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Midway have signed a licensing deal with DC Comics and Warner Brothers to produce games based on their Justice League comic, which spawned the trippy Super Friends cartoon series during the 1970s. The deal gives Midway access to some of the world's best known super-heroes, including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as more obscure (and frankly useless) characters such as Aquaman and .. er .. Wonder Dog. Yes, we hope that one gets left on the cutting room floor. No self-respecting hero would be able to don his gaudy costume without a super villain to do battle with, and Justice League should give Midway access to everyone from Lex Luthor and The Joker to The Shade and Brainiac. Midway are said to be "looking forward to bringing these iconic characters to gamers everywhere", especially as the Justice League has recently been revived, with a new cartoon series and tie-in comic launched late last year. Expect to see a whole plethora of heroes and villains finding their way on to the GameBoy Advance and next-generation consoles some time in the not-so-distant future. Related Feature - Punish your machine

GTA Vice City, sometimes referred to as GTA3: Miami, is happening on PlayStation 2. On Friday, Sony issued a press release through its SCEE.com website confirming the forthcoming release of a number of big titles over the coming year, and much to the mortification of Rockstar Games, GTA Vice City was among the titles listed. If you check the press release now, of course, you will find no trace of it. The American website that picked up on the release - Gaming Horizon - didn't store a local copy of the release, but did quote the offending chunk, which we have reprinted below. "More than 30 first party games titles and over 200 third party games for PlayStation 2 are scheduled for release in the coming year. These include The Getaway, Primal, WRC 2002, Ratchet and Clank and This Is Football 2003 from SCEE and Virtua Fighter 4, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Harry Potter, Timesplitters 2, Superman; Shadow of Apokolips, TOCA Race Driver, Medal of Honor Front Line, Onimusha 2, GTA Vice City, Red Faction 2, Tribes 2, Tony Hawk 4 and Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, all from third party publishers." Both Rockstar and Sony are keeping schtum, but we understand the former is more than a little annoyed with the latter. GTA Vice City is expected to be among the games announced by Rockstar at E3 next month, and will take place in a fictional interpretation of Miami, as fans of the original Grand Theft Auto will no doubt have guessed. Watch out for it. Related Feature - Grand Theft Auto III review

Earlier this month we reported that Eidos were planning to auction off the original Lara Croft costume, as worn by model Nell McAndrew back in 1998, with all the proceeds going to UNICEF. Those of you wanting to get your hands on this unique and rather kitsch piece of gaming history can now head over to eBay UK to put in a bid for the costume, which includes everything from the infamous skin-tight shorts and vest to a pair of replica pistols and Lara's sunglasses. The auction isn't for the faint of heart or empty of wallet, because with six days left to run the asking price is already above £2,000. But if you have deep pockets and a strange fetish which we really don't want to know about, this could be just the thing. And it's all in aid of a good cause, as you can try to explain to your girlfriend when you tell her you just spent a few thousand pounds on a pair of sweaty pants. Related Feature - Tomb Raider : Angel of Darkness screenshots

Norwegian developers Funcom will be unveiling an expansion pack for their massively multiplayer game Anarchy Online at this year's E3 trade show. Titled Anarchy Online : Shadowlands and due for release at the end of the year, the add-on will feature new locations to explore (including the eponymous Shadowlands and a floating city), new variations on the original game's breeds, new high level items and a wider choice of armour. The pack will also give players more ways to develop their characters, with a specialization system which allows you to branch off into new subprofessions that can give you access to special abilities or reduce the cost of improving certain skills or attributes. Expect to hear more after this year's E3, where Shadowlands will apparently be the only game on display at Funcom's stand. Sadly this seems to suggest that no further progress has been made on their much more interesting viking MMRPG Midgard since it was put on hiatus a few months ago. Related Feature - Midgard put on hold

Having unwittingly blown the lid on Xbox Live through its own Official Magazine in the United Kingdom, a story since removed (albeit not by us), Microsoft is now talking openly about the service, and the best example of this so far is a GameSpy interview with product manager David Hufford. Xbox Live will provide online opposition 365 days a year, and access will be controlled by a single password, Hufford explains. Amongst the core features of every Xbox Live game will be instant messaging and voice communications (with voice masking). Furthermore, the Xbox Voice Commander product will actually plug into a memory card slot, saving players the torment of giving up a gameport. Apart from these standards, Microsoft also plans to ban cheaters as and when they are found out. The lobby system will allow players to switch games without severing the connection, Dreamcast style, and message people in and out of all the supported games. The system, currently in testing at Microsoft, will control all the niggling aspects of online gaming; subscription fees, server management, tools, interface standards and so forth, in the interests of putting online gaming within a developer's reach without substantial support costs. And if it has been worrying you, the service will not be based on The Zone. The service has been built from the ground up, if Hufford is to be believed, and currently has more people working on it than worked on the Xbox launch itself. Hufford tells us to pay close attention to E3, where he believes online gaming will take centre stage in each of the format holders' presentations, along with a number of big software announcements. Seamus Blackley is also expected to unveil his plans, which will almost certainly include Xbox. Hufford also admits that Microsoft is in discussion with big name companies about massively multiplayer games, and that there may be a few under wraps at Microsoft. Promising news indeed. Related Feature - Xbox Live details emerge

It's finally here! On Friday, European gamers will be able to buy the coveted Nintendo GameCube for €199, or £129 in the UK, a price which, despite staggeringly low margins, many retailers are planning to honour in the hope of securing the most customers. The Cube has suffered numerous setbacks, including one of the longest transitions between Japan and Europe for yonks, lacklustre third party support, and a couple of niggles which only emerged once the darned thing was sat in our front room. The question is, will it emerge this Friday a handsome console with a number of strong titles at a sensible price, or would we be better off buying a real Fisher Price tape recorder?

British developer Rebellion, best known for their Aliens vs Predator games on the PC and Atari Jaguar, have unveiled their latest project - Pinball Advance. As the name suggests, it's a pinball game for the GameBoy Advance, featuring three pre-rendered tables for you to knock your balls around on, each with six difficulty levels and its own unique set of game modes for one or multiple balls. Fellow arachophobes will be glad to hear the game includes a Tarantula table which "will allow budding pinball wizards to venture into the spider's lair and..." No, stop right there. I've heard enough already. There's also a Jailbreak table, and a Daredevil machine where you must "take your chances with the Wheel of Death and Loop of Fire". Throw in hundreds of pinball sound effects and a voluminous soundtrack, and pinball fans who just can't wait to get to the pub before slamming some balls around should be in for a treat. Expect to see Pinball Advance appearing on shelves come June, courtesy of Digital Worldwide. Related Feature - Pinball Advance screenshots

Earlier this week a German teenager called Robert Steinhauser walked into a school in Erfurt carrying a pump action shotgun and a pistol. During the next twenty minutes he shot dead 16 people, including two students and a police officer, and wounded several others before eventually being confronted by a former teacher and apparently committing suicide. But now, as Germany comes to terms with one of the worst shooting sprees we've seen in Europe recently, some politicians are starting to point the finger at .. you guessed it .. computer games. It seems that Steinhauser, like hundreds of thousands of other gamers around the world, was a Counter-Strike fan. Unlike the many other people who spend hours playing the world's most popular online shooter each week though, Steinhauser was a member of a local gun club and legally owned four firearms, including the ones that he used in the attack this week, along with an astounding one thousand rounds of ammunition. Naturally a lot of attention has been focused on gun control laws in the wake of the massacre, but today Christian Democrat leader Edmund Stoiber called for an immediate ban on violent video games, with (funnily enough) his Minister of Culture Monika Hohlmeier demanding that "the trash must finally be forbidden". No doubt she'll be organising some nice cosy bonfires down there in Bavaria to burn copies of Quake and Half-Life, maybe with a few books thrown on for good measure... Ironically Germany already has some of the toughest laws on violent games in Europe, with many titles eventually ending up on a list which prevents them from being advertised or openly displayed in shops. If Stoiber and his cohorts have their way though, many violent games and movies could end up being banned outright.

Our Tony's first outing on the GameBoy Advance in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 impressed us mightily with its sexy pseudo-3D graphical trickery, yet at the same time baffled us with some dodgy level design quirks born of the isometric perspective we were forced to live with. It was hard to see how Vicarious Visions might overcome these troubles. The forced perspective was a thorn in the side of THPS2, an otherwise fantastic title, and has duly reappeared in the inevitable sequel.

According to a new book that's just come out in the States called "Opening The Xbox", Microsoft put in a $25bn bid for Nintendo at the tail end of the last millennium. The gargantuan take-over offer was apparently met with laughter by the Japanese gaming behemoth, whose success with the Pokemon franchise and the ever popular GameBoy series of hand-held gaming systems has left it rolling in cash. "I was surprised, we didn't need the money", Nintendo Of America's Minoru Arakawa is quoted as saying. "I thought it was a joke." Joke or not, half-hearted negotiations apparently continued over the winter, before finally floundering in January 2000 after opposition from Nintendo's elderly president Hiroshi Yamauchi. "It became clear that our objectives and their objectives were not the same", Arakawa explained. If the book is to be believed, Microsoft's ultimate aim was to get Nintendo to drop their plans for the GameCube and throw their support behind the newly conceived Xbox instead. Certainly such a move would have provided a massive boost for the Xbox, particularly in the difficult Japanese market. It's a funny old world...

Specialist British publisher Just Flight are probably best known for their string of unofficial add-on packs for Microsoft's Flight Simulator games, introducing new scenery, planes and missions for fans of the series. Now they're going all extreme on us though, with the arrival of a new aircraft racing game from Victory Simulations. Titled Xtreme Air Racing, it puts you behind the yoke of a turbo-charged 3,000 horsepower plus plane as you fly your way around 15 varied tracks at under two hundred feet. Featuring over twenty aircraft to fly, each with its own 3D virtual cockpit, and settings ranging from Thailand to Iceland, it's certainly got plenty of variety. Then there's the eight player online support, three championship seasons to work your way through, race commentary, coaching from your co-pilot (real-life aviation expert Bob Hoover), air combat and stunt modes... If you fancy trying out the game before it arrives on European shelves on June 7th, you can download a 54Mb demo from the official Xtreme Air Racing website. Related Feature - Xtreme Air Racing screenshots

we took a look at some of the work that Blizzard have been doing on Warcraft III, from balancing the races through the multiplayer beta test to the effort that has gone into scripting and storyline for the single player campaign. But what happens after the game is released? We talked to Blizzard's Bill Roper to find out...

A few months ago we discovered during an interview with GSC Game World's Sergiy Grygorovych that the company's best selling real-time strategy game Cossacks would be getting a second expansion pack at some point. After a long wait, the add-on has today been officially announced. As we exclusively revealed at the end of last year, Cossacks : Back To War will feature a staggering one hundred new single player missions for fans of the series to wade their way through. Other additions include two new nations (Switzerland and Hungary), four exclusive units for each of them, and a new unit (camel mounted Bedouins) for Turkey and Algeria. Up to eight thousands of these soldiers can now fight it out across huge maps that make your average real-time strategy battle look like a game of Pacman by comparison. The pack is due for release in France and Germany at least some time later this year, but other details are thin on the ground at this stage. Expect to hear more over the coming months though. Related Feature - GSC Game World interview

While there's been a lot of talk about Warcraft III's multiplayer support in recent months thanks to the online beta test, which every webmaster and his dog seems to be part of, precious little has been heard about the single player campaign. We caught up with Blizzard's Bill Roper during a recent press tour of Europe to find out how the beta has been going, and what solo players can expect from the game.

Sony will beat its consolidated operating profit projections this year, the company has revealed, largely thanks to the success of PlayStation 2. PlayStation 2 and PSone hardware shipments in fiscal year 2001 amounted to some 20.14 million and 8.25 million euros profit respectively, while software shipments amassed 135.77 million and 101.46 million euros. Sony projects shipments of PS2 units worldwide for the fiscal year (April 2002 to March 2003) of 20 million (1.67 million per month), according to a report on Bloomberg.

Ubi Soft has announced another Tom Clancy game, this time based on Paramount Pictures' upcoming cinematic release The Sum Of All Fears starring Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. The PC version of The Sum Of All Fears will be released in conjunction with the film in the US and Canada, and then in the autumn for European gamers. Next generation console versions will follow, although no specifics were discussed. "The film adaptations of Tom Clancy's novels always thrill audiences with their intensity and action-based realism, which is the same formula for making great games," said Laurent Detoc, president of Ubi Soft Entertainment. The game is being developed by North Carolina based Red Storm Entertainment, already world renowned for their impressive adaptations of Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon. The Sum Of All Fears is said to combine the physics and graphical technologies behind Ghost Recon with the gameplay of Rainbow Six. Players will be able to take on the role of an FBI elite hostage rescue team member. Up to three players locally, or 36 across the internet, will be able to take part in co-operation missions in locations as diverse (albeit unsurprising) as West Virginia, the Middle East and South Africa, with rendered cinematics breaking up the action and keeping the story alive. A couple of screenshots have already been released, and may be viewed here. Related Feature - The Sum Of All Fears screenshots

Earlier this week it emerged that Factor 5 and Dolby Laboratories had put the finishing touches on a MusyX development tool update, to allow Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound in GameCube software. We commented that many games from now on would support the standard. According to IGN, the first big name developer to embrace the technology is Silicon Knights, the company behind Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. ED is already a game prone to the odd bout of slippage, but this 11th hour development is not expected to affect its 24th June release date in the States. Related Feature - GameCube gets Pro Logic II

Take 2 have launched a bizarre new competition for Serious Sam : The Second Encounter, with top of the range GeForce 4 Ti 4600 graphics cards up for grabs. All you have to do for your chance to win is fire up the copy of Serious Editor that came bundled with the game and design a fragmatch map. There is one catch though. It has to be a .. Disco Cathedral! "It's up to you to satisfy our desire for funky fresh fragging grooves by creating the hippest, wackiest, most colorful Gothic Cathedral around - transformed into a 1970's shrine to K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Gloria Gaynor and the Bee Gees. Think Notre Dame meets Studio 54 and you've just about got it." The mind boggles. Anyway, if your artistic sensibilities can stoop low enough to meet the entry requirements, head over to the Disco Inferno competition page to find out more about the rules and how to enter. The competition ends on May 17th, so get your groove on! Or something. Related Feature - Serious Sam 2 review

Charity in the name of the WWF? You could be forgiven for thinking "World Wildlife Fund" at this point, but as you will have guessed, it's actually those wily sports entertainers at the World Wrestling Federation to whom I am referring. THQ, publisher of the ever-popular WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It!, plans to auction off a bundle of goodies tonight through online auctioneer eBay, with proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish foundation, a charity that aims to help needy children fulfil their dreams. Apart from a PlayStation 2, signed by WWF wrestler Rikishi, and a copy of the game, the winner will also receive a limited edition figurine of The Rock and a T-shirt of the game. The pièce de resistance, though, is a pair of tickets for the upcoming "Insurrextion" event taking place next Saturday, 4th May at Wembley Arena. Anybody interested in helping the Make-A-Wish foundation and getting to the sold-out Insurrextion event, featuring wrestlers like The Undertaker, Trish Stratus and Stone Cold Steve Austin, should head over to eBay, where the auction has just gone live. Related Feature - WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It! review

Having licensed the rights to develop and publish games featuring Manchester United's star player David Beckham at great expense, Rage are apparently not content with simply pumping out straightforward football games. Witness the bizarrely titled Go Go Beckham : Adventure On Soccer Island, a newly announced GameBoy Advance adventure game starring a cartoon character who doesn't look entirely dislike the famous footballer. The game sees David taking on the evil Mr Woe, who has placed a terrible spell on the inhabitants of Soccer Island and unleashed his minions on them. To add insult to injury, he's even stolen all their balls. Now it's up to Mr Beckham to recover the missing balls using a range of "special soccer moves" as he dribbles, kicks, bends and heads his own ball through the game's colourful levels. Fairly obviously it's aimed at a younger market, but it does look suitably off-the-wall and comes from Denki Ltd, the Scottish developer behind Rage's award-winning puzzle game Denki Blocks. Expect to see David saving our balls some time in August. Related Feature - Go Go Beckham screenshots

Having invented cel-shading, it seems a mite unfair that Sega's Jet Set Radio didn't capitalise on the technique's popularity with roaring sales. Poor performance on the Dreamcast hardware and what I like to think of as the world's first vertical learning curve meant many players got sick of the game before they really got their fill. However, hoping to avoid that situation the second time around, developer Smilebit has dumbed down the long overdue successor to an almost infantile level, and we're still not sure we prefer the new approach. Like the previous game, Jet Set Radio Future gives you control of one of several skater teens, whose sole objective in the game is to cause trouble. They hang out at "The Garage", although unlike the first game this is now a rather enormous skate park with routes to all the game's major levels and lots of things to grind. At the centre of the skate park you can chat to a desperately annoying robot who saves your gave and gives you training objectives to complete, as well as acting as a doorway to the options menu and customizable graffiti. Missions begin with erstwhile DJ Professor K and his pirate Jet Set Radio station broadcasts. These usually consist of the mad professor bopping to beats and laying down your mission objectives, whether it's to (literally) paint the town red or knock down some Rokkaku bad guys. Unfortunately these short scenes are nowhere near as punchy as their counterparts from the original game, and they are completely unskippable. Thanks chaps. Beyond each unfathomable cutscene lies a sprawling level which is effectively split into a number of large areas which can be linked as you tick goals off on the objective list. As in the Dreamcast original you collect paint cans and use them to graffiti anything with a marker on it, but spraying graffiti no longer requires awkward analogue stick combos. This removes one of the toughest elements of the game, and manual tricks such as those witnessed in Tony Hawk allow you to skate slowly past marked areas spraying the whole thing in one go.

Last week Interplay revealed that Shiny was up for sale, and today we know who the potential buyer is - Infogrames. Yes, Bruno and the boys have got out the cheque book and offered to snap up Shiny for $47m, with the deal expected to be finalised within the next week. As well as giving Infogrames control over David Perry and his team at Shiny and their controversial "advanced tessellation technology" patent, it also gives Infogrames the exclusive development and publishing rights to create games based on The Matrix trilogy, something which allegedly cost Interplay upwards of $10m just over a year ago. The Matrix game is apparently still on track for a May 2003 release to tie in with the cinematic launch of The Matrix Reloaded. "For Interplay and its investors, successful conclusion of this transaction will enhance stability and position Interplay for growth. The sale of Shiny will significantly reduce the general corporate overhead of Interplay and allow the Interplay teams to focus on the continuing development of games based on its successful TSR licenses such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale", Interplay CEO Herve Caen beamed. "The transaction will strengthen Interplay's capacity to finance the development of its current slate of titles. We now have the financing and the management team in place to provide a much stronger platform for the development of fun and profitable games." "To add Shiny and The Matrix franchise to our portfolio is a tremendous coup for Infogrames", Infogrames head honcho Bruno Bonnell chipped in. "Shiny's outstanding development team has a proven track record for creating innovative games that push the envelope [and flop at retail - Ed], making the studio a wonderful addition to our growing in-house development team, and underscoring our commitment to assembling the best talent in the industry under the Infogrames banner." Caught in the middle was Shiny itself, but after the financial difficulties which their former owners have faced in recent years, David Perry was said to be "thrilled to be joining the Infogrames family, which clearly shares our enthusiasm for and belief in The Matrix franchise". Hopefully now we will get some idea of how work is progressing on The Matrix game in the near future. Related Feature - Shiny up for sale

Valve Software has updated Half-Life to version 1.1.0.9 to coincide with the long-awaited release of Counter-Strike version 1.4. Apart from the usual upgrade executables for owners of Half-Life and the retail Counter-Strike set, Valve is also offering a streaming game download service for broadband users, called Steam. Hopefully Steam has been altered slightly since the testing phase, where joining a server meant downloading tens of megabytes in uncompressed patches… The list of changes between the old versions of Half-Life and Counter-Strike and their respective updates is typically long, but the highlights include a couple of new maps, at least one old one with a makeover, various HLTV features for the dead and spectating, a number of important gameplay tweaks and the usual cheating countermeasures. CS 1.3, released many moons ago, was widely criticized for the gameplay imbalance it introduced. An anonymous friend who was playing Counter-Strike 1.4 until 7am this morning (hence wishing to remain anonymous - I believe he's bunking off work today too), described the update as "an enjoyable improvement," and said that "where the last one failed, this one seems to make amends, although he's probably broken some of the weapons again." A full list of changes to Counter-Strike is available on the mod's official website, and you can download the various HL / CS updates from the following locations.

Fans of the futuristic racing genre have been deluged with games over the last year, taking in everything from the hypersonic tubes of Ballistics on the PC and the twisting tracks of Wipeout Fusion on the PS2 to the cross-platform cityscapes of New York Race. But although the flood has only just begun to subside, another game has popped up on the horizon - HoveRace.

Peripheral manufacturer Radica has announced its latest product, Connect TV Excite Striker, which will allow football fans to test their skills without leaving the house, and operates indepedently of any established console. Unlike Thrustmaster's competing product, the 2002 FIFA World Cup Football Stadium, Radica will provide its own Excite Striker software, allowing you to take part in ball juggling activities, penalty shootouts, and even an actual game of football. The graphics don't look too hot, but admittedly we haven't seen them move, yet. The degree of interaction afforded to players by the Excite setup is a bit difficult to gauge from the design alone, but we hope to get hold of one in the near future and put it through, er, our paces. Although hopefully not in front of a camera. The package consists of two shin straps, which are attached to each player's leg and a main console unit that connects directly to the TV, and the whole thing uses Infrared to communicate between devices. The connection to the TV is made via composite with left and right audio channels, as shown in the accompanying pic. Radica promises "Japanese style characters and full UK commentary" and describes the game as "the perfect World Cup purchase, providing the ideal way to make the football last all day." Related Feature - World's "first interactive football pitch" unveiled

More details have emerged of Nintendo's Clear Cube campaign this morning. The company tells us that plans are afoot to show the world exclusive video of Asher D's new single, and popular beat combos Soil and allSTARS are also expected to appear outside HMV in Covent Garden over the course of the following week. Fans of Asher D - apparently one of those So Solid Crew hoodlums - should pencil 12 noon on Saturday or Sunday (27th and 28th of April) into their diaries and haul backside down to Covent Garden, 40-42 King Street, London WC2. But please don't shoot anybody. Meanwhile, Soil, described by the press release as "hard rock", will be slinging the sounds of their new album around the same seven-foot Cube standing outside HMV, Covent Garden, on Wednesday, 1st May. Completing the musical line-up, "the latest teen sensation," allSTARS will be making an appearance on the penultimate day of the run-up to the GameCube launch, performing tracks from their forthcoming album inside the Clear Cube. We were offered an interview, but we declined… And then of course, to top it all off, eager Nintendo fans can queue around the block at HMV stores in Birmingham (38 High Street, B4 7SL), Glasgow (Unit 6, Argyle Street, G2 8AD), and Oxford Street, London (150 Oxford Street, W1N 1DJ), where from midnight on Thursday, 2nd May, you will be able to purchase a GameCube console. Although you might want to take your credit card, because we're still hearing conflicting reports about the price… In the meantime, Nintendo has also announced a few additions to its UK marketing plan. Joining forces with Yahoo!, the company will sponsor FIFAworldcup.com, the official website for the you-know-what, as well as teaming up with MTV Europe to help promote the console. Related Feature - Watch out for Clear Cubes

Although some importers will happily take lots of money for a copy, Gran Turismo Concept is not readily available in Europe. This Japanese oddity features an array of concept cars from the Tokyo Motor Show, and retails at a wallet-friendly price. Despite consisting of largely the same elements as Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec, and lacking a great deal of that game's structure and discipline, GT Concept flew off the shelves in Japan, and now SCEE is hoping for a repeat in Europe. The newly announced PAL version of Gran Turismo Concept will offer a choice of some 80 vehicles including numerous prototypes from the Tokyo Motor Show, and from similar exhibitions in Europe, Korea and America. Meanwhile, the Japanese get Gran Turismo Concept Geneva, based specifically on European concepts. The PAL version of Concept will feature a modest five circuits, Sony reports, although these will actually be rejigged versions of popular tracks from GT and GT3, and in light of the game's low quotient of original content will be priced at a lower standard RRP. Look forward to hearing more from GT Concept, without fighting your way past obscure importers and through endless Japanese menus, when the game hits the streets this summer. Although Polyphony could not be reached for comment, we heard them shouting from the hills: this is not Gran Turismo 4... Roger that. Related Feature - Gran Turismo Concept 2001 Tokyo preview

Last week we heard that Contra was heading to the PlayStation 2, but Konami has so far failed to confirm that for us. This week, it seems that the company has announced a new Contra game for the Nintendo GameCube. "New Contra" is the game's actual title, and this potentially multi-platform shoot 'em up extravaganza is likely to show up in Japan towards the end of the year.

Majesco, the publishing company often responsible for Rage's US releases amongst other things, has set up a wholly owned European subsidiary, based in England, imaginatively named Majesco Europe. The plan is to focus on the "growing" (thanks IGN) markets in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Asia Pacific and the Benelux region. "With the rapid pace of business today and the growing global influence on interactive entertainment, the establishment of an international office was critical to our growth strategy," Majesco President Jesse Sutton said yesterday.

The original TimeSplitters was one of the better titles amongst the lacklustre PlayStation 2 launch line-up, and so it was no great surprise when a sequel to the game was announced last summer. With work on TimeSplitters 2 now well underway at Free Radical, Eidos today confirmed that Xbox and GameCube versions of the game are also in development and due for release this autumn. Once again players will be going up against the evil TimeSplitters as they battle their way down history, with a more involving single player mode and stronger storyline being promised this time round, as well as enhanced graphics and animations, and improvements to the much vaunted level editor. "At Free Radical, we are passionate about console gaming", Free Radical MD David Doak explained. "It's only natural that TimeSplitters 2 will be appearing on all three next generation consoles." Related Feature - TimeSplitters 2 screenshots - Xbox / GameCube