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When Mindfire announced that they were making a movie based on the House Of The Dead series, we were somewhat surprised. After all, their first movie was the hilarious Trekkie send-up Free Enterprise, and it was hard to imagine them doing a horror game adaptation as their next project. "We tried to keep the Mindfire sensibility in developing the property, but things take on a life of their own when you bring in a director and cast", president and writer Mark A. Altman admitted in an interview with HomeLAN Fed. "I think fans of our first two films will really enjoy House of the Dead as well, [but] it's certainly a lot more action-packed than what we've done in the past." Given the history of movies based on video games, from Mario Brothers to Tomb Raider, it's hard to be overly optimistic about the prospects for House of the Dead, but Altman has at least spotted the problem that has afflicted most of these past attempts. "I think that many people don't bother to try and come up with an interesting story. They think that having a video game is enough, or worse think because something is based on a video game the story isn't important. We felt the opposite, we wanted to please the fans of the game as well as those who weren't familiar with the game and wanted it to stand on its own. Being a first person shooter, House Of The Dead is a lot more style than story, but that only made it easier to come up with an original story for the film which incorporated the elements from the game which give it a universal appeal. It's a really fun game and that will, hopefully, translate to film." House of the Dead is currently on track for a May 2003 release. Meanwhile Mindfire are also working on a Dead Or Alive movie for Tecmo, which could prove .. interesting. "I can't wait for DOA Beach Volleyball", Mark revealed. "But don't tell anyone." Related Feature - Trailer Of The Dead

Squaresoft began testing the PC version of Final Fantasy XI yesterday in Japan, according to various sources. With the exception of basic services (chat, messenger, email and the Tetra Master card battle game), the Windows-based beta test is taking place on a dedicated server away from PS2 clients, although in the full release version players from both versions will be able to mingle happily. The PC game is due for release before the end of Square's current fiscal year (March 2003), and the developer has released detailed computer requirements, and they are pitched quite high (PIII-800, 128Mb RAM, GeForce 3 recommended, 4.5Gb HDD space). Thanks to the low spec of the average Japanese system (dating sims don't need a GeForce 3, see), these specs will probably alienate a number of its potential domestic users, but by the time Final Fantasy XI arrives in Europe they certainly won't be too far wrong. Related Feature - More woes for Final Fantasy online

Codemasters have confirmed that IGI 2 : Covert Strike will feature multiplayer support, with the first solid details of the online mode emerging today. In a nod to the likes of Counter-Strike, the game will pit IGI operatives against terrorists in a variety of objective-based teamplay maps, with support for up to eight players on each side of the conflict. Missions vary from blowing up oil refineries to hacking satellite uplinks and escorting convoys, and maps will include surveillance cameras, sentry guns and remote control doors and shutters for teams to gain access to. As in Counter-Strike, players will be able to purchase a wide range of realistic weaponry and equipment, but in a novel move you will also have to pay to get back into the game after you've been killed. The longer you're willing to wait before respawning, the cheaper it becomes, until eventually you can get back in for free and spend all your spare cash on buying bigger and better guns. It should be interesting to see how this works in practice, and with a September release currently on the cards we should know soon. In the meantime we have the first batch of screenshots of the game's multiplayer mode in action for your visual gratification. Related Feature - IGI 2 screenshots

The Sold Out budget label received another boost today with the news of six new titles for July, including Tomb Raider 3 and Thief 2. Joining the illustrious ranks of the £4.99 budget label - currently swollen by the likes of Worms 2 and Homeworld - are three games each from publishing giants Codemasters and Eidos, and there's not a duffer among 'em. Leading the way are TOCA 2 (soon to be sequestered from full-price sale anyway by its long-awaited sequel) and Tomb Raider 3 (to put it into the perspective the series has lost, that's the middle title of five currently on the market) - both excellent games, and both more than deserving of your five-pounds-minus-one-pence. Elsewhere, Codemasters also contributes the underrated Severance: Blades of Darkness and online driving doobrie 1nsane, but the real gems come on Eidos' side, with Championship Manager 99/00 joining the £4.99 array along with Thief 2. Now shipping in conventional DVD cases, these titles - available from July - will slot nicely into the gaps in your collection. If we didn't already own them, we'd be tempted to buy more than one. Related Feature - Interview with Garry Williams, MD of Sold Out

Spider-Man used to do whatever a spider can, but if Treyarch's hotly anticipated Spider-Man: The Movie is anything to go by, our old pal Spidey has opted to spend his latter days performing tedious fighting moves on large groups of disorganised thugs in warehouses, whilst one or two of them stand at the back taking pot shots with a collection of pistols and machine guns. For those of you with the film already behind them, Spider-Man: The Movie is a journey packed with all of the nomenclature and none of the spirit.

We're really not sure who thought up the name .hack//sign (pronounced "dot hack slash sign", by the way), or for that matter what drugs they were on at the time, but whoever it was that dreamt up the title of what is now one of the hottest anime properties on Japanese television certainly has a knack for the unusual and the downright weird. Set in an online game - an MMORPG played in an environment called The World - .hack//sign is perhaps best described as Phantasy Star Online The TV Series. The character and environment designs are superficially similar to Sega's seminal online RPG, and the constant references to standard RPG conventions and quirky mentions of internet concepts such as server administrations, log files and characters disappearing from the story occasionally because they have to deal with some "real life stuff" only serve to enforce that feeling. However, there's a lot more to .hack//sign than that. In fact, it's simply one part of a much broader cross-media 'experience' which centres on a PS2 game called .hack - a highly unconventional single player RPG, set within the world of an online game. It's the kind of bizarre and self-referential concept that could only come out of Japan, and which is already a media phenomenon there before it's even released. (And remember, that's "dot hack"… yeah, you get the idea. I'm just terrified of letting that one slip ever since being subjected to an American who insisted on pronouncing it "period hack" the whole way through a conversation…) Of course, some of the big names involved haven't hurt .hack's prospects at all. .hack//sign, the TV series which is based on the game, was created by the director and some of the team behind one of last year's huge hits, Noir - which may not mean much to you, but to the Japanese game-buying and anime-watching public, that's a pretty big deal. An even bigger deal is the involvement of a studio called Gainax, who created a short (and again separate) animated .hack series which will be bundled with the .hack PS2 game as a second DVD. Gainax are the people behind Neon Genesis Evangelion, the angsty-teenager-and-a-robot series with a difference which arguably revitalised the anime market in the mid-nineties, and was partially responsible for the massive boom in the genre in the USA and more recently in Europe. A new Gainax series is big news both in Japan and in Western fandom, and recent reports that the anime DVD will also be bundled with .hack when it's released in the USA is good news indeed. Whether we'll see the whole media circus being brought to Europe at any point is as yet unclear - but given the growing popularity of both RPGs and anime in this territory, it doesn't seem in the slightest bit unlikely. Media circus, by the way, is no exaggeration - so far there's a TV series, an OVA series (that's "Original Video Animation", indicating a short series, usually with very high production values, which is released gradually on DVD or video rather than being broadcast on TV), console games and sundry other bits of merchandise and media. Besides the growing popularity of RPGs and anime though, there is of course the outstanding example of Pokemon, which enjoyed roaring cross-media success over here. Whether the same can be true of the much more mature and thoughtful .hack phenomenon will be very interesting to see.

Yesterday we learnt of Hong Kong based developer Enlight and their publishing deal with Phantagram to release Restaurant Tycoon in the West. However, whilst most of the Western world was scratching its head and asking whether or not a restaurant management game was taking the whole Tycoon thing a little too far, the vast minority of importers, anime fans and Japanese wannabes were tutting and running back to screenshots of Xbox oddity Bistro Cupid. In Japan, the notion of a restaurant management game is only daft if not accompanied by some sort of hunting RPG love story focus, and that's where Bistro Cupid comes in. As the game literature says, "To improve a skill of cooking, adventure out to forest and desert. Win the battle with an enemy, you can get new recipes. Make your restaurant famous by learning many different dishes!" And who can say fairer than that? But wait, there's more. "You can manage 12 different types of restaurant including the main character." Yes, thank you Babelfish. "It depends on you if your restaurant becomes popular. Twelve heroines support the main character." Excellent call. "You can learn cooking and manage a restaurant together with them or you can go on a date on holidays. Aim for an happy ending by improving your impression." So you see, Restaurant Tycoon is nowhere near as confusing or peculiar as you thought it was. This, on the other hand, is. Related Feature - Do you want Tycoons with that?

Everybody loves that speedy blue hedgehog. He sells in huge quantities, even if the games he features in are largely rubbish! In fact, it could be said that he adds a redeeming feature to any game he stars in, unless of course the discussion turns to Sonic Shuffle… But exorcise that horrific game from your collective mind - it looks like Sonic Team will reveal a new game for its long-running figurehead at the World Hobby Fair in Japan this July 13th and 14th. Although publisher Sega hasn't discussed platforms, details or anything else about the game other than its proposed unveiling, we've seen Microsoft's Xbox associated with the title prominently in other sections of the press. I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one. Sega is also promising to show off Super Monkey Ball 2 at the booth in playable form. Oh what we wouldn't give to be in Japan this year…

The long-awaited Cube release of the Phantasy Star Online twins has been set for August 8th in Japan. Episodes I and II, detailed elsewhere, will be accompanied to market by the GameCube dial-up adapter, which will retail at 3,800 yen (€32.15 / £20.55). Nintendo has yet to announce when the broadband adapter is likely to make it to market, but pricing is believed to be the same as the dial-up, based on previously released information. Both Nintendo and game developer Sega will be hoping to avoid the pitfalls of hardware shortages and technical outages that have plagued Square's PS2 online epic Final Fantasy XI, but comparisons are difficult to draw. Technically speaking, PSO is a much smaller scale game than FFXI, with no fiddly hard disks, patches or microcosmic tendencies, and one expects it to make it out unscathed. Related Feature - Phantasy Star Online Episodes I and II preview

Konami Tokyo are celebrating after their latest football game, Winning Eleven 6, hit the million sales mark in their native Japan. Having comprehensively beaten EA's lacklustre 2002 FIFA World Cup at home, Konami are now hoping to repeat that performance to produce a solid result in the away leg. Pro Evolution Soccer 2, the European equivalent of Winning Eleven 6, is currently being refined by the company ready for an early November release, with improvements to the control system and new player kits and team rosters amongst the changes being made to the game for its arrival in the west. "We are delighted that Winning Eleven 6 has been so well received in Japan", Konami Europe president Kunio Neo beamed. "It represents the absolute pinnacle of football games, [and] with the refinements Konami TYO is currently putting in place for its European release as Pro Evolution Soccer 2, we are also very confident the game will enjoy equal success all across our European territories." Related Feature - Winning Eleven 6 / Pro Evolution Soccer 2 preview

One announcement that we missed during the media scrum of E3 last month was TimeGate's unveiling of a sequel to their award-winning real-time strategy game Kohan : Immortal Soverigns. The original game brought a rare spark of originality to this stalest of genres, offering an experience that was closer to a real-time Heroes Of Might & Magic than your traditional Command & Conquer clone. Now the imaginatively titled sequel Kohan II will build on that novel gameplay, while replacing the rather primitive isometric 2D graphics of the original with state-of-the-art 3D rendering, allowing over a hundred units on screen at once and featuring all the latest buzz words, such as bump mapping and vertex and pixel shader support. Add to that dozens of new hero units to develop and the promise of "a never before seen mode of online play", and TimeGate could be on to another winner. Our only hope is that this time it doesn't take over six months to bring the game to Europe... Related Feature - Kohan review

Over the years there has been a veritable flood of business management sims with the words Giant and/or Tycoon in the title, varying from the addictive (Rollercoaster Tycoon) to the superfluous (Oil Tycoon). The latest such game to pop up is Restaurant Tycoon, the brainchild of Trevor Chan and his team at Enlight. The Hong Kong based developer is something of a veteran of the genre, with the hit Capitalism series amongst their back catalogue, and another sim (the JoWooD published Hotel Giant) currently in the works. Indeed, a quick comparison of the screenshots of Hotel Giant and Restaurant Tycoon reveals a certain family resemblance. As the title suggests, the company's latest project puts you in charge of a restaurant, with responsibility for hiring, firing and training waiters, cleaners and cooks, decorating the premises, stocking ingredients, and of course spying on customers to see their reactions to your culinary creations. To add a soupçon of excitement, you'll also be able to prepare special meals for celebrity guests and take part in international contests to show off your cooking skills. Or you can just cheat by slipping cockroaches into your rivals' creations, amongst a range of dirty tricks on offer to less scrupulous chefs. Eugh. With settings ranging from Paris and New York to the Middle East, three different types of cuisine to master and a host of management options to fine tune, Enlight are hoping that Restaurant Tycoon will follow in the footsteps of their successful Capitalism series. Will it be another five star production or the gaming equivalent of an M1 service station? You'll have to wait and see, because Restaurant Tycoon is going to be in the oven for the best part of a year, with a spring 2003 release on the cards for Europe, courtesy of Korean publisher Phantagram. In the meantime you'll just have to whet your appetite on a banquet-sized portion of screenshots of the game. Related Feature - Restaurant Tycoon screenshots

With the World Cup already in full swing and their home team fortunately still in the tournament, German developer Handy Games has unveiled its latest J2ME-based game for the latest generation of mobile phone handsets. Titled Fussball Fun, it pits you against the CPU in a three-a-side mobile football match. And if tapping away on your handset is too much like hard work, you can sit back and watch a pair of AI-controlled teams battling it out instead. The game is available for T-Mobile subscribers in Germany to download from the company's online portal, and is tailored to work on the Siemens MT50 and SL45i phones, while on the new Samsung SGH-S100 you'll get colour graphics and proper sound effects. Ooh. Related Feature - Java In Your Hands

Just when you thought it was safe to assume E3 was over and the industry was back to normal, we've unearthed a tantalising titbit of Nintendosity from the latest NGC Magazine that seemingly has yet to penetrate the ether(net). Probing the dark recesses of Nintendo's E3 stand this year, the NGC team uncovered a peculiarity: Donkey Kong on the GameCube. From a developer other than Rare. But instead of slotting neatly into the Donkey Kong series as a 3D platform adventure, this "Create-a-Kong" game sees players build up vintage Donkey Kong levels of their own design and then transfer them to the GBA where they can be played, and the cycle repeated ad nauseum. NGC speculates that there must be more to come from the title, stating that it seemed as though the whole thing could be done on the GBA without the help of the Cube. Meditate on this, we will.

Scoring top marks for topicality, Soldier Of Fortune II sees the world being threatened by the menace of a terrorist group armed with lethal biological agents. Naturally it's up to you, occupying the jack boots of all-American gun fetishist and mustachioed mercenary John Mullins, to put an end to this.

Long-time fans of the Final Fantasy series will know that with the advent of each new platform Squaresoft adopts, enormous leaps are taken in new directions. Final Fantasy II introduced SNES owners to the glory of 16-bit graphics and Cecil's carefully woven story of intrigue showed gamers that Square could do more than just paint and program. Later on, Final Fantasy VII on Sony's fledgling PlayStation ushered in a new era of jaw-dropping CG and polygonal characters fighting in front of beautiful pre-rendered backdrops.

Eidos has announced that its second GameCube release in Europe will be Ace Golf, known to our cousins across the pond in America as Swingerz Golf for some reason. Thankfully the dubious title and extraneous "z" are both being dropped for the European release. Developed in Japan by Telenet, the game features a mixture of serious ball physics and not-so-serious characters. Fourteen "offbeat" cartoon golfers will be available, ranging from a female soldier to a leather clad biker, each with their own unique abilities and personalities. You'll also have a choice of six caddies to lug your clubs around for you, with half a dozen golf courses available for them to roam across, including everything from a traditional English course to a cactus studded desert. If that's not enough for you, how about four gameplay modes - from full tournament to short course - and support for up to four players to tear up the turf together? We should know whether Eidos have landed a hole-in-one or dropped it in the rough when the game appears on European shelves some time in the autumn. For now you'll have to content yourself with a batch of early screenshots though. Related Feature - Ace Golf screenshots

Following a somewhat rocky launch which was plagued with network problems, Square's Final Fantasy XI received its first major patch last weekend, with all the PlayOnline servers taken down for major bug fixes and upgrades and a new version of the game required for players to log on. However, although the patch seems to have fixed many issues, other problems continue to plague the ambitious online RPG. Most embarrassingly for Square - and indeed for Sony - is the revelation that the game is entirely incompatible with certain models of PS2. Some (unspecified) PS2 models allegedly refuse entirely to boot the game, instead displaying an error message and ceasing to function. Sony is thought to be aware of the problem, and players encountering it have been asked to notify the company, although it's not known what kind of fix is planned. Perhaps even more damaging for the commercial success of the game, however, is the situation regarding the PS2 hard drive in Japan. FFXI requires a hard drive to be installed before you can play it, and it appears that poor sales of the game to date (compared with other titles in the Final Fantasy series) are almost entirely attributable to the massive shortages of hard drive stocks. Most consumers are being forced to buy PS2 hard drives as part of an ISP service bundle rather than at retail, effectively squeezing out anyone who already has a broadband connection, and even those lucky enough to be allocated a drive are having to wait up to seven weeks for it to arrive. There are reports of gamers desperate to try the title having to ring around multiple ISPs on a regular basis until they find one who actually has a unit in stock (and is prepared to sell it). Final Fantasy XI is due to be released in North America and Europe in 2003 on PlayStation 2 and PC. Hopefully the lessons learned from the troubled Japanese launch will be applied to releases in other territories, and once the game finally arrives it'll actually be a polished - and working - product.

Last week we spoke to Ed Howson of Masabi about their new hand-held version of the classic BBC Micro platform puzzler Repton. Today we take a wider look at the state of the mobile phone industry, how gaming fits in, and why we should all replace our creaky old handsets with the next generation of Java-compatible phones due out later this year.

Pikmin is now available in the UK. I see you already have a copy there. This is good. But you might not understand quite how far Nintendo is going to promote this peculiar piece of botanical beauty. Enlisting the services of Mother Nature herself, late last year the company renamed an actual flower in commemoration of the Shigeru Miyamoto-designed videogame, and today, what should the postman be hauling up to our door? The very same flower: The Pikmin Flower, née Bacopa Cabana. Described as an agricultural masterpiece by the accompanying literature, we were impressed by how little soil has managed to wriggle free of its potted prison in transit. To be sure, it's not a Donkey Kong Daisy, nor a Mario Marigold - not even a Zelda Azalea - but it's a handy little plant, rugged in all conditions (although a bit needier during hot spells), and it flowers during the spring, summer and autumn. We have no idea where you can buy them, and we reckon you won't, either, but we've got one, and hope to bring you updates on its progress in the garden later in the month. Unfortunately, attempts to make it follow us around and build bridges, break down doors and crush our enemies have so far proved fruitless. Much like the plant itself. Related Feature - Pikmin review

Rage has opened the official website for its "aggressive inline skating" game, Rolling. The Flash site features a brief introduction to the game, equally brief profiles on some of the world's top skaters featured in the game, and the first of a series of developer diaries charting the title's progress towards completion. This opening installment mostly talks about the vast amount of animation involved in bringing all the game's tricks to life, from grinding and shuffling to grabs and jumps. Rolling is due for release in November on PlayStation 2, with GameBoy Advance, GameCube and Xbox versions expected early in 2003. In the meantime, we have four new shots of the game in action to give you a taste of how the game is shaping up. Related Feature - Rolling screenshots (PS2)

Blizzard's latest real-time strategy game Warcraft III : Reign Of Chaos has gone gold, publisher Vivendi Universal confirmed today. Apparently a ludicrous 4.5m copies of the game have already been ordered by anxious retailers, which would make this one of the fastest selling games of all time if it meets expectations. "We're very excited to announce that development of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos has been completed and that gamer and retail demand will make this the largest launch in gaming history", Blizzard's president Mike Morhaime beamed. Warcraft III is expected to appear on shelves across Europe on July 5th. Given the huge number of copies being shipped to retail, it should be hard to miss. Related Feature - Warcraft III - The Story So Far

In a welcome break from tradition, the Xbox port of Lotus Challenge will actually feature a range of improvements compared to its older PlayStation 2 sibling. According to publisher Titus, the physics has been revamped to give punters "more player-friendly arcade handling" and "an incredible impression of speed", graphics have been tweaked to take advantage of the Xbox's hardware, and tracks have been modified. The Xbox version of the game will also sport enhanced stunt challenges, which see you performing spectacular feats for the movie and advertising industries. Otherwise the gameplay of the original is intact, which means racing classic Lotus sports cars around a range of settings, from the streets of Tokyo and London to a Lotus test track and the Arizona Speedway circuit. Vehicles available include everything from the famous Lotus 7 (as driven by Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner) and Esprit (used by Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only) to old Lotus Formula One cars. Expect Lotus Challenge to crash on to the Xbox some time in September. Related Feature - Lotus Challenge screenshots (Xbox)

Those of you keeping up with the world's first massively multiplayer console RPG (that's Final Fantasy XI) will be interested to hear what shape the world's first massively multiplayer console RPG patch took. It's pretty boring, actually. Despite the cynical hopes of some, the patch did not take the form of a massive bug fix, instead focusing on gameplay tweaks to help balance out the persistent world of Vana D'iel. Squaresoft is to take down the PlayOnline servers for four hours to perform database maintenance and fix a couple of minor text interface bugs in the actual game code, but apart from that, we can't see anything to get too worried about. In fact, the ruthlessly efficient developer suspended new user registrations and account cancellations for the whole of yesterday to prevent difficulties resulting from additional server load - a bold move, and one that will doubtless annoy some of the citizens of Vana D'iel, but perhaps a logical one. At the moment it seems that players of the game are enjoying themselves. Square has commented on the issue recently, decrying comments made by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, who made an assertion that FFXI was failing because of its dependence on networked gaming, by highlighting the game's popularity amongst players. At the moment the main problem facing FFXI stems from hardware shortages. Without the hard disk and broadband adapter, players are unable to make their way into the game world, and this has stunted sales, with interest surging sporadically as Sony struggles to keep up with demand. It was always going to be difficult for Squaresoft to pull this off first time, and with more updates and the game's American release still to come, it seems likely that the developer and the platform holder will have learnt from their mistakes, and that if and when it materialises in Europe, it will be an extremely polished product. Related Feature - Final Fantasy XI preview

A number of job losses are rumoured at Infogrames Sheffield House as part of a restructuring of certain operations at the French publisher Infogrames' Sheffield House offices have been targeted for restructuring by the multinational publisher, with rumours circulating on development forums suggesting that a number of layoffs have occurred at the studio as a result. The layoffs are expected to mostly affect a range of services which will now be outsourced to other Infogrames locations, but the number of games in development at the studio will also be reduced to two. No details on the exact numbers of job losses are available as yet, despite significant Internet rumour-mongering surrounding the news, but it is thought that tens of employees have been laid off. Infogrames is reportedly seeking to cut costs across its entire range of operations at the moment. The company is no stranger to aggressive restructuring, with changes affecting every office of the company - including London and corporate headquarters in Lyons - over the past couple of years. Jean-Marcel Nicolai, VP of European internal development studios, emphasised that these changes will result in higher quality product from the studio. According to Nicolai, "Infogrames has changed a lot in the last few years, and as a result has constantly looked at restructuring to make the most of its positions. This goes on all the time and people don't realise it - it's only when it impacts people's jobs that the outside world becomes aware." The Sheffield House studio, which formed the core part of Gremlin prior to its acquisition by Infogrames for £23 million in 1999, has had a somewhat chequered history. Many of its products, including UEFA Striker, Hogs of War and Wacky Races, have been commercial disappointments, and in January this year former Gremlin boss Ian Stewart was linked with a rumoured bid to buy back the studio. Although this never materialised, rumours of a management buy-out attempt at the studio continue to surface with surprising regularity. Related Feature - Superman screenshots (PS2)

Microsoft this morning announced that it will be cutting Xbox software prices as part of a summer promotion to "bring even more value to gamers". The bad news is that only five Microsoft published games are included in the promotion at this point, and although it's nice to see the ever popular Dead Or Alive 3 and Project Gotham Racing reduced to £39.99 / €59.99, the other three games being discounted are somewhat less inspiring. Both Azurik and Nightcaster have received mixed reviews and failed to set the charts on fire, while NBA Inside Drive 2002 is likely to prove less popular in Europe than in basketball-mad America. "These titles have done very well for us, and all have appeared in and around the top-ten Xbox sales charts", Xbox Europe VP Sandy Duncan pronounced, before stretching his credibility somewhat by claiming that "we have also received an overwhelming response to these games through reviews and awards, proving that both the industry and consumers love Xbox and its games portfolio." Whether this heralds a rethink on Xbox software pricing remains to be seen, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to bring the cost of Xbox games in line with the competition. Microsoft expects more than 150 games to be available for the Xbox in Europe by Christmas, but as many of those will be available more or less simultaneously on all three console formats, it seems a bit much to expect punters to fork out an extra £5 for the Xbox version. Related Feature - Xbox price cut buoys sales

Capcom has unveiled its latest Xbox project - Shinji Mikami's Dino Crisis 3. Apparently an Xbox exclusive, this latest instalment of the popular series sees a team of intergalactic Marines trapped onboard a Colony Spaceship infested with cold-blooded beasts. This latest addition to Capcom's stable of survival horror games is already taking shape and two visually impressive screenshots accompanied the Japanese announcement. A very major new addition to the game is jet propulsion packs, and what with jetpacks and only vaguely dino-related alien badguys, the game seems to be shaping up in a similar way to Sega's Gun Valkyrie. Except that it will be frightening in the traditional sense, and not frighteningly difficult instead. Capcom's mastery of the "alone and scared" genre is unrivalled, but Dino Crisis 3 will see players fighting as a team to survive. Whether this will stretch to multiplayer modes is difficult to say, but with Resident Evil Online already threatening to do that on PlayStation 2, it wouldn't surprise us. Related Feature - Dino Crisis 3 screenshots

The five of you out there who actually play games on your Macintoshes will be glad to hear that Neverwinter Nights is being brought to Apple's translucent computer for people with more money than sense. Infogrames' MacSoft label will be handling the title, which is expected to arrive on shelves a couple of months after the recently completed PC original. Players on both formats should be able to play online together and exchange home-made campaigns and maps. "Neverwinter Nights will provide limitless adventure and Macintosh gamers will have unprecedented game play options as they join the existing Neverwinter Nights community", enthusiastic Neverwinter Nights producer Trent Oster proclaimed. Or they could just buy a real computer and get the game two months earlier... Related Feature - A Neverwinter Night's Dream

In reverse order of excitement, ARC System Works' Guilty Gear X is currently set for release on the GameBoy Advance in September 2002, and the appallingly named Marvelous Entertainment's appallingly named King of Fighter EX : Neo Blood is due in August. Of course, it's a good thing it's not "King of Fighters EX", because you'd look pretty stupid asking for that in a shop. Go on, say it out loud. Anyway, the recurrent 2D beat 'em up staggers ever onward on multiple platforms, but GGX and KOF on the GBA are perhaps forgivably 2D. And was there ever anything strictly wrong with 2D beat 'em ups anyway? No, not really. So get excited, because Guilty Gear X is a 2D beat 'em up the way 2D beat 'em ups should be done, and King of Fighter EX is an update to the excellent Neo Geo Pocket Color games of a similar name. To begin with, they both have a stupid, completely irrelevant plot, which could easily be spun into a daft film with a plot even less relevant, and in turn not even strictly relevant to the game it started life as. No doubt starring Kylie and Van Damme. GGX has a lot of different play modes, from the standard arcade, training and versus modes to the more intriguing three-on-three link cable and tug modes, developed exclusively for the GBA, and an aptly named mode from the Dreamcast version - Survival. King of Fighter EX isn't looking that bad in the modes department either, with a story-driven team play mode (which is actually single player), team versus team (which is actually two-player), single play mode and survival mode. Players of GGX also have the option to pick from 14 characters with a handful of others waiting to be unlocked throughout the game, and finally the game will let players create their own characters to throw into the mix, which should be an interesting task to say the least. Hopefully the excellent character balance from the PlayStation 2 version will also make the transition. There, individual strengths complement and defeat one another demanding a truly strategic approach to battling.

The last time someone made a game about the Manx TT, it was Sega. And it was crap. I'll give you a few seconds so you can fully absorb that fact. Are you finished? Right. Actually, if you like bikes floating several feet above the track and sub-Sega Rally graphics, incredibly you can still download a demo of the PC version of the game in some places and see what I mean. Here, for instance. But you really shouldn't. Instead, TT fans, you should look ahead to Jester Interactive's official Isle of Man T.T. title for PlayStation 2, due out in 2003, presumably in time for the famous race itself. Jester has been laying the groundwork for the title, sending three of its company directors to the island on Jubilee weekend to capture footage of the 38 mile-long course, and to take measurements and make notes to help make the game as authentic as possible. And, amazingly, they actually rode it. This reconnaissance mission hasn't anything to do their desire to see the TT or get a nice paid holiday, surely? "We are all big motorbike fans at Jester," says Tim Wright, Creative Director of the company. "To truly appreciate every nuance of the circuit you need to ride some of it at race speeds. We went to the Island to do just that, and the lessons we've learned and the footage we've captured will be invaluable." I suppose that's reasonable. The game is already causing a stir on the quiet little island, and we understand that the government has given the team at Jester full access to the course. After the unlikely success of Super Trucks, which was surprisingly good and extremely detailed by all accounts, perhaps this title, with its thorough research and widespread backing, could become the first great game about the TT to appear.