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Minoru Arakawa, President of Nintendo of America for the past 22 years, has announced his retirement from the position with immediate effect. After such a strong GameCube launch, Mr. Arakawa has decided now is the time to relinquish his duties. Mr. Arakawa will be succeeded by Tatsumi Himishima, who has served as Chief Financial Officer for The Pokemon Company and President of Pokemon USA during his short tenure with Nintendo. In related news, Nintendo will apparently use the Milia 2002 event in France to announce the launch date for GameCube in Europe. The console, which has been available in Japan and the USA since late last year, has been a point of significant consternation for gamers this side of the pond, with Nintendo seemingly indignant on the point of a release date. Only last month did they eventually let on that they were aware of the problem, and agreed to announce a launch date very soon.

Dune had everything going for it. It's based on one of the most epic of science fiction novels, released to coincide with the arrival on DVD of the eponymous TV mini-series and features a mixture of third person adventuring and Metal Gear Solid style stealth combat missions. Unfortunately it falls far short of its potential. Things get off to a promising start with an excellent training mission which teaches you the various moves that Paul "Muad'dib" Atreides can pull off. The animations are slick and life-like as Paul scrambles his way over a pile of boxes and backs up against a wall, edging along it before peaking round the corner and then rolling past the opening. Sneaking up behind a guard on tip toes, you take him by surprise and click your mouse button to "neutralise" him, causing the game to switch to a dramatic camera angle as Paul grabs him and slices his throat open. This has the added benefit of providing you with the victim's all-important water, which can be recycled by your stilsuit and used to boost your health if you are injured. The rest of the combat system is somewhat less slick though, requiring you to "lock on" to an enemy before you can fire your weapon. This tends to be a rather hit-and-miss affair and firefights are unnecessarily clumsy. While this is a stealth-focused game, sometimes you have no choice but to gun down an enemy and there's no reason why it should be this awkward. It's also annoying that you can only use your knife if you take your enemy by surprise; if a guard is alerted to your presence he will just keep backing away from you, firing his gun as you futilely wave your knife around in his face. Later in the game you can use "the voice" to temporarily paralyze any nearby guards, but for some reason this option is only open to you when you are almost dead. Given that the voice is a precursor to Obi Wan's Jedi mind tricks, this lacklustre implementation is something of a cop-out.

Intel has officially announced its new Pentium 4 revision, codenamed Northwood. It's smaller, faster but is certainly not cheap. At 2.2GHz (with lower and higher speed models on the drawing board), the chip scales as high as 2.6GHz using standard overclocking techniques. Northwood is also the first Pentium 4 to be manufactured using 0.13-micron fabrication techniques, with copper interconnects. Intel has been able to increase the chip's Level 2 cache (which should help) while reducing overall processor size by over 30 percent. The reviews have been flooding in as usual, many comparing Northwood at 2.2GHz to the Athlon XP 2000+. Here's a good feature at The Tech Report. The verdict seems to be that they both perform about the same, but that Northwood is a good bit more expensive, which makes it less economically viable, even if you can now twin it with DDR memory at a lower cost than RAMBUS. At the end of their press release, Intel hastened to add that this release means the Pentium 4 2GHz model is now at an all-time low! We're not sure we'd like to pay $342 per chip for a tray of 1000 units though. In practice there has been little price variance, with Bolton-based Scan (whose list is usually up to date), simply giving Northwood its own astronomical price category. AMD's tactic for dealing with Intel's high speed, high performance chip is to stress the price versus performance benefits of Athlon XP, and that a lower processor speed (and even a PR estimate that falls short of reality) don't necessarily point to an inferior processor. AMD has to try and educate the market to capitalize on its position, whereas Intel has the luxury of sitting around polishing its roadmap. Related Feature - Bits to Buy 2002

Computer & Video Games is reporting that Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of Liberty has been delayed in Europe. One of the year's most promising titles continues to elude European buyers, after an incredible reception in the States. The game has been unseated from its previous release date - February 22nd - and won't now see release in Europe until March 8th. Konami has produced two reasons for the delay of MGS2; that they have chosen to make the addition of a "Making of" DVD to every package, and also thanks to unprecedented demand for the title. Konami is calling it their "biggest ever day one order", and the manufacturing of such an enormous number of two-disc sets has forced the small delay. The "Making of" documentary has already shipped alongside the game in its native Japan, and a limited edition version of the game with the extra DVD can be purchased in the USA, where MGS2 is still driving PlayStation 2 sales. According to C&VG though, European gamers will also be treated to a couple of PAL-exclusive features. This is a staggering revelation for fans the world over, many of whom will consider trying to get hold of a European version for completion. The new modes are an Extreme Difficulty Mode and a Casting Theatre. "The latter will allow you to physically alter character models, one of which is the Ninja from the game: the European version is the only to allow gamers to play as the cyber-warrior." So, we now turn our attention to March 8th. Exactly two months from now. Oh crikey, it's pre-order o'clock. Related Feature - Picks for 2002

The over-commercialisation of Christmas is at best a mixed blessing, but the January sales are clearly just one of many pockets of heavy spending, sprinkled across the year to bolster the revenues of credit card companies and other financial institutions. Plus, they make a brilliant excuse to spend all that money you made selling your festive supply of socks, lights and party food. Oh, and your presents. The Internet isn't working quite as hard as the citizens of Oxford Street and so on, but there are a couple of sites kicking off the New Year with a bit of optional retail therapy, to sooth you back into the swing of working after such an extensive period of loafing. Amazon's sale is quite extensive, covering many of the website's ridiculously large number of departments. PC & Video Games receives several bargain areas. You can get up to 50% off a selection of PS2, PSone and Dreamcast games, and there are even some PC bargains with up to 40% off. Which isn't too hard to imagine, since 2001 was a pretty poor year for the PC on the whole. The Dreamcast section is particularly interesting at first, when it's clear that all of the games on the sale menu are £9.99 and less. After regaining your senses though, it might not seem quite so impressive. Sonic Adventure is the stand-out title at £7.49, but virtually every Dreamcast console sold in the UK is bound to be living in close proximity of a copy, so that's a moot point. Fighting Vipers 2 is a curious beat 'em up, also at £7.49, while lower down the list there are games like Wild Metal and Shadowman at £4.99. Making up the list are games like Re-Volt, Hidden & Dangerous and Worms Armageddon. Games which, it must be said, most people either own or don't plan on buying. And the less said about Chef's Luv Shack at £4.99 the better. The other major site delivering post-Yuletide savings is the once distended and cripplingly over-funded but now reformed and revenue-driven Gameplay. Their January sale covers items for every console they currently support, including oldies like the GameBoy Color and the Nintendo 64. Fans of the latter will definitely want to pick up Perfect Dark at £24.99. Further up the scale are modern classics like F355 Ferrari Challenge for £9.99 on the Dreamcast, and Rainbow Six for the same. PlayStation 2 owners may be vaguely disappointed with their category, facing a list of games which commands little respect. Supercar Street Challenge is a game most people haven't even heard of, while Shaun Palmer Snowboarding was a misguided attempt to mimic Tony Hawk on the fluffy white slopes of a mountain. The Weakest Link is a game that nearly drove our reviewer to insanity, however good it is compared to the other quiz games, and the final candidate on the list is Smuggler's Run at £19.99. A good game? Surprisingly, yes, but in the wake of games such as its esteemed sequel, then Grand Theft Auto III and Burnout, it seems less of a bargain. Other games like Half-Life and Twisted Metal Black hover at around the £29.99 mark. Interestingly, the PC section is the best stocked, with Rainbow 6 : Covert Ops for £4.99 along with its big brother, Rogue Spear : Urban Ops. Apart from those two though, the Internet doesn't seem to be terribly awash with January gubbins. We're still waiting to see if we can find some more, but in the meantime, you might like to consider a website like eBay, where millions of hapless Britishers are currently tapping away into their keyboards, desperate to shift bloated debts through the sale of their mediocre Christmas presents. Bidding is rife for new games, sold in their original plastic seal, and they often go for less than the asking price of most retailers. Bid wisely, young padawan, and happy shopping.

Back in the early 1990s games like Dune II, Command & Conquer and Warcraft spawned an entire new genre of real-time strategy games focused on resource gathering, base building and unit construction. Over the next few years the market was flooded with bland RTS clones, most of them rehashing the same basic ideas without adding anything new to the formula. Flash forward to 2002 and the massively multiplayer role-playing genre is at the same stage. Everyone from Blizzard to Squaresoft is jumping on the bandwagon, dozens of games are under development, and many of them show a startling lack of innovation.

Portable gaming wouldn't be portable gaming without a staple diet of unimaginative platform mediocrity, and the GameBoy Advance has already had its fair share. Platform games are a tired concept and its all too easy for developers to knock them out for the GBA without batting an eyelid, casting aside any thought for concept, innovation or design. Thankfully then Nintendo have bucked the trend admirably with Wario Land 4. The story sees Wario heading off to a recently discovered golden pyramid containing untold riches which have of course attracted the attention of our greedy anti-hero. So this is basically the excuse you get for leaping about in jungles and lava-filled caverns collecting coins and jumping on the heads of a cast of meandering adversaries. The sacred pyramid acts as a hub for each of the game's levels and is separated into six sections of four levels, plus boss rooms for each section. It's not a case of simply running through a level and moving on to the next though, there is a twist on the usual mechanics of the genre. Wario must locate four gem pieces throughout each level in order to unlock a door to the next, then leap on a switch to open a portal back to the pyramid. Jumping on the switch also triggers a timer, and you need to get back to the portal, often on the other side of the level, as quickly as possible. This shifting of pace offers the game a great sense of dynamics and intensity that hasn't really been seen before. Naturally you are also able to pick up coins during your exploits and, as well as being able to buy your way into the sub-games with them, you can also buy items in a shop in order to aid your battle against each boss.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has rekindled speculation that he will be providing the soundtrack for id Software's new Doom game in an interview with MacWorld. Most of the feature is fairly uninteresting stuff about Reznor's use of Pro Tools and DVD Studio Pro on the Mac, but towards the end of the interview he is asked if he is planning to score any more computer games, having provided the moody industrial ambient music that added to the atmosphere of the original Quake. "I've been discussing things with Id Software for Doom III", Trent confirmed. "It's not formalized at this point, but it's something I really want to do. When I did Quake, we were still questioning if the audio was going to be streamed off of CD, which if it wasn't was incredibly limiting. But .. as interactive as things are now, and as immersive as the engine they've been working on is graphically, and some of the program is so moody; it's like scoring a film. Yet it's much more intense than a film because it doesn't always go the same way, it has to be interactive. Plus the mood of the game is so dark and evil, it's interesting to me." Be still my beating heart. Related Feature - Doom III screenshots

Showing that Microsoft and bad press go together like a horse and carriage, the Associated Press are reporting the horrifying news that "hundreds of people who bought Microsoft's new Xbox game console over the holidays received defective systems". Quite where they get this rather vague number from isn't clear, although we would hazard a guess that it's pulled-from-their-ass™, as the AP only found a dozen people with boxes that either didn't work at all or stopped working soon after purchase, while Microsoft say anything up to 10,000 faulty units could be in circulation. To put that into perspective though, Microsoft has thus far shipped well over a million Xboxes in the USA. It also bears remembering that the PlayStation 2 suffered from a few breakdowns on launch as well, and AP themselves admit that Nintendo is reporting a similar failure rate to Microsoft, although amazingly they haven't yet printed a big exposé about GameCubes going to silicon heaven. More worrying for Microsoft is the bad word of mouth that the out-sourced Xbox customer service team is apparently getting them. A few failed consoles aren't a big deal on the wider scale of things, but at least one of the recipients of a dud Xbox waiting "over a month" to get it fixed certainly would be. "The whole thing that was so frustrating (was) just the fact that still to this day I'm waiting for a call-back just to explain to me what happened", the unlucky punter John Kreis told the AP, before adding that he finally received his repaired Xbox on December 10th. Given that the console was only released in America on November 15th we fail to see how he could have been haranguing customer service for "over a month" by this point. But niggling aside, although waiting almost four weeks for your Xbox to be repaired or replaced is unusual, most of the people the Associated Press spoke to described Xbox customer support as poor. As Kreis himself put it, "I'm hoping I never have to call support again, that's for sure".

After a week of confusion, the new 175Mb single player demo for Medal of Honour : Allied Assault has been officially released on the net. Originally the demo was intended to be exclusively available on the cover disk of American magazine CGW, but before the issue had even hit news stands the demo had been leaked to an east European gaming site. Since then it's spread like wildfire around the net, with EA belatedly getting it pulled from some of the more prominent sites. To add to the chaos, Amazon.com had already started selling copies of the demo on CD-Rom, although the offer was pulled from their site earlier this week amidst suggestions that the demo CDs should really have been given away to people who had pre-ordered the game instead of being sold to unwitting punters at $5 a pop. The whole mess even spawned an article on CNN. The demo itself features one mission - Nebelwerfer Hunt - which sees the player tracking down a battery of the eponymous German rocket launchers in Normandy shortly after D-Day. Along the way you will take out a tank with a captured German panzerfaust and fight your way through the streets of a ruined French village with a trio of American soldiers. It's all good clean fun, although if you have already downloaded the leaked version of the demo there's no reason to download this - it appears to be exactly the same, except that this time it's been "exclusively" released through FilePlanet as part of a promotional tie-up with CGW. Needless to say, it's already available from all your favourite outlets -

As far as storyline goes, there is none. There's an incomprehensible language of gibberish, through which you may occasionally spy a semblance of, well, consistency, but for the most part the game just asks you to get Jorda out of the castle and away from her enemies, and it throws as many obstacles as humanly possible into your path to try and prevent this. Irregular combat sections break up the puzzling, but they are mainly there to show off the shadowy nasties that haunt your surroundings. Visually Ico is one of the most spectacular PlayStation 2 games ever envisaged, particularly thanks to its use of light and water. You can find light all over the place, whether it's the sun through the rafters, the flicker of your torch or a reflection on the water, or any of a hundred alternative sources. Ico is a very eerie game, and the light seems to hang there in the air like a peculiar constant. Beyond the lighting the most impressive thing in the game is the animation, because there's just so much of it. The two main characters look reasonable, but it's not until you see them move that your heart really misses a beat. The way they shift their weight and move between objects is absolutely stunning, teaching other designers a lesson in humility. Actions like clambering over a ledge or leaping a huge gap could be confused with live action...

Although there's still been no official announcement from Infogrames, rumours that Digital Extremes were working on a sequel to online shooter Unreal Tournament seem to have been confirmed by a press kit which has surfaced on a Belgian gaming site. If the product sheet turns out to be genuine (which it appears to be), Unreal Tournament II is on its way to the PC this summer. The sequel will apparently sport a mixture of old favourites and new features - Capture the Flag and a revamped Domination are joined by new Survivor and Bombing Run modes, while classic weapons such as the Flak Cannon and Shock Rifle will be joined by a new Ion Cannon and Link Gun. Some of Unreal Championship's features seem to have crossed over into the new PC effort as well, such as the inclusion of vehicles and differentiated characters, each with their own unique abilities. How this will all shape up in practice remains to be seen, as the screenshots which came with the press kit honestly aren't all that impressive. No doubt if the game really is due out in Q3 2002 we will hear more about it soon though, hopefully through somewhat more official channels...

To paraphrase some of our more aggressively updated brethren in the hardware stakes, we haven't laid down the smack for quite some time. It's time to catch up: let's have a look at what we can find on retailer's shelves in January 2002 that might improve our framerate in recent PC releases, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The Athlon XP 2000+ running at 1.67GHz is definitely the fastest processor on the market at the moment, outperforming the top Pentium 4 in many of the most important areas. Heck, even the Athlon XP 1900+ outstrips the top P4, as Anand discovered last month. However, if Bolton-based e-tailer Scan are to be believed, they have stock of the new Pentium 4 2.2GHz, codenamed Northwood. In terms of price versus performance though, it's no match for its barely inferior competitor. XP 2000+ costs a whopping £250 before VAT, but at £469 the Pentium 4 2.2GHz deserves some sort of award. On the graphics card front, ATI's long-awaited Radeon 8500 (and 7500) has appeared on the market, weighing in at around £190 before VAT. After some shaky driver issues, the Radeon 8500 has rejoined the running as top dog of the graphics card market, demonstrated best by this rather long and unexciting review at HardOCP. You could pay as much as £100 more for a GeForce 3 Titanium 500, and wouldn't you put up with the occasional slurping of new drivers to avoid that? Pretty boring though they are, motherboards play a big part in everyday PC use. On the Athlon front, boards based on NVIDIA's nFORCE getup have started appearing on the market since we last convened. MSI were indeed the first with theirs, as we reported on September 11th during ABit's unfortunately timed roadshow, the K7N420-Pro (oo-er), and ASUS recently followed suit with the A7N-266 and A7N-266-E (with built-in 100Mbps Ethernet support). There have been a few teething problems, and apparently something was up with our demonstration at ECTS, because nobody else seems to have witnessed performance quite as impressive as we did. The best (although perhaps not safest) bet for Athlon XP buyers is something of the KT266A variety, sporting VIA's most recent Athlon chipset and outperforming its rivals hands down. DDR memory is still the memory of choice for Athlon buyers, but prices have risen again slightly, bucking last year's trend of out and out freefall. Intel motherboards are a tricky matter, with VIA chipsets supporting DDR and Intel's own i845 DDR solution starting to appear on motherboards from companies like ABit, ASUS and Intel herself. You must be Johnny Lots-of-money if you are even considering a Pentium 4, so it probably makes no nevermind to you which you end up with, but Anandtech have some nice reviews to keep you on track. There are still some people using the lowly Pentium III and Celeron, we're quite sure, so we ought to bring to their attention the lovely little Shuttle SV24. Reviewed by Scott Wasson of The Tech Report and his obliging son, the SV24 is a tiny barebones Socket 370 computer, with onboard graphics, sound and networking, and one expansion slot. The reason? It's roughly the size of a large shoebox, has a case made of brushed aluminium and has front-mounted USB ports, Firewire support, TV out via S-Video and composite and runs very quietly indeed. Some people might find that with a decent PCI graphics card, that makes a nice first computer for junior, or a good university PC - something like that. At a perfectly reasonable £165 plus VAT from our old pals Overclockers.co.uk, you could be forgiven for finding a reason… To round off the desktop bunch, hard disks are falling in price too. 61.5 Gigabytes of finest 60GXP IBM Deskstar will set you back a meagre 90 quid and some VAT, yours for about a ton. These are the fastest IDE drives you will find on the market today, although perhaps not for long. And finally we come to the subject of laptops. Our GeForce 2 GO-equipped Dell slab is now run of the mill of course, as we knew it would be before long, with newer, faster laptops with 1.13GHz and 1.2GHz Pentium III processors, and even the odd Athlon and Duron-driven lappy filtering onto the market. The GeForce 2 GO with 32Mb of memory is no longer king here either, with the new ATI Radeon Mobility giving NVIDIA a quick lesson in humility. Prices are ridiculous as usual, and there isn't a laptop out there with a sound chip to meet our requirements, so there seems little point in last year's buyers looking for an upgrade just yet. There's always a fair amount going on in the hardware market, and at the start of 2002 it's in a fairly good shape. It will be interesting to see which way it goes. We're also going to keep an eye on these so-called Personal Data Assistants. Some of them have got a bit fancy, like the new Sony Clié 770C, which has a full colour screen and even plays MP3s and AVIs. It won't be long before there are some decent games to rival those seen GameBoy Color at least. And what about that PowerVR MBX chip from STMicroelectronics? It's gorna be a bonny year.

When the Dreamcast was but a young'un, with no idea of its fate and every intention of fighting off competition from Nintendo and Sony, Sega announced Floigan Brothers, a cartoon-inspired adventure of some description with gameplay to rival Mario. Thankfully, after such a long period of time without an update and nothing but a few fanciful screenshots and artist's impressions to go by, most people have forgotten about Floigan Brothers, or simply given up on it. Better late than never then, Visual Concepts have delivered the finished article, and we're surprised it took them this long… Floigan Brothers is a funny game. Not Sam & Max funny, but perhaps Monkey Island funny. The main characters find themselves in ridiculous situations and the on-screen antics and dialogue live up to the billing. It's a fairly American sense of humour, but it had me chuckling quietly on several occasions. What else does Floigan Brothers have to offer though? The premise is that you are Hoigle, the smaller of the two Floigan Brothers. Your partner in crime, Moigle, is working on a secret project and needs some help finding the seven missing parts to get it going. You have to help Moigle find these parts of the puzzle by pointing and guiding him to various areas of the screen, hugging him to make him feel better, punching him in the stomach to annoy him, or feeding him, which puts him in the mood to take in new information. Another integral part of the control system is the Speak button, which brings up a small menu with various things Hoigle can say, with topics ranging from games to insults, all of which have a different effect on Moigle.

Nintendo of America has released a list of some of the software that will find its way to GameCube in the first quarter of 2002 in the States. Apart from NBA Courtside 2002, there are no first party games, but Nintendo has confirmed that Star Fox Adventures : Dinosaur Planet and Eternal Darkness will both be released in the first half of 2002. Eternal Darkness has originally been scheduled for a February release, with Dinosaur Planet set for March. The list of some 19 games features games from Acclaim, Namco, EA, Konami and more. Sega's long-awaited Virtua Striker 3 is looming - let's hope it can improve on its lacklustre Dreamcast predecessor. Gauntlet : Dark Legacy also stands out, along with the GameCube version of EA's Bond-athon Agent Under Fire and Dark Summit from THQ. After all the bleating and whining about the 'complete lack' of third party support for Nintendo's next-generation console, this list makes interesting reading. Here it is in full:

The ELSPA's dedicated crime unit has been working overtime this Christmas, with two men - Mr. Keith Quarterman from Birmingham, and Mr. John Heath of Stoke On Trent - earning jail time and suffering forfeiture of all their computers and videogame software. Quarterman was convicted of five specimen counts of having the copied PlayStation software in his possession, for gain, under the Trademarks Act 1994, while Heath was found guilty of producing copies of PlayStation games for his own gain, contrary to Section 92 of the same Act. Quarterman received 12 months, Heath received 30, and both lost all their toys. The ELSPA's Director General Roger Bennet commented, "ELSPA's dedicated anti-piracy unit is determined to rid the streets of these counterfeit con-men. The outcome of [the Heath case] is an excellent example of the achievements that can be seen following the multi agency approaches which are conducted throughout the country and should be a clear warning to all those who may be tempted in becoming involved with this illegal activity." Related Feature - Roger Bennet interview

Casual console fans always seem to mention Sega Rally amongst their favourite games. This was drilled home to me at the Delta Force III launch last year, when even the chap manning the vodka luge mentioned it. It's never been brilliant, I think it's fair to say, but the arcade version of Sega Rally 2 meant the difference between a boring four-hour Channel crossing from Newhaven and an only mildly boring one, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Eidos has unveiled its first quarter line-up for 2002. Reeking strongly of PlayStation 2, but with a dash of Xbox in places, the line-up includes Deus Ex : The Conspiracy for PlayStation 2, as well as the long-awaited Herdy Gerdy for PS2 and Xbox-only Hitman 2 : Silent Assassin. March sees the release of Blood Omen 2 and Commandos 2, both of which will be available for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, while the PS2 gets one-up once again with EOE : Eve of Extinction for PS2. Here's that list in full:

Squaresoft has changed its mind over the pricing structure of its PlayStation 2 service, PlayOnline. Contradicting CEO Yoichi Wada's previously stated position on the matter, Final Fantasy XI players will be charged a small monthly fee, but some services will be available for free. PlayOnline beta testers are currently putting Final Fantasy XI through its paces. The first massively multiplayer iteration of Squaresoft's famous series will be made available to the public along with the rest of the PlayOnline service in March. Related Feature - Final Fantasy XI preview

Capcom Vs. SNK 2 : Mark of the Millennium for the PlayStation 2 is virtually the same game that was released on the Dreamcast recently. It features a crossover of Capcom and SNK-bred characters, and for all intents and purposes it's Street Fighter with optional knobs. As far as graphics, sound, storyline and longevity go, there is very little new here, and as far as gameplay modes and the feature set go the only changes are tweaks, along with some extra characters and gameplay mechanics lifted from older iterations of Street Fighter. That makes it a very difficult game to review because, firstly, there is so little to discuss, and secondly, the kind of subtle advances found in Capcom Vs. SNK 2 : Mark of the Millennium compared to its predecessor are the sort of minutiae that only a determined, lifelong fan of the 2D beat 'em up genre could identify. Frames of animation removed from certain moves perhaps, or increased speed at a particular point of a popular combo, or whether a new background is derived from a competitor's product and is actually a complimentary gesture from one development team to another.

Those of you still haunted by recurring nightmares about random battles can sleep easy with FFXI, because Square have completely vanquished the concept, offering something in-between the classic Final Fantasy gameplay and Diablo II-style fighting. As you wander around the game world you will see a lot of your enemies doing the same - just prowling about the area, spoiling for a fight. Using the target function, players will be able to enter a real-time combat mode with whoever they plan to victimize. After a smooth transition from the gameplay view to the battle view, players will see a colour-coded window detailing attacks and the damage caused, while the player's character will attack in real-time unless ordered to do something else. This approach means that you won't be caught off-guard by a quick-thinking monster. A pop-up menu is available in this mode which lists various combat options, including defensive and offensive magic, special abilities and inventory items. There will also be an option to peg it, if said monster looks a bit too mean for the player's poor, weak-willed character. Whether the game will offer magical abilities in line with Square's previous adventures is unknown. Enormous screen-filling limit break attacks and the like would certainly be nice to see, but whether they would work in real-time is debatable.

Last year's cancellation of Ultima Online 2 was something of a shock for most people, as EA unexpectedly decided to focus on supporting their original four year old online world instead of developing a fully 3D sequel to the game. Rather than waste all of the hard work that had gone into the abortive sequel, including a set of bizarre new monsters created by comic book artist Todd McFarlane, EA have managed to recycle some of the artwork and characters for their new Ultima Online add-on pack, Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. As the pack's website confirms, "we are using some assets that were created previously for [the sequel], but this will not be associated with any of the fiction created in the past for UO2". This means that, for example, the Meer and Juka races which were planned for UO2 and featured in many of the game's early screenshots will now find their way into Ultima Online, but only as non-playable monsters, and with a somewhat reduced polygon count judging from the batch of character renders released by the publisher just before Christmas. EA are quick to point out that this isn't just a rehash of left-overs from the UO2 fiasco though, as "there will also be quite a few additions to the world of Britannia that were created exclusively for this new incarnation of Ultima Online". Perhaps more interesting though is the lengthy product sheet that came with the latest batch of screenshots. Unusually (and quite possibly accidentally) this includes not only the familiar PR spiel and feature lists you would expect to find in a press release, but also frank assessments of the challenges facing EA in marketing an add-on pack for a game which is somewhat past its prime, as well as a brief look at some of the game's main competitors. "In the US [Ultima Online] is a well-known brand and stands for innovation, realism, fantasy roleplay and intriguing adventures", according to the product sheet. "In Europe, it is not as well known for the Ultima brand and much better known as an online game that was surpassed technologically by EverQuest and subsequent online worlds. This needs addressing." EA seem to think that the way to accomplish this is to "focus considerably on the title 'Lord Blackthorn's Revenge' and less on the Ultima Online logo and brand", concentrating on "cool monsters, gameplay features, and gaming experience" instead of letting it be portrayed as an "old timer online world". As EA themselves point out, Ultima Online is "perceived as neither the biggest nor the best" and to correct this "there needs to be a style change in order to provoke more consumer interest". This means attracting new players into the game, which has around 200,000 subscribers at the moment. Younger players in particular "want immediate results" and are "impatient"; they "need persuading that the UO brand is new, exciting, full of potential and [offers] online experiences they don't see in other products". Luckily then Lord Blackthorn's Revenge will add an innovative new Virtue system and a range of features designed to make "joining the world of Britannia .. better, easier and a lot more fun", as well as some odd cyborg creatures that really look out of place amongst the more traditional dragons and trolls of Britannia. Whether this will be enough to revive flagging interest in the game in the face of increasing competition remains to be seen, and interestingly the Blackthorn product sheet includes an overview of some of Ultima Online's rivals. Dark Age of Camelot seems to be a favourite at EA, described as having "lots of advance awareness" here in Europe and "impressive technology support and design". Asheron's Call is "classified as one of the steadiest and [most] 'roleplay friendly'" massively multiplayer games on the market, although it has a relatively small subscriber base. At the other end of the scale, Anarchy Online is blasted for suffering an "outrageously bad launch" which caused "a lot of players [to] leave the game very early on". EA see the game as a triumph of style over substance, saying that it "looks great [and] gained interest for it's style and subject, if not it's design and playability". World War II Online also gets a brief mention, described as having had a "disastrous launch [which] left this product with very little respect in the online gaming internet circles". Finally there's the big one - Evercrack, which currently has twice as many subscribers as Ultima Online. "EQ is very strong", EA admit. "Its players have a reasonably unique tendency to be friends out of game. Common in the UK for EQ players to all drink together and then meet in game once they all get home." So if you see a bunch of elves down the pub drinking lager and lime, they're probably Everquest fans... Related Feature - Blackthorn gets revenge on Ultima Online

Every year we celebrate the New Year by picking out some of the top games we expect to be reviewing over the next twelve months. 2001 proved to be another mighty triumph for our predictive skills; out of our six picks from last year, two of them were disappointing (Black & White and Myst III), two of them weren't even released (Neverwinter Nights and Metal Gear Solid 2) and two of them were actually rather good (Gran Turismo 3 and Phantasy Star Online). So in the hopes of getting a better average this year, here are our picks for 2002.

Joining the likes of Ben Kingsley, Alan Parker and the Bee Gees on the New Years Honours List today is Jeremy San, CEO and founder of Argonaut Games and co-founder of TIGA, the UK's Independent Game Developers Assocation. Jez now becomes an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, having been cited "for services to the computer games industry". Argonaut has been around since 1984, releasing hit games such as Starglider and Starfox, as well as developing the SuperFX chip which powered Starfox's 3D graphics on the SNES. More recently the company worked on the chart-topping Harry Potter game for the PlayStation, and is currently developing Malice and SWAT : Global Strike Team for the Xbox. Congratulations to Jez San OBE. Now, how about a knighthood for David Braben next year?

It's been another exciting year for the gaming industry, with the launch of no less than three new console systems and the coming of age of a fourth. Gamers have never had it so good.

Cult horror director Wes Craven has confirmed that he is still working on the movie adaptation of America McGee's Alice, one of last year's weirder games. Apparently the film will be computer animated rather than live action, although Craven's comment that "everything we can take from the game we will steal" presumably refers to the storyline, characters and visual style rather than actual artwork and models. "It's a little darker, got a lot more edge, so it's kind of like Wonderland seen through the eyes of post-21st-century America", Craven told the Sci Fi Channel, having hopped out of his post-21st-century time machine. The movie is currently targeting a vague 2003 release, so it could be some time before we get to see whether this CGI effort will be a Toy Story style success or a Final Fantasy flop. Being a sceptical lot though, our money is on the latter. Related Feature - Disaster Movies

2001 has been a great year for PS2 owners, and it has seen the introduction of Nintendo's spectacular GameBoy Advance platform. Although Dreamcast manufacturer Sega tailed off production in March, the platform has also seen several important and extremely impressive products in the intervening period. Far from gaming's dead duck, the Dreamcast is still a big success, and this year's wooden spoon has to go to the PC. Although a large number of PC games materialized during 2001, very few truly stood out, and some of the most anticipated fell short of expectation. As is traditional though, each platform gets its moment, so without further ado, we take a look at some of the best games of the year 2001…

The action-strategy genre has had a tough time of it over the years, producing a string of critically acclaimed games that flopped at retail. Even the genre's poster boy Battlezone was only saved from ruin by being bundled with every piece of computer hardware known to man, but this hasn't deterred other companies from attempting to create the perfect blend of fighting and thinking. The latest such effort is Breed from British start-up Brat Designs, due out next summer through German publisher CDV. And not only is it trying to merge action and strategy elements, it's also throwing in vehicles and (probably) a kitchen sink for good measure.

If it weren't for 16-bit classics like Smash Tennis and Super Tennis, the average quality of the tennis videogame genre would be surprisingly low. Without Hitmaker's Dreamcast version of Virtua Tennis though, it would probably have sunk right off the bottom of the chart. Virtua Tennis 2 is a highly anticipated game, and it comes at a time that new Dreamcast games are few and far between. If it wants to sell, it has to impress fans of the original game (i.e. a large percentage of Dreamcast owners out there), and with this in mind Hitmaker have brought along improved visuals and a larger selection of players, and they have tweaked the gameplay mechanics too. Will VT2 leave a significant enough impression? The interface and main game options remain pretty much the same, with tournament, exhibition and World Tour modes still providing the bulk of the action. In tournament mode, you have to battle a number of world-class tennis players to claim the crown of world number one, whereas in exhibition mode you can just choose someone to wallop a ball back and forth with in a best-of-three. World Tour has been changed slightly, this time including the option to create your own player. Once you've chosen a suitable appearance and given him some reasonable attributes, you play a selection of mini-games, which improve your player's tennis abilities, and you face increasingly difficult opponents as you fight to break into the world tennis circuit. After a while you can quality for and play in tournaments and grand slams, with huge cash incentives and luxury doubles matches to look forward to. This is all very well, however, but is more or less the same as the original World Tour…

Ecks V Sever is the latest first person shooter to come to the GameBoy Advance, arriving just a couple of weeks after the release of Doom. But while Doom was a decidely old school run and gun experience, Ecks V Sever is attempting to be more of a thinking man's shooter. In a bizarre turn of events, it loosely follows the storyline of a movie which hasn't even begun filming yet. Set in the present day, you play either Ecks (an ex-FBI agent traumatised by the death of his family) or Sever (a Femme Nikita style NSA assassin, trained to be a killer in an agency-run orphanage). Each character has its own twelve mission campaign and the two run parallel to each other, usually showing you different parts of the same levels as Ecks and Sever carry out similar orders. For example, the game starts with the agents trying to access files on each other stored on laptops hidden in a warehouse. Sever then sets a bomb, leaving both characters dashing for the exit against the clock, before indulging in a running battle through the streets outside. Between missions you are treated to the transcript from an inquiry into these events, with the game itself effectively a series of flashbacks. It's a nice idea and the plot is typical Hollywood action movie hocus pocus, but the actual presentation is disappointing, consisting of page after page of repetitive long-winded text, most of it written in short stoccato sentences which make Max Payne's cutscenes look like a work of literary genius. The fact that your character describes the outcome of the mission to the inquiry before you even start playing it also leaves you feeling rather helpless and kills any real sense of suspense.