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MotoGP: Online Demo will officially ship with the Xbox Live Test Drive and Starter Kits, and THQ has been good enough to let us know what we can expect from this modified version of Climax Brighton's most excellent bike-racing sim. Although this is considered a demo, the release will include two gameplay modes; Play Live and Time Trials, and if you own the full game, you'll be able to play online with every track and bike, even custom-built ones, so it's fair to say that experienced bikers aren't being shortchanged for their loyalty.

The publisher that brought us all Shrek, the passable but not exactly amazing adventure game based on the movie, have turned their hand to the infamous "party" genre. Shrek: Super Party is due out this Christmas, and features three modes - a multiplayer board game, mini-games and a single player game against the AI.

You’re not in Seville, but Eurogamer is, bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage of all the big Microsoft Xbox news from this year’s European showcase. Learn all you need to know about Xbox Live – how the open beta will affect you, how much you’re going to pay and which games will support it – and find out which game discs will be buzzing in your black box this year and next. And of course, now you can finally see what Rare are up to. It’s been worth the wait.

When we reviewed Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, we liked the multiplayer side of it a lot more than the single player. Bundled together, the game seemed like a worthy attraction, although it hasn't really withstood the test of the short amount of time it's been available, with the number of players online declining dramatically since June.

The GBA-based Sega Smash Pack has been completed according to developer CodeFire. It will be on US store shelves soon, and hopefully European ones shortly afterward. For those of you with short memories, Sega Smash Pack is a compilation of three Mega Drive / Genesis titles; Golden Axe, Ecco the Dolphin and Sonic Spinball. So, soon you'll be able to see an early scrolling beat'em'up, Ecco before it was a bit crap, and the very definition of the term "spin-off".

It was a bit of a surprise when Microsoft announced ports of Oddworld, Monster Truck Madness and other titles to GameBoy Advance, but since then the shock has worn off, and despite swapping harsh words on the issue, we could see Rare and Nintendo making up at the end of it and still working together on GBA titles. As it happens, that's exactly the situation.

Tomb Raider creator Toby Gard has been hard at work on Galleon for longer than I can remember. In the time it's taken him to perfect his vision of the game, Eidos has released a handful of sequels to his inspirational action heroine's first outing. Needless to say, many hope the attention to Ms. Croft's details went with him, and Galleon is hotly anticipated and despite a torrent of cynicism from journos and gamers everywhere, still pencilled in for December 2002.

It's another world starter from Lionhead. Third person... in existence. Tribal pursuits. Dionsauric. Puns aplenty have been vetoed this morning already, so instead of trying to amuse myself (let's be honest, you're not laughing, are you?) I might as well tell you about Lionhead's BC, set at the dawn of time in a world covered by ravenous predators and starring various dumb-as-a-rock cavemen hoping to evolve. With your careful guidance.

And here it is, the one you've all been waiting for. Hands on, er, hips. We'll be going "hands on" with DOA XBV later today, we can assure you, but first of all Microsoft has asked us to tell you about the actual game. The game. Remember, it's a game. A game. [I think you're the only one who's confused, to be honest -Ed]

Project Ego, Lionhead's ambitious life sim, has been officially dubbed Fable, and should be with us during 2003 according to the firm's X02 release sheet.

Microsoft has told us more about Sudeki, the Xbox-exclusive RPG announced last night in Seville. Apparently a detail they managed to omit from their first press release was the developer - none other than UK-based Climax, the chaps responsible for recent stunners like MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology. This is a bit of a departure from tried and trusted avenues for them, but Sudeki already looks very impressive, as you'll no doubt have clocked from one of the hundreds of screenshots I was up at the crack of dawn posting. They get to go to Seville and ride on rollercoasters; I get to post screenshots and write copy. This is fair... how?

Although Xbox Live stole the show in Seville, and its March 14th launch date was perhaps the biggest talking point this evening, Microsoft is keen to remind us all that the European Xbox will host a number of exciting titles before the end of the year.

Following the critical success of its first Xbox endeavour, Sports Interactive has used X02 to announce Championship Manager: Season 02/03, another exclusive for Microsoft's console courtesy of the UK-based dons of the footy management genre. CM 02/03 will include updated team and player data as well as an all-new transfer system, with more details due to be announced in the next few days.

X02 is still raging in Seville, and Microsoft has now announced its latest exclusive, a first party RPG by Microsoft Game Studios entitled Sudeki. Starring four heroes; a sultry "wizardress", a soaring gunslinger, a powerful swordsman and a dark huntress, Sudeki aims to bring a much needed RPG influence to Xbox with Hong Kong cinema-style combat and naturally enough, envelope-pushing visuals.

Microsoft has announced that Controller S, the smaller alternative Xbox controller released in Japan and the US this year, will be released in Europe on November 1st priced £24.99 / €39.99.

NTL was among the companies mentioned in Microsoft's Xbox Live rollout plans earlier today, and the firm has since confirmed its intentions and announced its plans for dealing with the service.

These days, it's not so strange to see a decent first person shooter on the PlayStation 2. Medal of Honor: Frontline is of course the de facto standard, but it's easy to forget that Volition's Red Faction helped pave the way for EA's seminal classic. We haven't forgotten though, and with Red Faction II, Volition and publisher THQ aim to remind you the best way they know how - by blowing a hole in the wall with a rocket launcher and shoving it down your throat.

Details of Microsoft's European Xbox Live service have emerged this morning courtesy of broadband partner Telewest. The service will begin beta testing between October 30th and November 29th, with an open test from November 30th as part of "Xbox Live Test Drive" in the UK, France and Germany.

Vivendi and Crave have signed a worldwide agreement to publish Whirl Tour on PS2 and GameCube during Q4 2002. Whirl Tour incorporates your typical extreme sports antics, this time on a scooter, but combines it with an ongoing adventure. The story begins as someone kidnap six members of a rock band, and one of their roadies sets out on a mission to rescue them, by grinding and tricking his way through eight varying locations. Players are promised a castle, an amusement park, an oil refinery and various other environments in which to behave "extremely".

Konami released yet another MGS2: Substance trailer at this year's Tokyo Game Show, and kindly mirrored it on their website for all to see. The quite reasonably sized 10MB trailer showcases quite a lot of the game and suggests that there's some narrative to all the VR missions. There are also a few seconds of "Snake Tales" clips, those being pint-sized Solid Snake missions to try and satisfy the hordes of Raiden critics.

One of the biggest crowd-pullers at this year's Tokyo Game Show was a game by the name of NUDE. Understandably, you might say. Unfortunately, NUDE stands for Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment, and we don't think there are any naked women in this one. So you're still have to wait for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

Japanese gamers will be able to go online with Xbox Live on January 16th, 2003, Microsoft has told attendees at the Tokyo Game Show. On that day, the Xbox Live Starter Kit will go on sale priced 6800 yen (£35 / €56), and will include the Xbox voice communicator headset, a copy of Phantasy Star Online Episodes I & II (hopefully in better shape than its Cube counterpart) and 12 months' subscription to the service.

Japanese GameCube owners who have just gotten their hands on Phantasy Star Online Episodes I & II are suffering at the hands of a "duping" bug, and Sonic Team's Yuji Naka has reportedly announced that a fixed version will be released in about two months time.

Lamborghini, Rage's licensed racer featuring 21 of the most beautiful supercars in the world (that's our opinion, rather than theirs), from the majestic Countach to the divine Diablo, will be among the first European games to support Xbox Live when it launches in March 2003.

Apart from moneybags, Nintendo is also set to retrieve some of its heftiest assets from Rare's Cube development carcass, including that damn dirty ape by the name of Donkey Kong. And obviously not content to hang around, Nintendo of America's George Harrison (no relation) has told CNN Money that Nintendo will soon be getting started on its own Donkey Kong product internally.

Wanadoo has alerted us to the demo version of IronStorm, its perhaps amusingly named shoot'em'up-infiltration hybrid. Set in an alternative reality where World War I still rages, IronStorm is understandably set up so that your goal is to survive and end this global conflict. To get your first taste of the action, you'll need the ability to download 194MB of demo version ( direct link), but make sure you can run it first! The system requirements are a bit on the steep side - you'll need a PIII-600 minimum, apparently, 256MB of RAM, a GeForce2 minimum and naturally DirectX 8.1. Recommended systems include a 1GHz plus CPU and a GeForce3.

Dino Stalker may not bear the name Gun Survivor, but it is in all but name the third title in a PS2 series which has included two rather disagreeable Resident Evil spin-offs thus far. Fortunately, Dino Stalker is a relatively good game - we'll have a full review for you later this week - and encouraged by this, Capcom plans to return the series to the Resident Evil fold for its fourth iteration, announced just now at the Tokyo Game Show. Few details are available at present, but the game should be available in Japan next year.

C&VG reports that Capcom is working on a brand new GBA game combining Onimusha with the growing niche of tactical strategy titles. The imaginatively titled Onimusha Tactics is apparently on its way to market this November 1st in Japan, which suggests that it's been in development for quite a while. We hope to hear more about it later this year, although Capcom Eurosoft were understandably hesitant to comment this early.

THQ told IGN today that Summoner 2 will appear on GameCube in early 2003 thanks to the development work of Cranky Pants Studios, one of the publisher's divisions dedicated to Nintendo hardware. Summoner 2 was originally developed for the PlayStation 2 by Volition and recently went gold in the US.

Michael Crichton, the best-selling author responsible for the likes of Jurassic Park, Timeline, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain and lots of other entertaining novels, will join forces with Sega of American to collaboratively develop an original concept upon which to base a game. The partnership will allow Michael to utilise Sega's top game developers in bringing the title to market for 2004.