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Core Magazine is reporting on an interesting story from the Netherlands. The Dutch government has supposedly blocked the sale of PSone consoles and accessories due to abnormally high levels of cadmium in the devices. Cadmium is used in the production of PSone due to its conductive properties, but overexposure has been linked to severe kidney problems. Customs officials are apparently holding 800,000 pieces of hardware, worth an estimated $162 million. No other country is thought to be withholding PSone consoles at this time.

Nintendo of Japan has selected Dobutsu Bancho, otherwise known as Animal Leader, to compete directly with the launch of Microsoft Xbox. Animal Leader is a game about eating your way to the top of the food chain. With bizarre off-the-wall visuals and a peculiar overall objective, we're not sure it would be our top pick to face Xbox. That said, the Japanese are big fans of horseracing games, so it's impossible to say. The Japanese launch of Xbox will be interesting, to say the least. Its Western reception has been pretty hot so far, but it will have a larger market packed with domestic games to deal with. Generally, Western titles don't sell terribly well in Japan.

Microsoft has issued an unusual release supporting the use of bridge tools like GameSpy Tunnel and XboxGW, stating that "It's amazing and exciting to see the lengths that gamers will go to in order to take their Xbox games online." Namechecking GameSpy specifically (to avoid embarrassment at the propagation of a Linux-based connection tool no doubt), Microsoft explained that "these efforts showcase the superiority of Xbox because it was built from the ground up to provide people with the next generation of exciting online game play." Remember, to go online with Halo or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X for Xbox you need a PC with two network adapters, a broadband Internet connection and an Xbox console, with either a crossover cable to connect PC to Xbox or a full-blown hub. That's rather a lot of equipment. "We think the GameSpy efforts are an interesting science experiment by and for hard core gamers," the statement continues, before acknowledging that the system doesn't really scale for more than two players (because the average amount of bandwidth required is about 256Kbps each way, and that's most people's upstream taken care of in one fell swoop. Microsoft's online service will be more involved, the company tells us. "In order to engage several players, voice, content download, and online support with no PC required, gamers will have to wait for the Xbox online service. And it will be worth it." "Right out of the box, Xbox online will be an always-on, fast-action gaming service that provides multiplayer and episodic gaming, and tournaments that appeal to all types of game players." So it looks like Microsoft are happy to support alternative methods of Internet play in lieu of its own service' arrival, which may not be until sometime in the summer of next year. The public's perception of Xbox as a 'connected' console this early on is clearly very important to Uncle Bill and his chums at Redmond. Microsoft have yet to comment on the various upgrade stories doing the rounds, or those websites ripping the console apart for photo opportunities. Related Feature - Xbox ripped to shreds

One of the more imaginative massively multiplayer games currently in development is Project Entropia, which sports a unique economic system allowing you to convert real world currency into in-game cash and (more importantly) vice versa. With the first two phases of the beta test now complete, the next phase will allow 5000 players from around the world to play havoc with this economy as special items worth one million Project Entropia Dollars (equivalent to about US$100,000 in "real" money) are added into the game. "Participants [will be able] to make real money, possibly even millions of dollars, which makes it absolutely essential that we test the economic system and security measures rigorously", Patric Sundstrom pronounced. "In order to do so, we will ask users to put small amounts of money into the system and offer them the possibility of taking out much more. We're very pleased with the progress of our tests so far, and extremely excited that we will soon begin trials with this vital element." The world's first massively multiplayer pyramid marketing scheme, or a breakthrough in interactive entertainment? We'll have to wait and see, but if you fancy being on the frontline you can apply to take part in the third phase of the beta test here. Related Feature - Project Entropia interview

I've seen enough arguing over whether Tricky is a true sequel to last me until SSX 3, but there is an obvious common thread linking these naysayers; they haven't played it. SSX Tricky is the finest example of a snowboarding game on any system, boasting tweaked control, improved visuals, added aggression and a boatload of new tricks. Arguably there are only two 'new' courses, but you would be a fool to gloss over the changes. There must still be some people who are new to SSX, so allow me to explain briefly what we are dealing with. SSX is a snowboarding game consisting of single and multiplayer races and a World Circuit mode, with two main sections to the latter - Race and Show-off. In Race mode you have to hurl yourself down increasingly elaborate courses, staying ahead of five other riders for three heats per track, whereas in Show-off mode you are all by yourself, with a certain points total to reach and floating snowflake multipliers to grab. You can just direct yourself with the analogue stick, but the idea is to take advantage of some of the series of jumps along the way to pull off mind-blowing tricks and, as the man said, Tricks equals boost: boost equals speed. You perform tricks by jumping at the right time and using a combination of your directional pads to turn in mid-air and the four shoulder buttons to handle different grabs. The boost button takes on the 'tweak' function during jumps, allowing you to pick up maximum points, while careering into a snowflake in mid-air can multiply the score for that jump by two, three or five, depending on the snowflake. Perform enough tricks and your boost bar will start to fill up, allowing you to improve your speed. Power it up the whole way and you can perform a special 'Über' trick, a masterful new addition to Tricky which are activated by holding a shoulder button for two seconds and then tweaking. They consist of anything from breakdancing on the board in mid-air to twirling it around your neck. Über tricks are signature moves, with a certain number per character, and pulling one off is so rewarding that the prospect of playing through the game with every character just to see them all is fine by me.

Telewest has started trials of the PlayStation 2 online today. Speaking in a prepared statement about the trials, which will last into the New Year, Telewest's head of games Tom Cotter explained that "Telewest is investing heavily in the PlayStation 2 service; believe me, this will be multiplayer gaming and broadband access integrated like never before." No firm date has been set for a widespread rollout of the service. Further details of the network will be released next year.

An Australian deckhand was electrocuted while thumbing the controller of a Sony PlayStation when a wave smashed into the boat's wheelhouse. The 19-year old man, Richard Wells, was sitting at a metal table playing with the console when a huge wave broke through the cabin window. The trawler was lying off the southern Queensland coast last week when the incident occurred. Three other crewmembers suffered shocks and burns while trying to rescue Wells from the cabin.

On the 24th of last month, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe sent out a birthday card and a discount voucher to its many registered PlayStation 2 owners, to celebrate the end of the console's first year on the market in Europe. When the PlayStation 2 launched on November 24th 2000, there were approximately 500,000 units available in Europe, approximately 50,000 of them to be found in the UK. They all went to pre-orders, just as their brothers and sisters had done in the USA a month previously. PlayStation 2 was a hot commodity, the follow-up to the enormously successful PlayStation console with the promise of more than double the power, and it sold on the strength of its predecessor's reputation.

A huge number of viruses appear in our mailboxes each day from people who have visited our site and then been infected by one of the many strains of mass-mailing worm which propogate by sending themselves to every e-mail address found in your internet cache and/or address book. So out of self-interest rather than any sense of concern for our readers, we would like to point out that the Quake4demo.exe file currently floating around the net is in fact a virus. The size of the file (it's only 56Kb) should be a dead give-away, not to mention the fact that when you run it a modified version of the Rocket Arena 3 installer pops up, asking if you want to "install Rocket Arena 3 into your Quake 4 directory" along with "the full version of Quake 4". Cunningly, if you click "Next" nothing happens, but if you smell a rat and try to hit the "Cancel" button at this point it installs copies of itself into your Windows directory, modifies your registry, and proceeds to overwrite exe files and mail itself to everybody in your address book. And if that includes us, we won't be impressed...

War is hell. Even more annoying though is coming home from a war to discover that one of your advisors has taken control of your kingdom, stolen your girl and started drilling holes in the ground in an attempt to raise an army of the dead. Just such a fate lies in store for Maximo, and needless to say he is somewhat miffed when he discovers these changes. Dropping in on the evil usurper Achille to exchange a few sharp words, things soon get out of hand, and in the ensuing scuffle Maximo is mortally wounded.

Despite their widespread appearance in computer games and anime cartoons, the idea of using giant robots to wage war is pretty silly when you stop to think about it. And at the very height of daftness are Transformers, the amusingly dubbed "robots in disguise" which spawned an extensive range of cartoon series, animated movies and action figures in a fit of near-Pokemon scale marketing insanity during the 1980s.

The collapse of high profile online gaming companies such as Barrysworld and Gameplay earlier this year has apparently done nothing to dent enthusiasm for the field here in the UK, with Telewest's blueyonder gaming portal first past the post. Today it was the turn of BTopenworld to throw their hat into the ring, with the launch of their new Games Domain service. Having acquired the website last month from former owners theglobe.com, BT will be relaunching it as a fully fledged online gaming provider. Features will include dedicated servers for a host of popular titles, a selection of web games such as chess for more casual gamers, and a matchmaking service for popular peer-to-peer games. Details were rather thin on the ground at this stage though and the rather brief presentation would have been even briefer had the computer projecting the flashy intro movie into the auditorium not crashed, prompting some frenzied rebooting and a long embarrassed silence. There was very little of Games Domain actually on show in the demonstration area afterwards either, despite the fact that free trials for the service are about to begin, and none of the people we spoke to seemed to be able to give a straight answer to any of our (admittedly awkward) questions. One of the slides in the presentation had claimed that Games Domain will be the first place on this side of the pond to play PlayStation 2 games over broadband internet connections, which came as something of a surprise given that Telewest are supposed to be working with Sony Europe to trial exactly this kind of technology. There were also vague mentions of cross-platform gaming, but unfortunately nobody seemed to be able to clarify or confirm any of this, with one senior tech bod telling us that online console gaming was something they were looking into for next year. BTopenworld are also promising exclusive mods for the service, but again there was no real explanation as to how this will work or what kind of original content we can expect. All we do know is that the group behind Quake 3 Fortress are involved, and that judging from the screenshots on the press disc we can probably look forward to Quake 3 and Counter-Strike maps emblazoned with Games Domain banners. And there was no word on what BTopenworld will be doing to improve the performance of their broadband network, which to date has proven somewhat unreliable for gamers thanks to packet loss and high contention ratios. Apparently they are investigating the problem, but we couldn't get any specifics. Then there's the question of the price. The trials are due to end in January, and after that punters will be expected to pony up £9.99 a month for the privilege of using Games Domain, even if they are already subscribed to BTopenworld's expensive ADSL service. A "limited amount of free content" will continue to be available for penny pinchers, but as you might have guessed it's not clear yet what that will include. Given the notorious unwillingness of hardcore gamers to actually pay for anything, you have to wonder how much of an audience those exclusive mods are going to have... Related Feature - Telewest launch gaming service

The PlayStation 2's footy cabinet is pretty well stocked at the moment. What with This is Football 2002 in Sony's corner and EA's massive FIFA Football 2002, Konami have their work cut out for them this Christmas. But they really shouldn't worry - Pro Evolution Soccer is without a doubt the best football game on any console. Ever. (Okay, maybe not better than Sensi, but give me a break.) Ignore the less than authoritative database of player names, team names and strips, the lack of player endorsements and other paraphernalia, and the silly little oversights like the 'Europian Cup': PES is the only game out there that actually feels like football at the moment, and not some sort of bizarre combination of ballet and opera. Yes we're looking at you now, EA. PES captures the spirit of the game, and by the time you're passing the ball about in midfield and threading dainty through-balls between defenders, the lacklustre presentation will be long since forgotten. There are a number of things that set PES apart from the likes of FIFA in its approach to the beautiful game. FIFA has long been the home of extravagant trick moves like Cruyff turns, overhead kicks and ridiculous shimmies. PES has a close control mode, activated by R2, that lets you perform trick moves but they require split-second timing to execute. In other words, you need skills. Another thing that sets the game apart from its competition is its approach to goalscoring. In games like FIFA it's pretty damn easy to score from any position goalside of the centre circle by hammering the sprint key and twiddling your player every which way past opponents, but if you score in PES it's because you deserved to score. Slotting a through-ball into empty space demands that you have created some empty space ahead of time, and shooting is completely unassisted - you have to get the angle, height and power behind the shot absolutely right. Other games may have dabbled with power bars, but I defy you to name even one that offers as much control over your actions as Pro Evolution Soccer.

The Independent Game Developers Association is launching its Student Scholarship Program for a second year, offering 25 lucky people a Classic Pass to the next Game Developers Conference in San Jose. Normally this pass would set you back some $1295, which is equivalent to about 600 cheap pints down at the student union bar or 185 all-you-can-eat pig-outs at that dodgy curry house round the corner. Well worth the effort of entering then, I'm sure you'll agree. The only bad news is that even if you win you will still have to pay your own travel and hotel expenses. The scholarship program is open to college and university students from around the world who will be over 18 years old when the conference starts in mid-March. You will also need to be a member of the IGDA, but you can sign up for a year's student membership for just $25. All entries must be in by January 7th, and applications will be judged by the likes of id Software's resident Brit Graeme Devine and Ray Muzyka of BioWare fame. For more details, head over to the IGDA website.

UbiSoft's licensing bandits have struck again, this time stealing publishing rights for the next installment in the Alex Ferguson's Player Manager series from under the noses of 3DO. The deal with developers Anco Software will see UbiSoft handling next year's Player Manager 2002 on PC, PSX and PS2, with the first two due out in the spring and the latter at the end of next year. Promised features include a bigger database featuring the latest information on 35,000 players, 500 teams and their key management staff. How this will stack up against the might of Championship Manager, which is entering the console market with an Xbox outing in the spring, remains to be seen. Related Feature - UbiSoft's Angels

I'm not sure there are many Tycoons left to make. Ever since the enormous success of Rollercoaster Tycoon, many have jumped on the strategy management bandwagon with a paraphrased moniker in an attempt to get a piece of the action. Microsoft, never being one to miss an opportunity, has skipped on board with Zoo Tycoon. Everything about Zoo Tycoon is familiar. From its feature list down to the interface, this is cut-and-paste game development at its most heinous. If you've played Rollercoaster Tycoon, you will know what to expect in the way of park building and management here. Simply replace the thrill rides and awe-inspiring custom coasters with meandering animal sprites and piles of poop in your mind's eye and you'll get the idea in a flash. Freeform mode gives you a fresh plot of land and a whole wad of cash to do pretty much with as you please and construct your ideal manure-scented world. Construction and item placement are simple enough, and the chunky toy-town interface leaves the user with little doubt as to what they are doing. However, to learn the true nuances of keeping your animals and customers happy, you're better off going the scenario route.

Microsoft has announced that Xbox production is up and running at Flextronics' European Xbox manufacturing facility in Hungary. European Xboxes are already rolling off the production line at what is apparently the first ever video game console factory located in Europe. The Xbox is due out in Europe on March 14th 2002, around the time Nintendo is rumoured to be launching GameCube. Nintendo have still to announce a firm date. "Today is the birth of Xbox in Europe" said an enthusiastic Sandy Duncan, veepee of Xbox Europe. Microsoft have once again decided not to release a launch allocation figure for the time being, but with production already up and running, hope to satisfy whatever demand there is for the console in a timely fashion. "Our ability to deliver substantial quantities on a weekly basis from day one and beyond will ensure that stock is adequate and that the launch is smooth," he added. The location of the plant brings significant employment to the region, which is a nice bonus.

TDK Mediactive looks set to publish for Nintendo GameCube. Titles in development by contractors like Digital Illusions, Vicious Cycle and Prolific Publishing include Shrek, Robotech and Dinotopia. Of the three, Shrek has already appeared elsewhere, as a launch title on Microsoft's Xbox where it met with a pretty average reception. According to reviewers at IGN, Shrek is an exceptional tech demo with a clumsy platformer wrapped around it. Shrek for the GameCube is almost certainly going to be a straight port, but there may be hope for the other two. Kids are bound to enjoy the game regardless thanks to its movie-like visuals.

Last week Nintendo claimed to have sold approximately $100 million worth of GameCube hardware, software and accessories in the first few days of the console's launch in America. A week later and the Japanese gaming giant is finally quoting figures. Nintendo has stated that during its first week of availability in North America, over 500,000 GameCube consoles have been sold. CTW is quoting a figure of 565,000, presumably extrapolated. Luigi's Mansion is apparently the most popular of the console's early titles. About 100,000 units of the launch allocation have been spread over Canada and Latin America, with the remainder going to rental and similar channels. We know that Xbox launched with around 300,000 units, but Microsoft has not released official sales figures yet. That said, it's a good bet that most if not all of them went to pre-orders. With both Nintendo and Microsoft shipping top-ups to retailers at the rate of about 100,000 to 125,000 a week, Nintendo looks set to ship more in the run up to Christmas, assuming there is demand. Either way, it's a good time to be a gamer in the States, with so many consoles boasting high quality software line-ups. Related Feature - Conducting the battle

Codemasters have announced that they will be publishing the latest effort from Britsoft developers The Bitmap Brothers. Due out next summer and provisionally titled World War II : D-Day To Berlin, it's a real-time action-strategy game which sets you the task of driving the Axis forces back across Europe as an Allied commander. With interest in World War II once again high following the recent success of the excellent Band of Brothers and not-so-excellent Pearl Harbour, Codemasters have high hopes for the title. Bitmap Brothers MD Mike Montgomery reports that the company is "committed to creating an experience that will have broad appeal from the core RTS player through to the casual gamer who will be attracted by the game's historical detail", and with the marketing might of Codemasters behind them they "believe [it] can become a major blockbuster". Hopefully it will turn out better than their last effort, the rather rough round the edges Z : Steel Soldiers, which flopped at retail and helped to plunge publisher EON Digital into financial turmoil. Related Feature - Z : Steel Soldiers review

People just will not stop tinkering with their Xboxes! We're all in favour of course, with reservations (the ones that stop us getting sued) so here's a little round-up of things people are speculating on, and some things people have actually done. The first thing we discovered was Icrontic's articles on disassembly and modification. Icrontic speculate on the possibility of upgrading the Xbox's hard disk and getting hold of its contents using a desktop PC. Now, while a lot of people have speculated on the file system used in Xbox, we have our own theory… If you were Microsoft, and you wanted to avoid exactly the kind of thing sites like Icrontic are proposing, you wouldn't just opt for some unusual file system, you would encrypt it. So the chances are, the Xbox hard disk uses FAT32 just as most standard computers, but that it uses proprietary encryption. In other words, encryption that would have to be reverse-engineered (without doubt illegally) in order to gain access to the files. This would be a useful way to block professional emulation too. After all, if you can't emulate Xbox without breaking the law, you're screwed. Anyway, aside from the hard disk, Icrontic comment on the missing RAM modules, which could indeed be soldered on. But the gains would be negligible with every Xbox game developed for 64Mb, and the danger to the Xbox involved would dissuade all but the most skilled. Icrontic also want to modify the Xbox front panel for some sort of USB hub, and as Anandtech noted during their journey into the Xbox hardware, there is a way to put the Xbox into debug mode and presumably enter whatever BIOS setup screens the console harbours. Furthermore, Icrontic managed to improve speeds ripping music to the hard disk of the Xbox by replacing the fairly cheap ATA33 cable. Aside from that, GameSpy have jumped in with their contribution to the Xbox networking arena. After XboxGW used Linux to good effect as a simplistic Ethernet bridge, GameSpy decided some sort of GameSpy Arcade tie-in was a good plan, and they have whipped up a tool which does much the same thing, called GameSpy Tunnel. The venerable matchmaker notes that players will almost certainly need a broadband connection at their disposal to reap the benefits of Halo's multiplayer modes, but at least it's not as fiddly as the VPN connection from the other week. The best place to see the insides of the Xbox (which have been everywhere recently) remains HardOCP, whose Xbox Spread Eagle feature touches all the bases. Related Feature - Xperience

You have to wonder about PC gamers. Clearly bored in the run up to Christmas, with plenty of stuff still not on the market, they have started collecting things that belong to computer game developers. The most prominent example of this is an eBay auction, which closed earlier today. "Fleece top as worn by Lionhead member" concerned a fleece top, as worn by Peter Molyneux in this picture, which Lionhead's Ollie Purkiss found on his desk, and after fruitlessly trying to find its owner, decided to sell. The Fleece went for $61, which is probably still more than it cost. If Ollie wanted to impress any birds, he would probably have donated the money to charity by now, but we'll forgive him that. What next? Romero's hair? Actually, can't you make voodoo dolls using that? Related Feature - Black & White review

Final Fantasy VIII had a lot to prove, coming off the back of arguably the best game of all time - Final Fantasy VII - and many people were disappointed with the result. The team hopes to prove that it can produce a classic with X, and with this in mind they have taken several gigantic steps forward, including the move to a polygon-based world. The last three Final Fantasies have relied upon pre-rendered backdrops and polygonal characters, but X will rely on a fully three-dimensional environment, retaining only the classic fixed camera perspective of the last three games. Another big change is the move to a Chrono Trigger-style battle arrangement, where battles take place on the same screen as the general adventuring. That is to say, practically every battle, because random encounters will still send gamers to a fight screen. Needless to say, this was a design restriction rather than a conscious decision on the part of the team. After a period of confusion, Square now seems keen to move towards a unified battle system. If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series, the chances are by now you're fairly excited at the game's prospects, but make sure you take a seat for the next bombshell: Final Fantasy X is voice-acted. That's right, defying its traditional subtitle-driven roots, the team behind X is breaking new ground by using voice acting, with matching facial expressions. The voice acting and sub-titles can be toggled as you like, but we are expecting relatively big things from Squaresoft in this department. Anybody who watched the underrated Final Fantasy movie earlier this year will know that Square can handle lip-synch, and then some.

SSX Tricky has shipped on GameCube in the USA, following a release on PlayStation 2 earlier this month. The game is an update-cum-sequel to arguably the PS2's most favourable launch title and features the musical talents of the Beastie Boys amongst others, and uncredited voice-acting from actors and singers including Macy Gray and Oliver Platt. He of Lake Placid (cough) fame. SSX Tricky is one of the most eagerly awaited titles on PlayStation 2 and GameCube around here this Christmas, due out this Friday (the 30th) on PlayStation 2, and on the 8th of March for GameCube if EA's release dates schedule is to be believed. Amidst all this speculation on the GameCube's actual release date in Europe, EA are keeping schtum. Related Feature - SSX review

UbiSoft has added another licensing scalp to its rapidly growing collection in the form of Charlie's Angels. The French company now has exclusive worldwide rights to develop and publish games based on the classic TV series as well as the recent film re-make and its forthcoming sequel. "The Charlie's Angels games will enable us to attract a broad audience", UbiSoft president Yves Guillemot proclaimed. "The series is enormously popular with the over-25 age group and the license lends itself particularly well to the video game medium." There are no details yet as to what form these games will take, when the first ones will be released or which platforms they will appear on, but UbiSoft's licensing deal with Sony Pictures covers PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and GameBoy Advance.

Project Eden is a maze and you are the proverbial mouse. In fact, you're four little proverbial mice, each of which has a particular skill; be it the cyborg with his resistance to hazardous environments, the technician, the computer expert or the leader with his helpful security clearance. Your maze isn't whitewashed, but decked out as a mysterious near-future cityscape with a fetching Unreal-esque visual demeanour, and spots of pure darkness that often disguise doors and archways when they shouldn't. The maze isn't glass-topped - you control your mice from the third-person in fact - but it does take advantage of several unfortunate limitations in an attempt to frustrate you; for instance your inability to jump, even over small distances. The late Douglas Adams taught us that mice are in fact singularly the most intelligent species of animal on our planet, and I'm willing to agree with him. However, I dare say they found this maze stuff extremely insulting, so I am hereby proposing a truce. Given our knowledge of their experience and fortitude and the fact that they have yet to flee our planet, I would like to swap the brain-depletingly tricky puzzles of Project Eden for the inside of a whitewashed maze where even I may flourish. Or a padded cell. (Or alternatively, you could get on with the bleedin' review. -Ed) Ah yes. Project Eden is a conversion of an extremely difficult PC puzzle game featuring three upstanding young fellows and one cyborg, and like so many other PC-to-PS2 conversions the gameplay is completely misplaced for the platform, and on a lighter note (chortle), as a result of the conversion the dark spots in the game have become almost opaque. This introduces a major gameplay problem not found on the PC in that the darker spots often mask doorways and other vital parts of the solution to whichever indeterminable problem you reckon you have probably been thrown at the time. The world is peppered with doors you cannot enter, with the game's approach on this one being to shoehorn one of your characters through a particular door that does open, where he will find some way to contribute to the solution.

The success of the deeply unimpressive Tomb Raider movie has spawned a whole new generation of potentially lousy game-to-movie adaptations, and the latest to join the queue at the bandwagon jumper's guild is Nocturne. Collision Entertainment and Dimension Films (who are currently producing movies based on Max Payne and American McGee's Alice) are behind the effort. Further fear comes from the fact that Mortal Kombat 2 and Hellbound co-writer Brent Friedman is working on the script, although one faint ray of hope is the disclosure that Steve De Jarnatt, the man behind Miracle Mile, is also on board. Other details are thin on the ground at this early stage, but it looks like the movie will rather loosely follow the game's story of a shadowy government agency called the Spookhouse which investigates paranormal goings on. Producer Scott Faye promised that "the film will play like a supernatural Untouchables, retaining the spirit of the game while introducing new characters and a solid, three-act action-adventure story line". And in a fit of exuberant enthusiasm and/or sheer optimism he declared that "Nocturne .. has the potential to become the next Mummy franchise". The game's developers at Terminal Reality are already preparing to cash-in accordingly. "When we began developing the game in 1997, the idea was to open up a franchise that blended pure horror with serialized pulp fiction stories", creative director Drew Haworth confirmed, adding that future Nocturne titles will be released on the latest generation of console systems. "Since PC and console game players are a different audience, we plan on reinventing the franchise with the console games. We'll create a brand-new game experience with a new 3-D camera perspective for a more action-oriented, Hollywood feel, while remaining true to the elements of the 'Nocturne' universe." Related Feature - Nocturne review

A recent update to the official Everquest : Shadows of Luclin website has revealed a rather drastic rise in the expansion pack's system requirements. It seems that a 400MHz Pentium II with 256Mb of RAM and a 16Mb T&L supporting graphics card are now required to take advantage of the pack's enhanced graphics, and a Pentium III or Athlon with 512Mb RAM and a 32Mb graphics card are recommended. Sony Online spokesman Greg Rizzer told CGO that the sudden leap was down to the complexity of the new enhanced character models, and that when the development team loaded them all into the game they suddenly realised that 128Mb of RAM just wasn't enough to hold all that cleavage in. Whoops... The announcement comes as no great surprise to us following the pack's dismal showing at September's ECTS though. The draw distance was appalling compared to every other MMRPG we've played, and as soon as the clipping plane was pushed back far enough for you to see much beyond the end of your sword without the world being shrouded in polygon-concealing fog the game started to chug, despite the fact that it was presumably running on a GeForce 3 graphics card like everything else at the show. Despite the new higher resolution textures the older areas of the game still looked incredibly ugly compared to more recent titles such as Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot and (for that matter) Asheron's Call, while the new Luclin zones weren't particularly astounding either. Which makes it somewhat ironic that Luclin's system requirements are now higher than those for the eye-candy laden likes of Max Payne and Serious Sam. Sadly it looks like a case of the game's underlying technology simply not being up to the task, and it's remarkable that the Luclin pack could get so close to completion without any of the programmers realising that all those new polygon-enhanced character models with their moving eyeballs and heaving bosoms would need a significant amount of memory. Go to the back of the class, that man. Despite this fiasco, our understanding is that Verant plan to continue expanding Everquest indefinitely, with any possible sequel a long way off. Time to start saving your pennies for another upgrade.

Next year's launch of Microsoft's network gaming service for Xbox has been pre-empted by an open source/Linux development, Xbox Gateway. Bill is no doubt absolutely ecstatic about this, but he can console himself with the thought that at least all the work XboxGW has put into the system is on the outside - the box itself remains unsullied by viral GPL-related stuff. XboxGW expands the functionality of Xbox system link games, working rather like an Ethernet bridge, and according to the developers both bridging Xbox game traffic and splitting it up so it goes between the right players. If two people with broadband links use it, then they can play one another across the internet. Microsoft itself proposes to offer this facility, but not until next summer. The system currently runs on Linux servers, but it's not absolutely necessary for users to install Linux (this would kind of reduce the potential market for it), because users of other OSes can just download a boot disk. Obviously you need a PC, and equally obviously you need the teensiest bit of networking to join the Xbox, the PC and the broadband connection together. Limitations at the moment include it not supporting PC Card network adapters or USB broadband connections. The developers are working on implementations for Win32, PPC Linux, Mac OSX and BSD, and say they intend to release the source code when they deem it fully stable. Now, who's going to be the first to get one of these to run on an Xbox?

Sega has just over 200,000 Dreamcast units left to ship in the US, and in the interests of clearing out their backlog, the company has reduced the console's pricetag to a paltry $50. With such an awesome catalogue of software to back it up, we can see no reason for our non-Dreamcast-owning American readers not to rush out and pick one up. The story was heralded with the usual retailer quotes and other opinions, but for us the question is, when are we going to see that reflected in Dreamcast street prices on this side of the Atlantic? Poking around e-tailers in this country reveals few bargains on this front. A Dreamcast shipping with UEFA Dream Soccer and Sega GT is still going for £99.99 at Gameplay, whereas a trip to Amazon.co.uk reveals a slightly more aggressive bargain; the console plus M-SR, Jet Set Radio, Virtua Fighter 3 and a VMU, but with a long waiting period for the console suggesting a complete lack of stock. The truth is, your best bet for Dreamcast these days is a second hand retailer or an auction website like eBay. There are unlikely to be large enough numbers of Dreamcasts left in this country to justify another price drop, and with bundles fairly reasonable priced at the time of writing, there won't be much left to hear about before long. Suffice it to say, if you haven't got one by now, get yourself out there and do it! With Shenmue 2, Headhunters and Floigan Brothers just released, and a stupid number of titles in the range it's something you should definitely own.