Latest Articles (Page 3456)

We're not quite sure how this has happened, but in the past few weeks publishers have been queuing around the block to sell us our childhoods. Like some kind of mutant bible-bashing double-glazing salesmen, they hammer on the front door, demanding that we learn the ways of the next generation gaming experience. Mr Pac-Man appeared the other day, babbling phrases like "retro futurism", "adrenaline fuelled" and "insanely addictive" at us. The next day it was General Contra, brandishing a weapon in the vain hope of a respectable review score. But after the Defender incident with the bodysnatchers, we'd had enough and installed an intercom.

UK publisher Codemasters is planning to attend this years GDC in San Jose with a "clear mandate to acquire five A to triple-A games" - part of an aggressive product acquisition strategy which will see the company spending big on externally developed games over the coming months.

Students in the UK are being encouraged to complete a survey on American history, in order to draw up some statistics on the state of American historical education in the UK student population.

Since you were all so excited by our hands-on with Splinter Cell PS2, we thought you might want to know that SC producer Mathieu Ferland will be answering questions on DALnet IRC tonight from 5pm GMT. Interested (but ill equipped) parties should first nab MIRC or an equivalent IRC program, before heading onto DALnet and entering #splintercell.

Codemasters has signed snooker celeb John Virgo to host a 'Trickshots' game mode in World Championship Snooker 3 for PS2, Xbox and PC. Virgo is most famous in the UK for his role alongside Jim Davidson in the BBC's snooker based game show Big Break, and rumour has it the Xbox version will afford 64 megs of texture memory to his waistcoats alone.

Reviving past glories is something publishers have been doing since the dawn of videogaming. But no dead horse has been flogged quite so mercilessly as Pac-Man, which has gone from 'surreal dot munching maze game' to 'side on platformer' to 'isometric dot muncher' to 'Tetris clone' before finally settling on '3D dot munching platformer' over the past 23 years. But unlike so many companies that have gone to the wall in that period, the original creator Namco is still going strong, and occasionally capable of releasing genre defining classics that keep us interested despite our advancing years.

Polish developer Mirage has revealed that a sequel to Nazi-bashing FPS Mortyr is in production, and may even be in a reasonably advanced state. An update on the official website reads "Yup. It's official now. Good ole' Mortyr will have a sequel that will be definitely able to compete with other FPP up-to-date games." The site goes on to say what's changed since the last revision of playable code went out (to testers, or reviewers?).

Nintendo has confirmed that the bonus disc containing Ocarina of Time and Ocarina of Time Master Quest (previously referred to as Ura Zelda) will ship with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker on May 3rd in Europe.

Despite press claims to the contrary (backed by confusion at a distributor), the GameCube Broadband and Modem adapters are still due out on March 7th alongside Infogrames/Sega's Phantasy Star Online, Nintendo has proclaimed.

The Sims was again an immovable object at the top of the All Formats chart this week, holding off both big new releases in the shape of Command & Conquer: Generals, and Mortal Kombat, which entered the charts at No.2 and No.3 respectively.

Deus Ex and MDK2 will both be available for five quid on March 21st, those budget boffins at Sold Out have announced, along with Carmageddon TDR 2000, Rival Realms, Descent 3 and Evolva.

Another bit of good news which popped up last Friday after we'd all knocked off for the weekend was the official US and European release dates for the PC version of Vice City. It's always good to see UK development announcements released to appear first in the US press - thanks Rockstar!

As some of you may have realised, we forgot to announce the winners of our Men In Black II: Alien Escape competition on Friday. Sadly none of you wrote in abusing our cheese-eating, surrender monkey tactics of delaying the announcement (we do so enjoy it when you do), but we remembered anyway and without further ado, the following three people are lucky, lucky (ever so lucky) winners of a copy of Men In Black II for the GameCube: Andras Szalai, Daniel Miller and Gary Chantler. Each of these brainy boffins answered correctly that Will Smith has never appeared in To Kill A Mockingbird. Wicky wicky boo hoo.

ActiveXbox reports that the first run of downloadable MechAssault content is due out on Xbox Live "any day now" having entered the official certification process. And in further good news, MS will combine the first four packages and release them all at once instead of staggering the downloads. Isn't that nice of them? We're happy for now, but then we're not sure whether the next batch will be free…

In April 2003, culinary connoisseurs will be saddled with cash and thrown into the busy world of a restaurateur, thanks to Enlight's Restaurant Empire. The PC-based management sim is bristling with detail - forcing you to build your own business from a menu of five cuisines, 37 unique chefs, 200 recipes and in one of three 'culinary capitals'. Players will have to hire waiters, decorate their restaurant and even get their hands dirty in the kitchen, in a game which is said to combine elements of the traditional management sim with RPG-esque gameplay. As you might expect, things quickly turn to acquisitions and expansion, as you try and gain a stranglehold on the industry in campaign mode, or in the freeform, Sim City-like "sandbox" mode.

Swedish Enclave developer Starbreeze has cancelled all outstanding contracts concerning the gorgeous gothic hackandslash title and its sequel with publisher Swing Entertainment, claiming that the publisher has not settled their payments and has filed for insolvency.

Tropico, for those of you who didn't run out and buy it, was a city building simulation "with a difference". Casting yourself in the role of a suitable dictator (Castro, Pinochet, Peron), you had to direct the development of your own little tropical paradise, erring as much on the side of corruption as democracy, which isn't too hard to imagine in the current state of world politics, whilst using trade and tourism to keep your country in the black. However, it suffered from a number of niggling issues in the trade system (particularly annoying was the way it froze your assets and stopped hiring and firing if you sank below $0), and we've been waiting eagerly for nearly two years to see how PopTop would set about recasting the sequel.

During my time as a gamer, I've experienced many sensations. I've been a plumber, a hedgehog, a bandicoot, a ninja, a Shaolin monk, a bounty hunter, every flavour of wizard, mage and magician you can envisage and a bouncy, big-breasted gun-toting animal rights dissenter called Lara. I've been around. But it wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that I took my first steps as a hamster, ladies and gentlemen.

Publisher Acclaim has incurred the wrath of young biking professional Dave Mirra, who last week filed suit against his videogame licensees for improper use of his name and image to promote BMX XXX.

"Wa wa it's not a game" game Project Entropia has "gone gold", with version 4.2 of the freely available massively multiplayer space community now considered non-beta. Entropia, for those of you with short memories, is the controversial online game which asks you to put up real money to provide in-game currency, allowing really rich players to secure an unfair but perhaps unwieldy advantage and genuinely good players to amass real wealth in exchange for their efforts. Cutting out eBay as the middleman.

Oh larks, this one's a true Friday announcement. Take-Two's bottom of the barrel label (sorry), Gotham Games, has penned an agreement with Disney Interactive to publish "Piglet's BIG Game". Disney has been working hard, we're told, to bring some of their most beloved characters including Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Piglet himself to PS2 and GameCube this spring.

Fresh from the makers of Cossacks comes large-scale warfare styled American Conquest, packing plenty of cannon fire and pistol flash. This time the battlefield centres on the colonial wars in America, with historical landmarks including Christopher Colombus' crusade to expand the Spanish empire right through to the War of Independence - playing as either the Britons or Americans.

This week's releases are what we like to call a mixed bag. You see, somewhere… there is a bag, and in this bag are things, and we assume these things to be of mixed value and quality. Hence from this we derive 'mixed bag'. We assume that as a bag containing contents of mixed quality, it is some sort of Gucci reject (or whatever the kids are down with) sold via bargain bins at Marks & Spencer. However, the mystery of what occupies the bag will perhaps never be solved. Except in this case, where it's obviously videogames.

The UK print magazine sector has suffered hugely disappointing ABC figures, despite the best ever year for games software sales.

WH Smith has taken the audacious step of charging publishers £7,500 a month per title for the right to be in the retail chain's games chart, a report in trade newspaper MCV revealed today.

Gamers of a certain vintage (i.e. pushing 30 or over) will no doubt be filled with heart warming nostalgic feelings at the news that a bunch of ageing gaming classics have been made available for free download at Infinite Frontiers' website www.infinitefrontiers.org.

Are we alone in the universe? Did men really ever walk on the moon? Is gaming art? While the former two questions are always up for debate, the latter answer is, apparently, yes, with London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) set to host 'Primal Art' - an exhibition of art from the game and "an innovative peek into the world of contemporary art and the cultural appeal of video games", from 6th to the 9th of April.

Two of Japan's biggest gaming companies are to become one, with onetime platform holder Sega announcing its intention to merge with gambling machine maker and game publisher Sammy Corp.

EA's next Sims expansion will let players lead the life of a celebrity, with all the benefits and privacy disadvantages of your average Michael Douglas or Catherine Zeta-Jones. The Sims Superstar is the latest in a line of expansions which includes Livin' Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation and, most recently, The Sims Unleashed.

If you tune in to your local radio station tomorrow, apart from hearing a lot of soppy dedications and lonely heart plugs, you may be offered the chance to win a pair of replica antique duelling pistols - courtesy of American Conquest publisher CDV.