Latest Articles (Page 3545)

Pro Pinball Trilogy is made up of three critically acclaimed pinball titles, and is actually the first pinball game ever to appear on the Dreamcast! Pro Pinballs "Big Race USA", "Fantastic Journey" and "Timeshock!" offer all sorts of unique multi-layered tables, and unlike most pinball games which are a resounding rip-off, actually sounds varied enough to hold even the most die-hard Friday-nighter at bay. We're not sure the incredibly OTT descriptions are called for - perhaps they're aiming for the hyperactive teenager market, but the game does boast high-resolution graphics, what's described as Empire's best ever physics model, and the option to fiddle with the physical parameters of the game, including flipper strength, table slope and other odds and ends. The game should be available for Dreamcast owners from Empire Interactive on the 13th of April, and we've knocked up a few screenshots for you to check out in the mean time... Update - the game is now scheduled for release on the 20th of April! Related Feature - Pro Pinball Trilogy Screenshots

Last year saw EuroGamer launch the Gaming Globes, the gaming industry's answer to the Oscars. Intended to recognise excellence across the entire spectrum of game design, from storylines and soundtracks to visual effects and artwork, the Gaming Globes gives you a chance to help pick out the best games and developers of the year in fifteen different categories.

Microsoft have finally decided to put their bottomless marketing wallet on standby for a couple of days and let the games do the talking. On the 12th March (that's today, by the way), they will be showing off a little substance from their headquarters in Seattle, with the following industry luminaries on hand: Peter Molyneux (Lionhead), Lorne Lanning (Oddworld), Chris Taylor (Gas Powered Games - he did Total Annihilation, so get down on your knees), Alex Garden (Relic), Martyn Chudley (Bizarre Creations), Carl Schnurr (Microsoft) and of course Jason Jones (Bungie). What can we expect to see though? There's all sorts of speculation, with everything from Black & White Xbox to MSR Xbox being touted. The only thing that's really certain is that this is a make or break day for Microsoft - the first real time that the public will get to see the Xbox in action, and not just pre-rendered Oddworld show-offs. We hope to bring you full analysis when the news lands tomorrow morning (at the close in Seattle). Related Feature - Thinking about the Box

Okay, so generally speaking, we don't draw attention to the myriad of obscure Far Eastern overclocking links we discover on our trawls around the web. Take H-Oda.com for example - a page that distributes the venerable WCPUID program, a page basically rife with stuff like this, and this. That said, when it comes to barriers, the biggest at the moment is 2GHz, and now that someone has broken it with an engineering sample of the P4 1.7GHz, we feel it our duty as hardware nuts to let you know! The person in question published this page just recently, which includes (independantly verified) WCPUID images that clearly show the Pentium 4 1.7GHz reaching not just 2.0GHz, but ultimately 2.3GHz! We'd congratulate the chap if we could decipher his name in Internet Explorer, but suffice to say, it's an achievement and a half. Check out the rest of his page for even more daring exploits into super-cooling and the like. We fancy this is the sort of bloke who uses Nitrogen in his air conditioner. Amongst his other feats (on the Records page) are a PIII-1GHz running at 1.6GHz and more. Check it out, but take a seat first!

Do you remember the Kyro? We previewed it in the middle of last year, and guessed (wrongly, it would seem) that the card had a bright future ahead of it in budget gaming systems, on the back of its strong array of PowerVR features. The final silicon was eventually labelled the Videologic Vivid, and the world hasn't really seen hide nor hair of it for over six months. That is, until this weekend, when rumours started to brew of a "Kyro II"; rumours that were eventually confirmed when we sauntered over to Hercules' press website.

Gore, subtitled "The Ultimate Soldier" will be an online multi-player game with an Offline ladder system placing the player against the game's advanced AI. Developed by 4D Rulers as a competitor to the now-proven multiplayer-only first person shooters, Gore features many new and popular gaming styles, and the design brief seems to be to make an entertaining shooter. It's described as the development team's dream game, and now you can sample that dream for yourself with the 40Mb demo version that has just been released. With so many demos hitting 100Mb and above these days, 40Mb is a pleasant change. You can download it from either of the following URLs:-

The game teaches you to drive mechanical diggers with a multitude of bizarre events ranging from rescuing turtles to playing ten-pin with a beach ball. Most of the tasks can be played against the clock in single player mode, or against an opponent's time in multiplayer. JVC expects the game to appeal to gamers both young and old. During our visit to JVC's UK headquarters we got a chance to play Power Diggerz for some time with one of the firm's PR officers, and it seems that thanks to the shear variety of tasks on hand and the subtle difficulty level the game is remarkably addictive. One of the first challenges was simply to duff up a limousine, and it acted as a good opportunity to suss out the controls. You use your left analogue stick to control extension of the arm, and general movement from side to side, while the X and Triangle buttons move the arm up and down respectively. It's surprisingly intuitive after a while, and no doubt after a couple of hours of it, manipulating the arm will become child's play, and that's going to be important, because a lot of the tasks are quite delicate! For starters, there's a fairground loop-of-wire style challenge, where you have to manoeuvre the claw through a maze whilst avoiding the sides and the ceiling, which is bobbing up and down. The idea is to try and get as far as possible while the clock is ticking, but the challenge really lies in moving quickly and avoiding the walls. If you hit them, you get penalised and knocked back a few moves, so it's all about gauging how much you can get done before the ceiling sinks back down to block you off.

While big western companies like 3D Realms and Valve vanish for three or four years at a time, working their way through multi-million dollar budgets in the hopes of producing another hit, while endlessly recycling their last game with console spin-offs and Plutonium / Platinum editions to mop up every last penny, a small company based in Croatia of all places has popped out of the woodwork with one of the year's most promising action games.

EA Europe's release schedule has been updated, with confirmation that Unreal-engined shooter "Clive Barker's Undying" is now due out next Friday on this side of the pond (we had previously been expecting it to be released yesterday), as well as new information on some of EA's other titles. Undoubtedly the biggest title to be added to the list is Westwood's first 3D real-time strategy game, the eagerly anticipated "Emperor : Battle for Dune", which is being targeted for a June 15th UK release.

Last week we talked with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux about some of the inspirations which helped to form Black & White, from the basic idea of being able to choose between good and evil, to the two hundred foot tall animals which help to carry out your wishes in the world. This week we look at the other end of the game's development, finding out more about why the game has taken so long to finish and what the future has in store.

JVC. Not a company one might associate with the publishing of PSOne and PlayStation 2 games, but they've actually been in it for as long as anyone. Thanks to a close relationship with Sony, JVC have a fairly strong line up of titles to release this year, and after visiting their London-based headquarters this morning, we'd back quite a few of their titles to do well. The first game we were shown was a Japanese title awaiting translation called "Power Diggerz". As the title suggests you control a JCB look-alike and smash things up. The game is surprisingly addictive, with some interesting challenges to overcome, generally either against the clock or hot-seating with a friend. For instance, during one game our host demonstrated a section where you smash up an expensive limosine, and spoke of another where you race against a clock to dig a trench. Slightly more amusing are ten-pin bowling with a huge beach ball that you bounce around with your digger's claw, and a take on the old fairground game of moving the loop around the wire, only this time with the jaws of a digger. Another game on the JVC agenda is "Panzer Front", an action-strategy tank game from Japan. Unlike other titles of its class (ho ho), Panzer casts you as any of several major nations with no discernible "evil" to stave off. With plenty of campaigns based on real-life tank battles and hundreds of the big hulks to choose from, the game should be quite a force to be reckoned with, and one of the PSOne's final full-priced games. Quite a swansong. Elsewhere, we were shown a couple of SNK games picked up in light of the company's fall from power; "Samurai Shodown" and a new "Fatal Fury" title, and finally footage of "Wing Over III", a PS2 title in development, again in Japan. WO3 features a half-and-half mix of commercial aircraft and fight planes, with some astonishingly intricate detail in the cockpit and on the outside. Although the ground could yet do with some work, Wing Over III will be a very interesting prospect when we finally play it in September.

Novalogic today announced that they have signed a deal with the famous fantasy artist Brom to contribute characters and artwork to their bizarrely named gothic-tinged first person shooter "Necrocide : The Dead Must Die", which features the exploits of a vampire battling the undead. Brom's characters will apparently be used as the inspiration for many of the shambling creatures of the night which you are destroying, and he is also designing four necromancers for the game.

Virgin Interactive today confirmed our worst fears with the official unveiling of Daily Sport Football Strip, which has been cropping up on their release schedules for a while now under various titles. As the name suggests, Football Strip is a soccer themed quiz game "officially endorsed by the UK's brightest tabloid newspaper", in which "the idea is to lose it all" with "four fabulous fillies" just waiting to "get their kits off for the lads". As the press release so succintly puts it -

If there's one thing I love about the Dreamcast it's the over-abundance of atypical Japanese beat 'em ups that make no real sense. Playing them almost makes you feel like you're part of some bizarre cult; the cult of the obscure fighter, perhaps, and there are a lot to play. Some of them even make it to the West. The PowerStone series did a sterling job, for instance, and now Sega are having another crack, with AM2's Fighting Vipers 2. The original Fighting Vipers was quite a typical Sega fighter. Enclosed arenas, cutesy models and refreshing gameplay. All right so it was mildly obscure, but after the success of Virtua Fighter 3 it deserved a rehash. The game, Fighting Vipers 2, developed by arcade heroes AM2 hit Japanese arcades in 1997. It flopped, big style. When it turned up in Western arcades nobody even raised an eyebrow in its direction. Despite proving something of a non-starter for AM2 (which is quite rare), FV2 was duly converted to the Dreamcast and released to Japan, where it did tolerably well. Well enough even, to spawn a translation for the West. Unfortunately, it hasn't been worth the wait.

As we reported this morning, ATI have just launched a budget graphics chipset to rival nVidia's GeForce 2 MX line. Is it any surprise then, that nVidia has chosen just thise opportunity to launch its MX-200 and MX-400 chips? Shyeah. The GeForce 2 MX features TwinView display modes for multiple monitors, but lacks the onboard DVD playback functionality of its competitor. It performs somewhere in-between the GeForce SDR and DDR levels, and the new MX-200 and MX-400 should raise the bar a little in that respect. Stripping the GeForce 2 MX down even further (and presumably therefore the price), the MX-200 features a rather pitiful and performance-choking memory bandwidth of 1.3Gb/second, but matches the original MX for fill rate and includes 32Mb of onboard memory. The MX-400 operates at 2.7Gb/second memory bandwidth wise, the same as the original MX, and beats it for fill rate by 50 pixels/second and 100 texels/second. It ships in 32Mb and 64Mb flavours. Certainly not as feature-laden as the Radeon VE, the MX line does address plenty of price pockets, and should wage a costly war on ATI in that department. One should fully expect to see the Radeon VE beating the MX-400 on the testbed but perhaps failing to beat it off the shelves. After all, ATI has not long been associated with ground-breaking 3D performance. Thanks to nVidia's Interactive website, you can see the GeForce 2 MX in action, so to speak. The site also offers you the chance to learn more about the company's Shading Rasterizer (or NSR). Related Feature - Hercules Prophet 2 MX

ATI have shipped the first models in their Radeon "VE" range to retail in Europe, the company announced in a press release yesterday. The VE range, which will compete directly with the nVidia GeForce 2 MX range, includes two integrated DACs and CRT controllers, integrated support for DVI (Digital Flat Panel) resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 and integrated TV-Out. The new Radeon VE graphics processor is a smaller scale version of the full-blown Radeon, but with only one rendering pipeline instead of two. Costing less to produce, the Radeon VE also paves the way for ATI's new HydraVision multi-monitor support, which is a pretty similar technology to Matrox's Dual-Head and nVidia's TwinView. It supports traditional CRT monitors, flat panel displays and TVs, allowing users to maximise their desktop space by using two monitors simultaneously. This feature has been enormously popular on other cards, and the visual quality and performance of the Radeon VE should help to endear it to hardware nuts and the average consumer alike. Another feature that ships with the Radeon VE is "MultiDesk". Similar to the Linux KDE2.0, it allows users to control up to nine separate desktop "configurations". In other words, virtual desktops upon which to arrange icons, windows and such. In this sense, you're not just multi-tasking, you're multi-desking, hence the name. You can set applications to automatically open on whichever desk you choose and so on, making it a pretty versatile feature. Elsewhere, the Radeon VE also includes ATI's industry-leading DVD playback. We're not just quoting a press release here either - the DVD playback on the Radeon line has been second to none, speaking from experience. Whatever ATI's "Video Immersion" software actually does, it does it very well. The software features motion compensation amongst other things, and even includes perfect multi-tasking during DVD playback. Having tested this on even the lowliest of PCs, we can confirm that it does exactly as it says on the box. The built-in MPEG2 decoding takes the strain off your processor too, making the Radeon VE the perfect card for that PIII-450 that's you have been suffering along with since the summer before last. As with all Radeon cards, the GPU also features ATI's HyperZ technology. Although unproven in its effectiveness, the theory goes that every 3D scene that has to be displayed has a number of areas that you cannot see. On older cards, these were rendered anyway, but with HyperZ, only the pixels in view are accepted and rendered. HyperZ also deals with the Z Buffer (the third dimension, so to speak) in a different way too, by compressing it to improve speed, and flushing its contents quickly to keep throughput going. Lastly, 16, 32 and 64Mb versions are being made available. At the time of writing, industry favourite Dabs.com lists the 32Mb Radeon VE in OEM and Retail packagings at £63 and £72 ex VAT respectively. In the past, Radeons shipping as retail boxed units have included faster memory, so bear that in mind.

On Monday we reported that UbiSoft had confirmed rumours that they were in talks with Gores Technology Group to buy the entertainment division of The Learning Company from them. At the time all we had to go on was a very short (one sentence!) press release, but now we have the full details of the deal, which will give UbiSoft publishing rights to well over 80 titles past, present and future, including Myst III : Exile, Earth 2150 : The Moon Project and Pool of Radiance.

Webgames experts WildTangent today announced that they will be showing off their Web Driver™ system's new multiplayer capabilities at the Game Developers Conference later this month, claiming that it is "opening the door to a new level of immersive media content". As the company was co-founded by Microsoft's former DirectX evangelist Alex St John, it's perhaps no surprise that Web Driver uses DirectX and "takes full advantage of hardware acceleration, scaling content to an optimal level for each user's machine".

As with all good war-games, you have the choice of a peace-loving force, fighting for freedom, and a slightly more malevolent one. The "International Corps for Peace" (ICP) are as good as it gets - a body formed by the peace-loving nations of the world to try and preserve the status quo. In strict contrast, ICP's shadow organisation, GHOST, have risen from the insatiable thirst for wealth of a malicious minority. Economic interests drive GHOST, who want to disrupt world peace and plunge us all into a third world war, the primary beneficiary of which would be them. As the ICP, you have to pursue military and political goals. And as with most modern conflicts, your image with the media is more important than anything. There are no resources to be harvested in the traditional sense in Conflict Zone. Your funding comes directly from the pockets of the general public, and as such your war chest increases depending on your level of popularity. This creates an interesting paradox; the ICP does have weaponry capable of flattening GHOST, but using it might incense the media, which is of paramount importance. Your funding is directly proportional to your popularity rating, so good deeds like airlifting casualties to facilities outside the conflict are rewarded. Treatment of civilians is also a factor in your popularity. GHOST could very well have captured and brainwashed a whole village of pitchfork-wielders to do their bidding, but if you chuck in a few mortars and count the teeth, you will have taken the initiative and killed hundreds of innocents in the eyes of Joe Public. You have to wait for the civilians to make the first move and treat them accordingly!

Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodger has summarised his report on the Xbox for Microsoft, and explained how soon one should expect the unit to start showing profit. In a summary of his report, he said that although it is thought that the Xbox represents a big opportunity, "we do not believe it will become a major contributor to operating profit in the next five years." Microsoft's fiscal year starts on July 1st, and Mr. Blodger said that "near-term, we believe it will require substantial investment. We estimate $2 billion in losses before break-even in FY2005." The report, on which Microsoft had no comment to make, explains in great detail how Henry Blodger and his associate Justin Baldauf believe the Xbox will impact the world's top software maker. The report comes only a couple of days after rumours started of a possible delay to the Japanese release of the console. Whether this had any effect on the report is unknown. With strong competition from Sony and Nintendo this year though, Microsoft will have to pull a lot of financial muscle to shift units. Related Feature - Xbox to be delayed in Japan?

Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, Pokemon get everywhere. The popular franchise is now set to be extended as Nintendo joins forces with camera maker Olympus Optical to develop a system for the GameBoy Advance that will allow people to play games using their own characters, including Pokemon, downloaded from electronic data cards.

GameBoy fans who have been patiently gnawing their finger nails down to the bone have finally discovered which games Nintendo has chosen to release with the GameBoy Advance. Of the 15 titles confirmed, only two are first-party titles, and one comes by way of the newly liberated third party publisher Sega. Before we list the games, we ought to mention the pricing. The system itself will cost $99.95 when it launches on June 11th, and the games should cost from between $29.95 and $39.95. We reckon that should boil down to a retail cost of approximately £99 in this country and games at around £25 to £30, which is pretty much what top-spec GameBoy games used to cost. Nintendo have also told us that they intend to launch more than 60 titles before the end of the year, but anyway, onto the list!

While its single player campaigns didn't particularly impress us and the graphics look decidely antiquated, the saving grace for real-time strategy / role-playing hybrid Kingdom Under Fire is undoubtedly its excellent multiplayer support. Now Korean publisher Phantagram are taking full advantage of that, with the announcement of a World Championship for the game. The first preliminary online competition here in the UK will be taking place towards the end of March, and if you want to take part in this contest you must register by Thursday March 15th. Simply send an e-mail with your name, address and phone number to kuf.europe@phantagram.com - you must be over 15, own a copy of the game, and live in the UK to take part in the UK Championship.

European publisher UbiSoft have announced that they will be releasing Everquest : Deluxe Edition later this month, giving those of us who haven't already bought the game another chance to get hooked on what users lovingly refer to as Evercrack. The pack will include a new improved version of the original game, featuring improved graphics with more detailed textures and three times the polygons, as well as both of the official add-on packs - Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious. You will also get some extra Everquest goodies for your hard-earned Euros, including a poster, strategy guide, map of the world and a lizardman figurine. And all of this for the princely sum of £29.99 here in the UK. If you want to find out why upwards of a hundred thousand people around the world play this game every night, this could be just what you were looking for...

, which covers everything from music and wrestling to video games and movies, seems to be the latest company to face the pinch as the online advertising market continues to collapse around their ears. UGO hosts or supplies ad banners to many of the biggest gaming sites on the net, including Blue's News, Shack News and the extensive Telefragged network, as well as many smaller fan sites dedicated to particular games or console systems.

Although it's bound to receive criticism from some corners, we view Sega's latest anti-cheating measure as an act of heroism. The system that controls access to their new RPG Phantasy Star Online is very clever. It gives you a serial number and an access key, which are saved to the internal memory of your Dreamcast, creating a unique login that cannot be "borrowed" by anyone or overwritten. This system is brilliant, because it allows you to log on and be assured that your character can't be perverted by joyriders, so to speak. It's also equally good at keeping people out. And Sega are apparently doing just that to people who dare cheat. Owners of the Action Replay device have apparently been using codes to gain an unfair advantage, and Sega don't like that one bit. So if you've bought PSO and fancy making things a bit easier for yourself - don't. You won't enjoy it as much anyway, and Sega might just cut you off, something which they reserve the right to do.

Our friends at The Register have been analysing a transcription of BT Openworld chief Andy Green's address during a Parliamentary IT Committee debate on the White Paper on the Regulation of Telecommunications. Choosing his words carefully, Mr. Green announced that "Only 30 per cent of the population is on the Net, of which only a tiny proportion are using it for anything other than a passive and sometimes rather weird kind of entertainment." Thanks Andy, we love you too! As The Reg points out, this confusing insult targets not only BT's staple diet of residential consumers, but its business clients as well. Not to mention everybody else in the country who uses the Internet in any way, shape or form. Even more perverse though were his claims that broadband Internet connections should be market-driven. In other words, BT will provide them to people when people are really demanding them, and have applications that can take advantage of them. Talk about the chicken and the egg... This announcement comes just hours after developers in America trialled a 54Mbit VDSL Internet connection up to 3.8Km from its source. Frankly we're a bit lost for words, and also a touch confused as to why Mr. Green is (allegedly) robbing competing service providers of their ADSL installations when the market isn't there yet? You can read The Register's thoughts on the subject here. Related Feature - BT faces legal action over ADSL

We've got a lot of time for Datel. Their Action Replay peripherals have long been a staple requirement in our collective gaming diet. Ever since the Super Nintendo in fact (and no doubt before), they have unlocked tricks and easter eggs in all our favourite games, and allowed our imported games to run flawlessly. Today sees the announcement of Datel's new "X-Port" for PlayStation 2, which is set to complement the powerful Action Replay 2 device, allowing gamers to store game saves on their PC's hard-drive (via a USB interface). The device also allows players to exchange any PS2 media, including Yabasic files, and game saves can now be exchanged at Datel's portal site, www.codejunkies.com. The system supports Windows 98 or above, and of course you must have a memory card to attach to the device. The X-Port's PC software allows you to load, save, delete, edit and exchange game saves using the hard-drive as the storage facility. You can even send saves to other X-Port users as email attachments, or back them up on other media like CDRs and floppy disks. Datel's marketing manager Grant Hughes points out the potential for the device, citing MTV Music Generator as an example. "Just think," he says, "soon you'll be able to exchange entire songs you've created". X-Port, which is a completely separate utility to the Action Replay 2, costs £29.99, which incidentally is the same price as an 8Mb memory card, and can be purchased at stores up and down the country or at www.d3world.com, Datel's online facility. Also due out from Datel this month are a USB keyboard and USB radio, both for PlayStation 2. Related Feature - Cheat!

- PhantagramSystem Requirements -   Pentium 200 MMX or equivalent   64Mb RAM   900Mb hard drive space   8x CD-Rom drive   2Mb DirectX graphics card

Westwood have jumped on the massively multiplayer bandwagon, today confirming the long-standing rumours that they were working on a new game titled "Earth And Beyond". Due out later this year, the game will allow you to be "a feared fighter pilot, an intrepid explorer or a savvy trader" as you fly around the galaxy in your own fully customisable spacecraft. You will also be able to land your ship and explore strange new planets in full 3D, with "hundreds of areas to explore, including planets, moons, nebulas, starports, Star Gates, black holes, [and] capital ships". It certainly sounds ambitious...