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FIFA has always been one of EA's cash cows, ever since the 16-bit days of the Mega Drive (Genesis for our US readers) and Super Nintendo. But last year's effort was almost universally derided, for frankly being a bit poo. Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer, and even Sony's This Is Football stole big chunks of FIFA's market share, and for the first time ever EA found itself usurped in the all-important footy market.

There are two basic rules when it comes to making light gun games. Thy plot shall be incidental, badly acted and insultingly unoriginal, and thou shalt not move from the rails beneath your feet. Capcom's Dino Stalker breaks both of these rules.

EA Games is to oversee a closed multiplayer test for 3,000 lucky gamers, each of whom will get the chance to play five multiplayer missions from Command & Conquer Generals over the Internet. The test will begin on October 25th, but sign-ups commence at 12:01 am on the 10th, and will run for 24 hours, after which 3,000 participants will be chosen randomly.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin has gone gold this week, publisher Eidos proudly proclaimed this morning. But what does this mean? Well, it means that the game is now almost certainly on its merry way to a rendezvous with this Friday, October 4th. You should be able to buy it then for PC, Xbox and PlayStation 2, and commence the slaughter.

Capcom has a new action game on the boil. Critical Bullet - 7th Target will appear on PlayStation 2 and GameCube, but beyond that a colourful one-page teaser website and nondescript trailer conspire to shroud the game in secrecy. We'd take a stab at the genre - probably third person action - but beyond that we'd be hard-pressed to say.

Legends of Wrestling II will introduce several past greats from the British wrestling circuit. Yes, although you may not even remember a British wrestling circuit, the likes of Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Mick McManus and Kendo Nagasaki were all big names in the sport during the 1980s, and Acclaim has signed all four of them to duke it out with the likes of Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and Jerry "The King" Lawler in Legends of Wrestling II. Each character will be faithfully restored at Acclaim's Salt Lake Studios from archive ITV footage, and character intros, costumes and signature moves have all been recovered and built into the game, including Nagasaki's "Kamikaze Crash". Goodness me.

Okay, there's bad news, and there's really bad news. The bad news is that Galleon, Toby Gard's swash-buckling adventure for Xbox, Cube and PC has slipped until 2003. We sort of anticipated this, remarking as much last week when publisher Virgin assured us of a pre-Christmas release. The really bad news is that somewhere along the way the PC version has slipped overboard, and Virgin now have no firm plans to release it, although they may double back on themselves at some point in the future.

In June 2002, Capcom revealed that combined worldwide sales of Street Fighter games had topped 25 million units, a landmark figure and the strongest representation to date of the series' phenomenal popularity. Fast forward to the present day and UK-based Crawfish have just polished off the GBA version of Street Fighter Alpha 3, one of the finest games to bear the famous name since the original 16-bit releases. This week, we spoke to assistant producer Dave Murphy about the game, which is due out in November from publisher Ubi Soft.

Electronic Arts' massively multiplayer Earth & Beyond is to receive only a limited release in Europe, despite the large number of European gamers on the official beta which ended last week. In order to restore beta characters and start playing again, interested parties will have to buy the game from one of a selection of sanctioned online retailers. For the UK, Amazon will be stocking the game, although it only arrived on their listings this week. The online retailer was completely oblivious to it as recently as last Friday, although now the game will apparently ship (priced £34.99 plus shipping) on October 4th.

Starting this November, the Sold Out range of £4.99 releases will grow to include titles from SCi. The first game to appear on the budget label will be the sequel to one of the grittiest and most controversial driving titles on the PC, Carmageddon 2. As part of the agreement, Carmageddon TDR 2000, the third game in the series, will also appear on the label during the coming year, along with Rally Extreme and The Italian Job.

The PC version of UK-based Pivotal Games' Conflict: Desert Storm left us with mixed feelings - whilst refreshing and more than a little enjoyable, Pivotal disappointed us with disengaging visuals, the likes of which even the humble PlayStation could realise. The question is, does the PS2 version bolster our faith in the old gameplay over graphics adage, or does it flop face-first in the sand?

A good proportion of games that cross our desks during any given week are absolute rubbish. The very thought of putting our hands in our pockets to pay for them is enough to send us into fits and hysterics. And when we do have to pay our dues, it's a tough task to bear - £40 is a lot of money, by anyone's measure, and just about everybody paying their way through a games obsession feels like a victim of unscrupulous licensing fees and extortionate retail margins.

Tribes 2 has been updated with two new game types and 32 new maps based on designs from both Tribes titles. The update also addresses "numerous lingering performance issues" according to publisher Vivendi studio Sierra, and the post-patch version of the game will be remastered and sold for $10 at American retail. Those of you with a bit of bandwidth can download the 88MB update from Sierra's FTP ( direct link), and if you want to keep playing Tribes 2, you will have to - it's a mandatory update.

Having only recently acquired its official name, Fable is already garnering hype on account of its gargantuan open-ended premise. It's an ambitious simulation of one man's lifelong struggle to reclaim his kidnapped mother and sister from an evil force, and it could be one of the most rewarding RPG experiences ever if Lionhead can pull it off. Despite concerns that much of what we've seen and heard is hearsay and conjecture on the part of both the developer and the public, early footage has shown up on Microsoft's website, and it seems just as keen to hammer home those extensive claims as before. We're still waiting to find out just how much of it truly is Fable and how much is, well, myth, but that shouldn't stop you enjoying the trailer. In either high or low quality streams.

Microsoft Game Studios has released a trial version of Links 2003 this morning, the perfect way to gloatingly remind everybody around you that Europe just regained the Ryder Cup. Featuring the back nine holes of fictional golf course Skeleton Coast, the Links 2003 Trial Version gives you control of Sergio Garcia (one of our heroes) and five different methods of play, including online options via Zone.com.

The Elders Scrolls III: Morrowind was critically acclaimed upon its PC release, so much so that the Xbox version of the game, due out this October 18th, is one of the most hotly anticipated RPGs on the console. Soon though, Bethesda Softworks will turn its attention back to PC owners for the release of The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal, due out in Europe this November 29th, with localised French and German versions scheduled for early 2003.

Xicat has announced its intention to release Japanese RPG Ex-Chaser for the Xbox in North America before the end of 2002. Renamed Black Stone: Magic & Steel, the Japanese RPG tells the story of Zedan, a world now shrouded by the work of the Dark Lord Madul, whose Underworld forces have stolen victory over the White Wizards and Forces of Light. The remaining good in the world has banded together to try and stop the evil Madul, but the small band of heroes assembled will have to travel great lengths to recapture key strongholds and restore power to the White Wizards.

Convincing Konami to release Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance on the Xbox alongside its more traditional PS2 and PC outlets was a major coup for Microsoft, but apparently it couldn't sway the Japanese giant all the way. According to the Japanese developer/publisher, it will not be releasing the Xbox version of the game in its home territory due to an insufficient installed base of Xbox units in the region. Until Xbox sales improve in Japan, MGS2: Substance will be targeted squarely at the US and Europe.

Bigben Interactive has signed a distribution deal with American publisher Agetec that will see keenly sought after Japanese oddity Zettai Zetsumei Toshi appear in the west under the name SOS: The Final Escape. All right, admittedly the name is complete nonsense, but Irem Software's title - a game about escaping the wreckage of a natural disaster - was hailed as one of the most original and delicately realised games of this year. Importers have made a tidy sum keeping avid fans on both sides of the Atlantic equipped with copies, and rightly so.

Chances are, you already know what Battlefield 1942 is like. You've already been caught up in the hype, you've already played it and you've already been hooked by it. I grudgingly had to take some time out from playing the thing in order to pick it apart for your pleasure. I hope you're satisfied.

THQ was kind enough to have us round the vicarage for tea and biscuits this afternoon - if for vicarage you'll accept swanky numedia boozepot Red Cube in Leicester Square, and for tea and biscuits you'll allow vodka and canapé. And the multifaceted publisher was also nice enough to introduce us to the latest product of internal dev studio Outrage Games; a PS2 and Xbox project entitled Alter Echo, due for release in spring 2003.

When was the last time you went to an arcade to play a game? I'd guess the answer was "ages ago" for most of us, for the simple reason that home games machines have become incredibly powerful, and there's no longer the aspirational value attached to going to a deafening smoky room chock full of cutting edge gaming cabinets.

THQ has released a couple of mutated hands worth of Red Faction II screenshots showcasing its various multiplayer functions. That's 12 screenshots, by the way. As you might expect, these highlight its four-player split-screen modes, and we've also caught wind of the precise details of the game's various multiplayer elements.

As mentioned elsewhere, Empire is bringing Bubble Bobble to the GBA at some point in the next few months, but the publisher is also eager to announce its other recent coup - the publishing rights to Chow Yun-Fat's next martial arts movie, Bulletproof Monk. The film sees Chow roam the globe to protect an ancient scroll, whilst gradually training a protégé. Unfortunately, this isn't going to trouble Crouching Tiger in the beautifully authentic stakes, because the new-age monk is set to be that darling of unnecessary American teen-cinema, Seann William Scott.

Those in retail will tell you that Christmas is nearly upon us, but the reality is that it's approaching us like an asthmatic bunny with a leg blown off, and there are several large hills in its way. There are, however, a handful of relatively top-notch titles scooting past it and out the door in this peculiar middleground between the deserted displays of August and the swollen shelves of October and November.

Empire is bringing Bubble Bobble to the GBA under the guise of "Bubble Bobble - Old and New". The game will follow the original arcade game closely, whilst drawing a certain amount of inspiration from the 1989 sequel Rainbow Islands. No firm release date has been announced, but Empire is hoping to have it out and available by the end of the year, and failing that, in early 2003.

After last year's bizarre crotch grinding antics in Pierre Cardin's playboy space mansion, Microsoft had to go some to beat the sheer other worldly opulence we witnessed down in Cannes for X01. So in true money-no-object style the venue of choice for X02 was a theme park in Seville. Yes, the first assignment for Eurogamer's new Editor Kristan Reed was an all expenses paid trip to Spain to go and play games, ride rollercoasters and be plied with free alcohol. Sometimes, dear reader, life is sweet.

If you are one of the many people who have imported a GP32 handheld from Korea on the promise of downloadable software, DivX movie playback and other lures, then today's your lucky day. As promised when we previewed it here last week, today marks the release of Sheffield-based Logik State's Pinball Dreams demo for the GP32. The free demo is available in a zip file from the developer's website, and if you have a GP32 you can whip it onto a flash card via a PC adapter and start playing immediately. Better yet, the demo weighs in at a measly 1.04MB, which even the average modem won't find too taxing.

Vivendi has announced two new Lord of the Rings games to be wrung from the book-based licensing deal it procured a while ago, and it's giving itself some fair old competition. The two chosen genres are real-time strategy and the massively multiplayer online RPG - to be targeted by The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Online respectively. Vivendi is also planning additional games based on The Two Towers and The Return of the King - the next two instalments in the LOTR trilogy - but then that's hardly surprising and no details are forthcoming about either.

Do you have an HDTV? No, probably not, unless you're reading this from the good ole' US of A, but should you be one or indeed other of the several people in Europe who happen to own one, Vivendi's forthcoming Lord of the Rings will soon become the lord of your lounge. HDTV support isn't the half of it. And for some of the rest of us, the game even offers a Halo-esque widescreen mode to dazzle and delight. Furthermore, if you want the cutting edge of pretend cinema then you can also take advantage of the game's built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 support.