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Diablo II and Warcraft developers Blizzard have had their front page replaced with an amusing take off of the Internet Explorer "Cannot find page" error message. We don't normally draw attention to this sort of stuff, but this one is fairly amusing, so why not. Plus it's a bank holiday, so sod all else is happening. In case the hapless sysadmins wake up from their nap and sort things out, we've taken the liberty of screencapping the page in question for your viewing pleasure. Just click the image and have a laugh. What're the chances that this is another IIS exploit running on NT4? Blizzard.com - still hacked at the time of writing.

The latest trailer for Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within was just released over the weekend, and all we can say is "wow". Clocking in at around two minutes, the trailer includes some of the most impressive CG animation we've seen to date, and gives a good taster of what we can expect to see when the movie hits cinemas this summer. Set in the year 2065 on an Earth laid waste by alien invaders, Final Fantasy follows the efforts of Aki Ross and her military team to find a way of saving what is left of humanity by destroying the alien threat.

Symmetric Multi Processing or SMP isn't something typically associated with the computer gaming hobby. In business, SMP is used to speed up laborious data analysis and such, often with four or more parallel processors working together to complete the task quadruple-quick, but at home SMP has always been viewed as expensive and pointless. The question is whether or not this is all about to change. With the recent price drops seen in the CPU market, processors can be had for an all-time low, and SMP has been viewed as a possible winner for heavy computer users. For instance, current estimates suggest an AMD SMP motherboard will launch at this year's Computex in a couple of months' time, and with Athlons and Durons at unbelievably low prices, many will have to give the technology serious thought. In the here and the now, Intel processors are the only SMP-capable consumer CPUs. The Pentium III specifically, and that's where we're going to focus for today, since low-end Celeron 300s and Pentium IIs aren't going to push many frames together or alone. Current operating systems that support SMP are Windows 2000 and the many flavours of Linux. Exploring the latter would be very time-consuming and somewhat irrelevant for the majority of gamers, so we'll focus on Windows. Curiously, Windows Millenium shipped with SMP disabled, much to the annoyance of hobbyists. That said, its big brother is at such a stage that performance is almost in its favour in a lot of gaming benchmarks, so it's no great shakes.

is the latest developer to pop up in Eastern Europe, this time putting Bulgaria on the gaming map. Founded by the lead designer of last year's real-time strategy game Tzar : Burden of the Crown, the company is already working on no less than three titles and is aiming to "become a center of gaming industry in whole East and South Europe, attracting young talents and experienced professionals from all over the world".

For those of you who have WAP-enabled mobile phones and still can't find anything useful to do with them, Kuju may have the answer in the form of a "realistic golf simulator" which is now available via the Nokia Mobile Entertainment Service. The imaginatively titled Golf can apparently be played on any WAP phone, and features a total of 45 holes split across three courses. A full selection of clubs and a swing shot system are included, along with a high score table and handicap system so that you can compare your performance against other mobile golfers. Obviously, having to run on a two inch square monochrome screen the graphics are hardly sensational, but then what did you expect from a WAP game?

As the BBC's "Robot Wars" TV series has proven, there's something strangely entertaining about watching bizarre home-made robotic contraptions reducing each other to their constituent parts. Now Liquid Edge Games are bringing this form of mechanical carnage to the PC, with an unusual online game called RoboForge.

When we last spoke to Human Head they were putting the finishing touches to their Viking-flavoured action game Rune. Less than a year later and not only have they released Rune, they have also finished a multiplayer add-on for the game and contributed to the Blair Witch trilogy. We caught up with the Head man himself, biz guy Timothy Gerritsen, to find out more...

BritSoft developer Crawfish has released a number of GameBoy Colour games in recent years, including popular titles such as Rainbow Six and Driver, and now they're moving on to Nintendo's new GameBoy Advance. We've already heard all about their work on Wings and Driven, and now the company's Croydon studio has revealed that it will be working on a first person shooter based on "an upcoming big budget action film" going by the unlikely name of "Ecks vs Sever". Apparently the film is in pre-production at the moment, and we should know more soon.

Microsoft last night announced that they have assimilated Ensemble Studios into their games division, buying the company behind the multi-million selling Age of Empires series. "This announcement today is a natural evolution from the relationship we've had with Microsoft", according to Ensemble CEO Tony Goodman. "Both companies have tremendous respect for each other. This deal gives Ensemble and Microsoft a long-term strategy for doing what we do best : working together to make world-class games."

Quite possibly the most bizarre game that we have ever come across (um .. let me rephrase that) is "Catch the Sperm" from Swiss developer Phenomedia. Sponsored by Switzerland's Office of Public Health as part of their Stop Aids campaign, the game is a side-scrolling shooter which takes place within a woman's vagina and tasks you with firing your condom cannon at incoming sperm and viruses. Successfully stopping them earns you points, and the top 100 scores each week are displayed for all the world to see on the Catch the Sperm website.

Vivendi Universal Publishing has confirmed what we all knew already, with the official announcement that it has licensed the rights to make computer games based on JRR Tolkien's best known works - The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. These will be released under their Sierra brand. "The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings properties are the pre-eminent fantasy works of our time and represent one of the strongest brands in the entertainment industry", according to Vivendi Universal Games CEO Hubert Joly. "They provide a tremendous amount of rich material from which we expect to make some of the best fantasy games ever created."

While we enjoy a good city building sim as much as the next man, they all tend to be rather serious affairs. Not Tropico. Transplanting the action to a small Caribbean island and casting you in the role of "El Presidente", this is a game with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.

Sony have dropped plans to cut the price of the PlayStation 2 by $50 / £50 across the globe at E3. The current target for the aggressive price drop is thought to be September of this year. Previously it was whispered that Sony would grab headlines at E3 by slicing $50 off the price of the PlayStation 2 in the USA, and £50 in United Kingdom / Europe, but now reports in this week's MCV suggest that the consumer electronics giant will hold off until Q3 when it will unleash a massive $100 / £100 reduction across the globe. With the Xbox and GameCube coming along full steam for Q3/Q4, an aggressive price drop would put pressure on the competition to perform. Cutting the price now would do very little for the company, but by holding off until the Xbox is in full view, the company could do some serious damage. One analyst also commented that the "still-scratchy inventory situation wouldn't respond well to a cut now". With increased inventory and competition online for September, they're "better off waiting". Sony's presence at E3 is more likely to be in software than hardware. Although the mythical PS2 broadband plans would be a fantastic thing to show off, it's difficult to say whether or not Sony will chance its arm with those unless significant steps have been taken with the infrastructure in the USA. On a related note, rumours this week suggest Sony is in talks with a UK cable provider about broadband over here - roll on E3 2001. With a strong Dreamcast software line up bound to be on display, a hefty Microsoft presence and Nintendo's make-or-break GameCube display to compete with, whatever Sony do will have to be eye-catching. We await with glee the results of the next few weeks.

Coin-op old-hand Midway Games has announced interesting financial results at the conclusion of the third quarter of its fiscal year. It's also changed it fiscal year end to December 31st from June 30th. If you're interesting in reading about the numbers, check out the full press release. Nothing particularly interesting is happening in either direction though, so we'll focus on the new games! The remainder of this calendar year will usher in the appearances of the following titles: on PlayStation 2, C.A.R.T Fury, Gauntlet Dark Legacy, NHL Hitz 2002, the long-awaited Spy Hunter, NFL Blitz 2002, Arctic Thunder and Legion: Legend of Excalibur. On GameCube both NFL Blitz and NHL Hitz get a "2002" outing, and the GameBoy Advance gets NFL Blitz and much earlier than that, the stonking Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 as a launch title. Finally, the Xbox welcomes NFL Blitz, NHL Hitz and Arctic Thunder. From that bunch, we'd pick Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 on the GBA. The press release is a lively one with a lot of financial data, so if you need something work-like to have an Alt-Tab away for when the boss spots you surfing the web, you could do worse than to pull that up.

are holding the latest of their series of LAN parties in Swindon on the weekend of June 8th to 10th, with room for up to 100 players and a modest £35 entry fee. Once again Intel are supplying the network hardware in the form of a 20GB backbone and a number of Pentium 4 computers, with the possibility of one of the country's first dual Pentium 4 systems being used as the master game server for the event. Intel are even showing up to explain why their Pentium 4 is the best CPU for gaming .. which should be interesting, given that most gamers prefer AMD's Athlon processors.

Many PlayStation 2 games stood out at last year's E3, but Dark Cloud was one of the most prominent. Developed by Level-5 for Sony, the game featured a unique design style and a young hero called Toan (previously thought to be "Toran"), who flew around on a Magic Carpet. Toan's plight is an unusual one - he witnesses the world's destruction, at the hands of the "dark cloud" that lends the game its title. When he awakes after the pillage, he is visited by a mysterious figure known as the Sprit Emperor, who bestows him with the power to rescue the world. Toan has no choice but to embark upon an epic battle, rescuing townspeople, battling monsters, restoring life and faith and unlocking the secrets of the land. Well I'm glad we got that out of the way. Although a fairly unsurprising narrative, it is said to be fairly compelling to play out, with emotional events, twists, turns and a roaring conclusion brought to life by the amazing capabilities of the PlayStation 2. Seen for the first time at E3 a whole year ago, comments were very positive, and the game still looks magnificent. The style is reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII with a cartoon-like edge - the character designs even more detailed by the looks of it. In fact the level of detail in the texturing is what looks set to make a game out of Dark Cloud. There's a decent selection of media including the promo movie we saw at ECTS 2000 over at The GIA as usual. Sony's press release on the subject of Dark Cloud speaks of an innovative new gameplay mechanic called "GEORAMA". They're right about it being innovative. Dark Cloud doesn't just require Toan to explore his devastated world and magically resurrect it - the idea is that Toan helps to rebuild and customize a fully interactive, three-dimensional world, as well as roam through it in real-time. The vast lands across which Toan will travel yield clues for rebuilding the villages and unlocking hidden secrets. Hopefully these will be a bit subtler than a bit of paper with a schematic on it, but you get the picture. Predetermined objects like trees, rivers, wells, homes, staircases and hundreds of others will help Toan play his own real-life game of Sim City. By using a smattering of magical spells, keys and vehicles, Toan will reconstruct the lush landscapes of his former world and help resurrect communities and influence their progress. There's a lot of work involved in Dark Cloud by the sound of it, and where did that evil cloud buzz off to anyway? Methinks that will become something to worry about at some point. The realistic weather system and time-of-day logic built into the game will help make Dark Cloud a really exciting adventure for players by introducing obvious parameters that other RPGs might lack. For example, people are willing to help you during the day, but they like a bit of kip at night. Dark Cloud is already available in Japan, and has received critical acclaim. The game's US release is said to be even bigger than the game the Japanese received - some 30% larger according to Sony guestimates. The game is due out over there on May 29th, and depending on its success, later in the year on our shores.

UbiSoft released their latest results last night, showing net sales booming by almost 40% to €260m during the twelve months to the end of March. Even more impressive, sales in the last three months of their financial year were up by 52% compared to the same period the previous year, largely thanks to a string of take-overs which has seen the company pick up the likes of Red Storm, Blue Byte and the publisher-formerly-known-as-Mattel-Interactive in recent months.

Capcom's RPG series spans several consoles including the Super Nintendo where it kicked off. It's no surprise to this writer that the original BOF game is the first to undergo through translation, but given the series' success, particularly in Japan, I doubt it will be the last. The story is of a land where dragons once lived, and fought through greed, a notion inflicted upon them by the goddess Tyr, who offered them the gift of wishing. Retribution came courtesy of the Light Dragon Clan, whose followers banished Tyr to a tomb in a far off land, never to return, but it came at a cost. Back to the present day, and dark times have returned courtesy of the evil Dark Dragon Clan leader Zog, whose soldiers are pillaging and looting the lands of the Light, in hope of uncovering the six Goddess Keys that will unlock Tyr's tomb and the power of a wish. There's a hell of a lot more, and in classic 16-bit RPG fashion it will take a lot of effort to uncover every nook and cranny. The game's combat system allows for only four characters to take part in an encounter, but during the game Ryu and his eventual partner Nina enlist the services of many others from other clans, including Bo, the Forest Clan fighter whose special talent is archery, Ox, from the Blacksmith clan whose strength is unmatched, and many others. The level of detail in the BOF series' artwork and the daring emotional storylines make for an exciting adventure, and one that certainly deserves to appear on the GameBoy Advance.

Following Fox Interactive's retreat from the world of publishing, the big question was who would pick up the responsibility of distributing their games for them in future. Now we have the answer in the form of an announcement that Vivendi Universal Publishing's Sierra brand will be handling several key Fox games over the next three years. Titles included in the deal will range from a pair of new Die Hard titles and a game based on Fox TV show COPS to the Lithtech powered Aliens vs Predator 2 and a previously unannounced sequel to No One Lives Forever. This will appear on both the PC and next generation consoles, and has been in development in a secret bunker in Seattle (probably) for at least the last few months according to our informants.

A few reports from yesterday indicate that the latest leaked NVIDIA driver release (version 12.00) improves performance on Pentium 4 machines by a great deal. Up to 90% in business applications according to one sensational report on German website All-About-PC. The report was picked up by ZDNet and others in Germany and eventually translated. Gaming performance is also said to be affected, with an impressive increase of 200 3D Marks under the 2001 edition of the popular benchmark application. Reports also indicate that Windows XP performance (of all things) is improved as well. The drivers can be had from all the usual outfits including The-Ctrl-Alt-Del.com. In our testing of the GeForce 3 last week on an Athlon machine we tried out the 12.00 drivers, but 3D Mark 2001 failed to complete on several occasions, whereas with the 11.01 driver set (according to NVIDIA a release candidate) completed successfully. 12.00 performance was certainly marginally better under Windows 2000, but Windows Millenium was more or less identical. You'll recall an interesting announcement when the GeForce 3 was still several months off (no, not last week) that NVIDIA intend to build Athlon and Pentium 4 optimizations into the new Detonator driverset. Perhaps the performance boosts in version 12.00 are evidence of this in practice. On a related note, The-Ctrl-Alt-Del.com also has 12.10 drivers for Windows 2000. We haven't had the opportunity to test these, but if one of you has, particularly on a Pentium 4 get-up, we'd love some feedback on them. Related Feature - GeForce 3 Review

Swedish publisher Pan Interactive have just announced their latest title, Intergalactic Bounty Hunter, an episodic sci-fi action-adventure game set to be unveiled at the big E3 trade show in Los Angeles later this month. The title is being co-developed by Pan and Creative Capers, an animation studio which has worked on Disney movies such as Mulan and Beauty & The Beast as well as a host of video games for the mouse house.

Do you remember a Sylvester Stallone film called "Driven"? No, you wouldn't, because it's not scheduled to hit cinemas in the USA until this weekend. Nevertheless, development/publishing outfit bam! entertainment are interested, so much so that they are developing a game of the film for PlayStation 2, due for completion in November. bam!, whose collective résumés include work on Donkey Kong Country, classic 3D romp Forsaken and Alien Trilogy, aim to convey the dangerous and exhilarating world of open-wheel driving, according to their press release. We think the idea is to make a game about spectacular racing action, crashes, flying debris and true to life car handling. Driven (the game) will supposedly harness the power of emotion engine to bring the intense emotional drama of the film to the PlayStation 2. Knock it off, guys? PR spin aside, the game does sound quite promising, with up to 5,000 polygons per vehicle, constant 60 frames per second gameplay and stupidly high speeds. There's a clever feature where leading drivers are suddenly "in the zone" and can push their cars beyond their specifications, travelling at up to 240mph. We're not too sure how that'll work in practice, but we'd be interested in trying it out. There's certainly a lot of talent on the development team behind Driven with a lot of ex-Acclaim employees and a highly distinguished Technical Director in the shape of Matt Wilkinson. If the critics don't rip Sly's new film apart too much, bam! could have a winner on their hands.

Granted, we weren't Lucasarts' biggest fans when they took yet another step toward soiling the Star Wars heritage with Jedi Power Battles for the PlayStation, but after a quick refresher, this writer believes the game is actually fairly suitable material for the GameBoy Advance. Developer HotGen Studios and publisher THQ will be bringing the game to GBA screens in the autumn. The release is part of a multi-property publishing deal THQ and Lucasarts have agreed. Their most recent release has been Battle for the Naboo on PC and N64, which unfortunately, like Jedi Power Battles didn't find favour with our illustrious editorial team. Nonetheless, as big Star Wars fans we certainly look forward to future titles. Jedi Power Battles, if you don't already know, is a single or two player action game where gamers take control of young Jedi and battles legions of battle droids, destroyers, assassins and other familiar Episode 1 entities. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Mace Windu are at the player's disposal, with 10 progressively more difficult levels to overcome. In other words it's perfect GameBoy fodder. That said, I for one would be far, far more interested in a conversion of SNES smash hit Super Star Wars to the virgin console rather than all this Eposide 1 tomfoolery. Ah well! (Tom, the 21st Century just rang, they were wondering when you'd be back with us... -Ed)Related Feature - Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles PSX Review

- NVIDIA and ELSAPrice - £349.99

Swedish developer Mind Ark have announced that the first round of public beta testing is now underway on their massively multiplayer sci-fi role-playing game Project Entropia. Set in the distant future on the planet Calypso, Project Entropia uses a novel economic system where the game is free to download and play, but gamers can optionally exchange real world cash for in-game money. At the moment there are just 50 external testers involved, but over the next few months the beta will be rolled out to include more players. If you're interested in taking part in the process, head over to the Entropia website and sign up.

The dot.com crash and online advertising slump has claimed another victim today, with the closure of the American branch of Daily Radar. Quite what this means for Imagine's NextGen and PC Gamer websites, both of which relied on Daily Radar for much of their regular content (not to mention their annoying array of pop-up ads) is unclear at this stage. A small number of staff are apparently being relocated within the parent company Imagine Media, but others aren't so lucky and the front page of the website currently includes an address to send job offers to, along with a list of previous contributors and (in true Daily Radar style) a twelve item "top ten" list of reasons why the site is closing down. Amusing suggestions include "John Romero made us his bitch" and "we wanted to beat the other game website employees to the unemployment lines".

We liked Deus Ex. We liked it rather a damn lot. In fact, we gave it a very controversial 10/10 rating when we reviewed it in the middle of last year, and despite the large bug fix patch that was subsequently released for it we stand by that rating. It's a top game. Eidos know this too, and to celebrate its popularity the publishing giant has put together a special "Game of the Year Edition" to go out on May 9th, featuring the original adventure patched up to include multiplayer support along with the various bits and pieces of Deus Ex software that have been released lately, including the Software Development Kit. Also featuring in the updated version is an audio CD with 30 tracks from the game's soundtrack remastered on their own disc for higher quality. If you don't already own Deus Ex, or if you just bought a new PC and want something to give it a run for its money, you could do a hell of a lot worse than to throw some cash at this Game of the Year edition. Saves you having to download a 35Mb patch at the least. In the mean time, feel free to bone up on the game's historic ins and outs with the aid of last summer's review. Related Feature - Deus Ex Review

As reported here over the last week, Intel has made sweeping changes to its Pentium 4 pricing structure, slicing as much as 50% from the starting price of the 1.7GHz processor, which now debuts at a cool £350 or so. The move is obviously a way for the company to make its chips more appealing to smaller OEMs, something that they have had difficulties with since AMD started undercutting them so vigorously. Although we're in danger of repeating ourselves, dropping prices by so much so soon is an obvious admission of error. Perhaps it was the "You could have faster, but why pay less?" slogan that those wisecrackers at The Inquirer came up with, which finally lit bulbs atop heads at Intel. Whatever happened, it's an impressive reduction across the P4 line, and it means that the lowly Pentium III 1GHz is now practically within the same price bracket as the cheapest P4, the 1.4GHz model. Does this mean Intel intend to phase out the old warhorse? Almost certainly, especially with its successor Tualatin apparently capable of launching within the not too distant future, in 1.13 and possibly 1.2GHz flavours. Well piffle, says Advanced Micro Devices. How about some Athlon reductions across the line to help improve our standing? Ta very much, says World+Dog. In strict fairness, the Athlon prices were already causing hassle for Intel before the reductions, and now leading UK e-tailer Dabs.com is listing a 1.33GHz Athlon for less than £170, less than 50% of the price of the Pentium 4 it arguably outperforms. If this is any indication of AMD's strategy on dealing with the competition, we like it! And if we're not mistaken, the Duron prices appear to have dropped a bit too. Although AMD weren't available at press time (they've all gone home, bless 'em), we're guessing they could still drop Athlon prices a little bit further if provoked. Considering the ferociousness of the Intel price drops however, this writer isn't convinced we'll see much more of that, at least not until the next P4 release.

A report on The Register this morning focuses on a new report by stock market watcher Nikko Salomon Smith Barney, who in examining the GameBoy Advance have apparently commented on likely opposition from both Sony and Microsoft in this field. Considering the failure of SNK's foray into pocket gaming it's more than likely, says El Reg, that both companies will use existing palmtop computers as the basis for any such device. For example, Sony's Clié, or Microsoft's PocketPC platform. For the former, the Clié has always been a mobile entertainment platform, and for the latter, porting a subset of DirectX to Windows CE shouldn't be too difficult. Keep in mind the fact that the Xbox will use a version of Windows 2000, so using the two to communicate would be child's play. Although this is all just rumour and speculation, we, like The Register, would be surprised to find out that neither company is considering its option. In fact, with the opposition now out in the open, it will be even more tempting. In our opinion however, Sony will more likely push its connections in mobile phone circles (e.g. Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo) with regard to loading its mobiles with gaming options. The work Dreamcast sympathisers Imagination Technologies have been doing with ARM and the PowerVR MBX must also be tempting. We heard today that the MBX will be capable of displaying Quake III in full 3D with T&L and the like at a quarter VGA. That's got to be an incentive.

The British gaming industry suffered another blow last week with the closure of Charybdis, who had been developing the highly promising Magic & Mayhem sequel The Art of Magic for publisher Virgin Interactive. At the time of writing we had been unable to contact Charybdis, whose phones have apparently been disconnected for several days. Virgin PR manager Jon Brooke confirmed the developer's demise though, while assuring us that this is not the end of the game. Virgin own the rights to the title, and will be passing it on to another development team, with an announcement of who will be picking up the duty of finishing the 3D role-playing strategy game expected in the near future. Unfortunately this latest setback has "moved the project back to September" from its planned summer release.