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Although the 64-bit version of Mario Kart possessed some of the previous game's spirit, the finest aspects of the game came up short. The tracks were often too wide, long, or overly complex, and the attempts at 3D often lacklustre. The fuzzy N64 graphics were a bit off-putting, and worst of all, Battle Mode - the very foundation of the original's longevity - was spoilt by an insistence on three dimensions, and the absence of Mario Kart's signature claustrophobic track design.

The wait is finally over. Morrowind, probably the most eagerly anticipated PC role-playing game this side of Baldur's Gate II, has arrived in Europe. And although it has its flaws, it's still an entertaining, addictive and time consuming game.

While EA are running their own little America-only mapping contest for their hit first person shooter Medal Of Honor : Allied Assault, EA Germany have teamed up with 3D Gaming to run a more open competition. All you have to do is submit your own homebrew Allied Assault map - single player, deathmatch or objective based - by July 14th. Prizes include American copies of Allied Assault, Renegade and Red Alert 2 as well as mousepads, soundtrack CDs, baseball caps and Medal of Honor goodies in the form of posters, t-shirts and zippo lighters. Full details at the Map Assault website. Related Feature - Allied Assault review

Codemasters have confirmed that another new entry in their World Championship Snooker series is being racked up ready for release on PC, PS2 and Xbox. Developers Blade Interactive Studios are promsiing "all the skill, tension and atmosphere of professional snooker matches", with TV style presentation, a new neural network based AI system and improved graphics sporting more detailed player models, smoother animations and facial expressions. The game will also include two variations on pool - nine ball and English eight ball - for when you get bored of potting reds. "World Championship Snooker 2003 is set to continue the series' success and will be another genre-leading title in Codemasters' sports game portfolio", marketing director Mike Hayes confidently predicted. With a winter release on the table, we should know the truth in about six months...

Take 2 last night unveiled its financial results for the three months to April 30th, showing a profit of $9.6m compared to a loss of $11.5m this time last year. Revenues almost doubled, from $88 to $170m, largely thanks to the continuing chart dominating success of Grand Theft Auto 3, which has now shifted over six million units worldwide, making it the biggest PlayStation 2 hit to date. But bizarrely enough, despite these strong results and the promise of more good news to come later in the year, the company's share price dropped over 15% following the announcement, causing the entire games sector to dip in after hours trading. The reason? Stupid analysts apparently. Take 2 raised its earnings guidance (how much money it expects to make in the next three months) to $100m, but wildly optimistic analysts had expected the company to earn even more than that, somewhere in the region of $145m, to be precise. So even though the company is expecting to make more money this summer than it anticipated a few months ago, and beat both its own guidance and analysts' expectations in the last quarter, the share price still dropped sharply. Go figure. "To be fair, it was the analysts' view of how big (our upcoming quarter) should be and not the company's view", CEO Kelly Sumner told Reuters, as the value of his share options took a slide on the NASDAQ.

Way back in the mists of time (the mid 1980s, to be precise) a young lad called John Bye took his first tentative steps into the gaming industry, courtesy of a platform puzzler called Repton. Not only did he get his first taste of videogame journalism, writing a fictionalized walkthrough of the first level of Repton 3 for his school magazine, but he also made his first mods using the groundbreaking level and sprite editors that shipped with the game.

Last week we learned that British developers Masabi were bringing Repton to the latest PDAs and Java compatible mobile phones, and being huge fans of the original BBC Micro games we tracked them down to find out exactly what they had planned. We got more than we bargained for though, as Superior Software boss Richard Hanson revealed that PC and GameBoy Advance versions of Repton are also "in the final stages of development". Details of the company's resurgence are scarce at this stage, but Superior Software will apparently be launching a new website in the near future with more information about the new Repton games, as well as possible conversions of other classic BBC Micro titles that they published back in the 1980s. Exile Advance, maybe? In the meantime though, enjoy our Mobile Repton interview with Richard Hanson and Masabi's Ed Howson, which covers everything from Repton's classic gameplay and level editing facilities to the advantages of networking the game's community and the possibilties of bringing Superior Software to the GameBoy Advance. Related Feature - Repton returns!

Nintendo's decision to distribute GameCube software on non-standard miniature DVDs was at least partly taken as an effort to stop piracy, but today we were shocked to learn that a group calling themselves Team BMM have circumvented this copy protection using a somewhat .. bizarre method. To back up their extreme claims, the hackers have released a 12Mb movie showing them copying Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and playing the cracked copy in their GameCube. The grainy home video ends abruptly though as an argument breaks out between the ski-masked members of the warez team, leading to a scuffle. Proof at last of ELSPA's contention that videogame piracy supports more violent forms of crime? Watch the video and judge for yourselves.

Sony held its annual PlayStation Awards in Tokyo last night, honouring the achievements of PlayStation developers over the past year. Nominations for the coveted PlayStation Grand Prix included Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Koei's Shin Sangoku Musou 2 (Dynasty Warriors 3), Sega's Virtua Fighter 4 and Square's Kingdom Hearts, but the winner was Square's epic Final Fantasy X - recently released in Europe after a long delay - which also received a Double Platinum Prize for over two million units shipped. Platinum Prizes (more than one million units) went to Sony itself for Everybody's Golf 3, Enix for Dragon Quest IV and Onimusha 2 from Capcom, which is scheduled for release in Europe later this year. Gold Prizes (more than half a million units) went to a longer list of games, including all of the nominees for Grand Prix other than FFX, Konami for Winning Elevens 5 and 6, Bandai for a trio of games with stupidly long names and Capcom for Devil May Cry. There were a number of other prizes awarded, and for the full rundown you should head over to The Magic Box.

According to the Japanese press, Nintendo and Square are already bickering over this and that. During Nintendo's analysts meeting on Thursday, it was remarked that Final Fantasy XI did not sell well, and that poor performance was down to its being an online game. Later, Square CEO Youichi Wada shot back that "Final Fantasy XI is opening up to a new market as a challenging pioneer. [We] would hope that Nintendo would even support us on the issue." Defending his product further, Wada-san added: "People who are currently playing Final Fantasy XI are satisfied, but people who haven't played would have misunderstandings [based on Nintendo's comments]." In good news though, the GameCube version of Final Fantasy is said - by former Nintendo Pres' Hiroshi Yamauchi - to be "ground-breaking software". Nintendo and Square parted company at the birth of the original PlayStation because of mutual distaste for the other's plans. Nintendo went on to release the N64, and Square went on to release Final Fantasy VII… You know, it wouldn't hurt Nintendo's outlook to be nice to them, would it? Related Feature - Final Fantasy XI preview

Virgin Interactive has popped up this week with some screenshots of its graphic novel-inspired sci-fi console shooter Falcone: Into the Maelstrom. Originally announced last year, the game runs on the Unreal Warfare graphics engine, and features a plot penned by 2000AD writer Robbie Morrison and characters designed by 2000AD and Batman artist Jim Murray. After showing us the space combat aspect of the game last year, Virgin has finally released a handful of first person adventure shots. The highly polished screenshots are as shiny as you might expect for a game using the Unreal Warfare engine running on current console hardware, and the various shades of grey that make up your average swash-buckling space-pirate caper are complemented more than adequately by colourful mech-style robotic suits and the aforementioned nebula-packed space combat bits. With the 2000AD influence the game's detailed visuals might at least have something behind them, but Falcone still faces strong competition from the likes of TimeSplitters 2 when it arrives on PlayStation 2 and Xbox in November of this year. Whatever the outcome of that particular battle, Falcone is more likely to draw criticism from the Daily Mail brigade with its promises of limb severance and accurate dismemberment models - yeesh! Related Feature - Falcone: Into the Maelstrom screenshots

Online gaming is once again being touted as the next big thing, teetering on the edge of greatness. This time the optimistic prognosis comes in the form of a market report from DFC Intelligence, who claim that 114 million people will be playing games online by 2006, including 23 million console gamers. The one caveat here is "whether individual companies will be able to monetize that usage", according to DFC president David Cole. Most online gamers are notoriously unwilling to pay for anything, whether it's from a practical standpoint (casual gamers) or religious convictions (hardcore gamers). Despite this, top online games are apparently already earning upwards of $100m over their life time. The bad news is that there are far too many online games in development for the size of the market, something we could have told you for nothing. It seems barely a week goes by without some developer you've never heard of before announcing a massively multiplayer number crunching game, or a big name publisher leaping on the EverQuest bandwagon to the promised land, where anti-social geeks throw money at you to spend all day running around in a dress killing orcs. The report obviously goes into a lot more detail than this - four hundred pages worth, to be precise - but as you'll have to pay DFC the best part of $3,000 to get hold of a copy, we think most of you will make do with the free one-page summary... Related Feature - Online gaming overhyped

What is it with beach volleyball? Did games developers just suddenly discover it out of the blue? Sega's Beach Spikers was the first recent example we had heard about, and it does look jolly good, promising to be both bouncy and addictive, Virtua Tennis style. But since then we've had Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, or at least a virtually pornographic movie of the game from developer Tecmo, and now we have Outlaw Golf developer Hypnotix' Outlaw Volleyball, as reported by The Magic Box. Do the screenshots look good? They're curvy, that's for sure, and we're not just being perverse - the player models seem to boast some stupid polycounts. Either that or we're just looking at cheekily passed off renders. Make your own mind up. Related Feature - Tecmo's Sexbox

In search of further promotion for its already-chart-topping footy title, 2002 FIFA World Cup, EA Sports has simulated the competition, game for game, with the in-depth results available on its website. If you're interested, so far of the 19 matches that have taken place - the 20th, France-Uruguay, is currently at 67 minutes - EA's World Cup game has accurately predicted the scores of six, and overall outcome of ten. If the group results are anything to go by, both the Republic of Ireland and England will be celebrating, and the Italians - one of the cup favourites - will beat Brazil 2-0 in the final. Related Feature - 2002 FIFA World Cup Xbox review

When you think about football management simulations, which game comes to mind first? Championship Manager. There's no disputing the fact that it's the genre's pinnacle, the very bastion of footy management games, and with each new release it gets even better. The other day we talked about accurate player statistics in Pro Evolution Soccer, but Championship Manger is so thoroughly researched that even in small-print the list of contributors is longer than my arm, and the results it produces are respected not only by fans of the game but fans of the sport.

The changing of the guard at Nintendo has brought about a surprisingly glum outlook on the gaming industry's future, with both the retiring 74 year old president Hiroshi Yamauchi and his (relatively) youthful replacement Satoru Iwata both bleak in their outlook. "We can't be optimistic about the game market", Iwata told journalists. "No matter what great product you come up with, people get bored. I feel like a chef cooking for a king who's full." Yamauchi was even more depressed about the whole thing, commenting that "game developers are running out of ideas" and that "delivering surprise is becoming extremely difficult". Which could explain games like Mario Tennis, Mario Golf and Mario Tiddlywinks. Even worse, game development is becoming too costly and too time consuming, leading Nintendo to seek to develop their games more rapidly without sacrificing quality. Which may explain games like Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin, both of which are a lot of fun but rather short lived. You only have to look at Square to see what they mean though - having hundreds of artists slaving away for years on a game that costs millions of dollars to develop is rather excessive, however pretty the end result. If it wasn't for the inevitably stratospheric sales that any new (single player) Final Fantasy game achieves these days, we suspect it would be something of a dead-end even for Square. Is this where the industry as a whole is heading?

It's generally acknowledged that Nintendo don't need to win the console wars to make a profit on the GameCube, as strong first party game sales and cheap hardware components help them make their money back quicker than rivals like Microsoft, who lose a small fortune on every Xbox that is sold. That hasn't stopped the Japanese company from setting their sights high though, with their latest forecasts announced today suggesting that they will sell some twelve million Cubes worldwide in their current financial year. That's on top of the four million or so they sold last year. By March 2005 Nintendo expects that figure to reach somewhere in the region of fifty million, or about where the PlayStation 2 is scheduled to be at the end of this year. Whether they can reach these targets remains to be seen though. The console got off to a flying start here in Europe and has been selling quite consistently in America, but in its native Japan it's being completely obliterated by the PS2. So far this year only half a million GameCubes have been sold in Japan, despite the much anticipated release of Biohazard (or Resident Evil, to you and me). In the same period Sony have chalked up nearly two million sales, and the latest figures we've seen from Japan show the PS2 outselling the GameCube by around ten to one. No doubt the arrival of flagship titles like Mario, Zelda and Starfox will help pick things up later in the year, but it's still going to be a steep mountain to climb. Related Feature - Cube cut in Japan

Extreme sports games seem to be all the rage at the moment, but one of the more .. well, extreme that we've seen recently is Codename : Smokin' Barrels from Australian developer Bungarra. Although it's ostensibly a surfing game, it replaces the traditional sun-soaked beaches and sedentary wave chasing of most surf sims with bizarre settings ranging from waterfalls to downtown Venice. Coming across as a hybrid of Tony Hawk on a surfboard and the Arnie movie The Running Man, it has you "riding for your life" as a contender in an oddball TV show, facing threats varying from waterfalls, whirlpools and rapids to boulders, giant swinging axes and bursts of steam. Rather you than me. Along the way you'll pick up points for pulling off outlandish tricks and stunts, from the usual surfing shenanigans to grinding your way out along tree trunks and the like. Expect Smokin' Barrels to appear on the PlayStation 2 some time early next year, with publisher yet to be confirmed. If you can't wait that long, some early in-game footage is available at the bottom of the gallery page on Bungarra's website.

In a frankly bizarre ruling, the Independent Television Commission has banned the Xbox's infamous "life is short" TV advert. Probably the console's best known ad on this side of the pond, it portrayed a baby being shot out from between a woman's legs in a hospital, getting older as it flew through the air, before eventually crashing into a grave as an old man. The punch line? "Life is short. Play more." So what were the grounds for the ban? Misleading advertisement? A chronic lack of in-game footage? Having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the product being plugged? No, apparently it was because some viewers found it offensive. According to a report from Ananova, more than a hundred viewers across the UK complained about the advert's content. Rumours that all of the complaints were typed in block capitals and ended with the words "Xbox $uxs, gameCube R0xors" have yet to be confirmed. Upholding the complaints, the ITC commented that "the man's screams throughout his life's journey suggest a traumatic experience". Insert obligatory joke about the size of the Xbox controller here. The ITC found that these screams, "together with the reminder that life is short, made the final scene more shocking". Or, for those of us who don't have a life mission to make the world as bland a place as possible, more amusing. We're now looking forward to the inevitable banning of the latest PlayStation 2 advert, on the grounds that the sight of a strange French bloke eating memory cards is likely to put people off their dinner. Related Feature - PlayStation 2 with a slice of lemon

The Breath of Fire series' first outing on PlayStation 2 looks 'different'. That's our verdict based on a 97 second video shown at E3 and now available from IGN. We already know something of the game's premise, which we learnt from the developer's expo announcements last month. In a long-standing series tradition the story concerns a young Ranger called Ryu, who lives in the underground city of Shelter, and one day wakes up and decides to head upstairs to see what lies on the surface. Ryu - along with Yorda-esque central female character and some of the enemies shown in the video - boasts a strong black outline, but he and the world he inhabits is far from cel-shaded. The characters aren't as detailed as you might imagine but their environment is dark, claustrophobic and futuristic. The setting is a labyrinthine world built out of the rubble of society in the pursuit of survival, and the desperately constructed caverns are lined with railings, thick glass and gunmetal walls and gangways. In the video, Ryu comes up against lots of spider-like creatures as well as a huge dragon/dinosaur like boss whose roar shakes the screen, but by the looks of things our hero is only accompanied by his love interest, and the level her involvement is unknown at this point. Fleeting glimpses of the battle system suggest a very cinematic approach with heavy blows emphasized by slow motion, and lots of magic, but sadly the movie did not demonstrate the PETS system, which was highlighted in the original Capcom press release. PETS (Positive Encounter and Tactics System) will let people lace the battlefield with traps and decoys to aid progress, and we really want to see how it works. Due out this Winter, we're starting to get excited about Breath of Fire. Can it reinvent itself sufficiently and thrive exclusively within the confines of dungeons? We'll see. Related Feature - Deep Breath

Sony's plans to tightly integrate its suite of multimedia products - TVs, VCRs, DVD players and PCs - include the 30-million-selling PlayStation 2, Bloomberg is reporting, and the first step towards their goals is PS2 Memory Stick support. Shinichi Okamoto, SCEI's CTO and senior veepee, explained on Monday that Sony is "trying to make PlayStation 2 fit in digitalized consumer electronics products," and that the company "will take steps for that this year." PlayStation 2 can already play DVDs, and shortly Sony plans to connect it to the Internet. By providing Memory Stick support through an adapter, the company gives users the opportunity to store countless save games - current memory cards store only 8Mb, whereas Memory Stick can reach more than fifty times that capacity - as well as software and other data. Using the Memory Stick to store music is one suggestion - a clear hint at an Xbox-style game soundtrack solution.

Virtually unknown PC developer Staggan Ltd. has announced its plans for a massively multiplayer online football game, called United Soccer. Footy fans will be able to play United Soccer offline in single and two player modes, before heading online to compete co-operatively with up to 10 other players on the same team, fighting in leagues, cups and sponsored tournaments. If the game becomes popular then this could be great news, but little is known at present about the technology that drives the game, and early screenshots on the developer's website look simplistic to say the least, with no real lighting system yet and not much player detail, even if the stadiums do look quite nice. It is not even yet known if the game will fall under the heading of simulation or arcade game, or what perspective players will take. The developer's overall plan is to produce a number of United Sport games, but this will surely rely on their ability to come up with a decent one to begin with. No doubt the costs involved in this project are quite considerable. With no release date in sight interested parties will have to stay tuned to the company's website, which presently rests at www.unitedsoccer.staggan.com.

Let's make something clear from the outset; Winning Eleven 6 is not the game that will eventually be released as Pro Evolution Soccer 2 in Europe. The final product will hopefully improve upon WE6 in the same way that WE6 improved upon Pro Evolution Soccer - specifically though, KCET is promising to work hard to overcome areas in the Japanese release which fall short of our expectations.

Multiplay UK have built up an enviable reputation over the last couple of years for running the biggest LAN parties in the UK, and their latest epic struggle of man and machinery (catchily titled i11) was expected to take place at Newbury race course on the weekend of June 21st to 23rd. Unfortunately things haven't gone as smoothly as usual this time, with the organisers today admitting that only 67 people have so far paid for their places at the event, which has a capacity of 600. "Whatever the reasons, be it exams or World Cup, the signups just don't seem to be coming in", Multiplay's Craig Fletcher announced this morning. "At the present number of paid people we would have no option [but] to cancel it. We'd rather not do this, as we love LANs just as much as those attending, but being a small family-run company, we simply cannot afford to take a loss of thousands of pounds." The event may still go ahead as planned, but that depends on the number of players booked for the event rising to at least 240 by Monday morning. More details on the Multiplay website.

An MIT graduate student has successfully dismantled Xbox's security system and published (after what appears to have been some discussion with Microsoft and EFF lawyers) the results. Bottom line - Xbox security relies on a "chain of trust" built on a "seed of trust" key that is included in a physically secure, secret boot block and which is identical in all shipped hardware. So if you've got one, you've got them all and Andrew "bunnie" Huang's paper explains how he was able to get them. You can get full details of what he did here, in the academic version submitted to MIT, and bunnie also publishes an entertaining and knockabout history of his Xbox activities here. The Register is particularly taken with his happy announcement "hey! I'm finally done with my PhD thesis on supercomputer architecture...I can finally spend some more time playing with the Xbox" before he gets down to tearing it apart. Most definitely, a crazy guy. Where Microsoft goes wrong in the Xbox security system is that although it camouflages the existence of the secret boot block via a not secret boot block, and makes it very difficult and expensive to access the secret block (it's hard coded into the southbridge system ASIC, which is built in 0.13 micron), the block itself is sent in clear over the HyperTransport northbridge-southbridge bus. Thus, by monitoring and analysing this traffic (bunnie tells how, it involves a belt sander, don't ask) you get the key. It doesn't take expensive hardware to do so, matter of fact it can be done with the kind of hardware an MIT grad student has lying around after doing his PhD thesis on supercomputer architecture. Once you've done so you then have the ability to investigate the bootloader and kernel further, as bunnie says he's doing, and opening out the Xbox for standard peripherals and other operating systems. As he says, "if you ship your secrets in your hardware, it is a good assumption that the users will eventually - and perhaps quickly - know your secrets." On an individual console basis his work suggests that it will be simple enough to be able to run what you want on Xbox hardware as currently constructed, and there are obvious implications for Microsoft as it begins to turn Xbox into a connected device. Xbox machines each have a unique ID, you could no doubt get access to these if you circumvented the security, so there is both a privacy issue and a threat to Microsoft's revenues from online services. The paper offers Microsoft some suggestions as to alternative and more viable security approaches, and no doubt The Beast is working on updates even as you read. As for you conspiracy theorists about to mail us suggesting it's all a plot to get you to buy Xboxes before they put on a better padlock - just don't, okay?

Ah, ISS2 lad, I've been expecting you. Take a seat. Now, I'm afraid we've had to reject your application for best football game ever. I'm sorry son, but in the areas of control, authenticity, graphics and AI, your big brother Pro Evo still has you beat. I know you were hoping to come up with a nice arcadey alternative, but it hasn't happened. Even at its lowest level, Pro Evo is yer daddy. Fortunately for you though, things are looking up with your latest outing. I'm impressed by the speed at which you move, particularly at your ability to get on with the game instead of wasting half a minute per stoppage, and in addition I like your player modelling, which in terms of size, facial expressions, mouths, eyes and whatnot actually outdoes FIFA!

Seagate last night unveiled its latest hard drive, the U Series X, specifically designed for use in a variety of consumer electronics devices, including the Xbox. Coming in 10Gb and 20Gb varieties, it's supposed to be 25% thinner than rival drives, 33% lighter, more shock resistant, more reliable and incredibly quiet. Using a fluid dynamic bearing motor (if that means anything to you), the drive apparently produces just 2.6 bels of noise, which should barely be audible to most people. The new drive is due to ship to "key customers" later this month, and presumably that will include Microsoft, who currently use a mixture of Seagate and Western Digital hard drives in the Xbox. Obviously reducing the weight and noise of the Xbox, however slightly, is a good thing™, and the smaller size of the drive should also improve airflow within the console.

One of the announcements we missed during the chaos of E3 a couple of weeks ago was Activision's absorption of yet another development studio. Z-Axis, the company behind the Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX series, will now become part of Activision's rapidly expanding in-house development stable, with $20m exchanging hands as part of the deal, along with assurances that key staff will stay at the company instead of jumping ship with their windfall. Despite the fact that Z-Axis is now part of Activision, they're still working on the bizarre sounding Dave Mirra BMX XXX for Acclaim. Described as the world's first "adult" (and we use that word in the loosest possible sense) extreme sports game, it adds scantily clad female bike riders into the mix, complete with "realistic physics for their hair, body and clothes" and FMV sequences of strippers being promised. And you thought Dead Or Alive Extreme Volleyball was bad... Related Feature - Activision grabs Shaba

While it received a critical slating from most quarters, the Tomb Raider movie did remarkably (worryingly?) well at the box office, quickly becoming the most successful videogame adaptation of all time. Unsurprisingly then, talk has been rife ever since that a sequel was on the way, with Speed director Jan de Bont signed up to helm the feature in recent months. And today more details have emerged. According to movie rumour site Dark Horizons, shooting could begin at Pinewood as soon as the end of August, with a summer 2003 release on the cards. There's also suggestions that "Cradle Of Life" is under consideration as the sequel's subtitle. Which would be a little ironic, as earlier reports suggested that lead actress Angelina Jolie's plans to start a family could get in the way of filming a sequel, although she neatly side-stepped that a few months ago by adopting a son instead of having her own. Meanwhile the official Red Dwarf website is reporting that Chris "Rimmer" Barrie will be returning as Lara Croft's butler in the sequel, claiming that "Chris was apparently such a hit in the first film that his role will be much increased this time round". Related Feature - Womb Raider