development. Due for release this Autumn, the game is said to improve on its predecessor in a number of ways, one of those being the inclusion of a "mysterious new female agent character," and another being the addition of not being mediocre. Maybe.

IGN reports that Raven Shield, the recently released third game in the Rainbow Six series (which we are reviewing, don't worry), will be expanded upon in short order, potentially as soon as July. Although IGN is a bit coy about where it got the information, they imply that someone at Ubi Soft accidentally told them. Hurrah!

DreamCatcher Games has secured a deal with Arx Fatalis developers Arkane Studios to publish the RPG worldwide on Xbox.

Following the news some time ago that TDK and Disney had formed a global publishing agreement for games based on some of Disney's forthcoming films - in turn based on some of the company's theme park rides - TotalVideoGames are reporting on the first of these, with details of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Uncontrolled online gaming is putting organisations at risk from legal problems from illicit software and robbing corporates of valuable bandwidth. That's the view of employee management software outfit Websense whose latest software, naturally enough, helps companies manage the issue (read: ban online gaming).

CDV and e-sports (eurgh) company Turtle Entertainment have teamed up to organise a Blitzkrieg online championship to support the international release of the World War II real-time strategy title. The competition will begin at the end of April in the Electronic Sports League, Europe's largest online league.

C&VG reports that Tecmo is very upset about the DOAX "nude hacks" which have appeared recently. The hacks are distributed as modified disk images, as far as we can make out, and substitute swimsuits for pubic hair and nipples in the frame buffer grabs we've seen.

It has been confirmed today that Whiptail Interactive will be responsible for assaulting our senses with POSTAL 2 this spring. Set to hit the shelves on April 14th, this is what Chris Warrender, Whiptail Interactive publishing director, had to say about it: "I may look like the fat controller meets giant haystacks meets Tony Soprano but I feel like Marie Antoinette." Right.