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About 8 months ago we took a look at Windows 2000, the (then) new Windows NT-based operating system from Microsoft, and tried to work out just why gamers already entrenched in heavily personalized Windows 98 installations should expend time and resources installing and maintaining this bloated mass of incompatibility and user-unfriendliness. Since then, circumstances have changed, twofold: firstly, drivers are now available for practically every device under the sun, and secondly, that every game released since last year now has in-built support for the operating system, making it a very viable alternative for both the casual and hardcore gamer alike, not to mention the hardware junkie. So if you're hanging onto Windows Millenium, Windows 98 or (God forbid) Windows 95, join us on a journey into the updated Windows 2000 and learn why you should give it more than just the time of day this on this occasion.

Plenty of companies have now gone public with press releases about their new GeForce 3 lines, including Hercules (Guillemot), ELSA and now ASUS. Currently it looks like the card will cost $549 in the USA (that's the recommended price at any rate), and £449 in the UK, based on Hercules' British and North American press releases. In both cases, the information is that the "[Hercules GeForce 3 design] will be available in March for" ... "£449.99 inc VAT" and "$549.99." Although the data is subject to change, it does match up with what we've just heard from ASUS too. ELSA have also confirmed their North American pricing of $549 in this release. ASUS' release says that the V8200 Pure and the V8200 Deluxe (which will include TV-out, video-input, video editing, and 3D VR glasses), will cost $549 and $598 respectively. We reckon that conservatively speaking if you want to secure a GeForce 3 at launch the cheapest you can expect to find it is £400, which is about the price Dabs.com are offering the Gladiac 920 at, but prices may well go up to about £450 as the Hercules release estimates. Prices are subject to change of course. Related Feature - GeForce 3 Preview

Probably the most bizarre webgame that we have ever come across, and purveyor of quite possibly the funkiest dub soundtrack ever to grace a computer game, Banja casts you in the role of the eponymous rasta as you explore the constantly evolving island of Itland.This month's event sees the opening of the new Itland cinema, and to celebrate the French techno star Laurent Garnier will be playing a virtual DJ set tomorrow night. There is also a new episode of the storyline to work your way through, as well as more surreal sub-games to enjoy and a casino to waste your virtual money in. Well worth a look if you fancy something completely different.

Having purchased German publisher Blue Byte (the company behind the popular Settlers and Battle Isle series) just a few weeks ago, French company Ubi Soft today confirmed that it is continuing its spending spree by buying GAME Studios (the recently renamed entertainment division of The Learning Company) from Gores Technology Group. Gores bought TLC from owner Mattel just last October, but have been focusing on its range of productivity and educational software. Gores revealed that they had received "a number of offers for the company's Entertainment Division" over the last few months, and that they had "identified the Entertainment Division as a non-core part of the company" early on.

Microsoft's Xbox is due out late this year in the States, and in Europe in early 2002. The system had been expected to hit Japanese shores about the same time as it arrived in Northern America, but according to analysts, the big M is having to rethink its strategy due to a lack of interest from developers. So far, Microsoft boasts support from all corners of the globe... except the far East. Studios like Lionhead and publishing giants like Electronic Arts practically offer an excuse for the Seattle-based firm to start their own mint, but so far only Konami have hesitantly signed up for the next generation system. Speaking to Bloomberg, Capcom's general manager of R&D Keiji Inafune said that "Japanese video-game developers cannot afford to invest aggressively in making Xbox games because Microsoft has yet to show its specific intentions, such as what age demographic it is targeting." As is widely known, Japanese console game demographics are very different to the West. The level of interest in popular Western titles like FIFA 2001 is nothing when compared to the interest in, say, a game about helping a schoolgirl to get a date for the dance on Friday. Although industry observers are now plotting the Xbox's arrival in Japan for early next year along with its arrival in Europe, Microsoft are standing firm to their release estimates. The Tokyo Game Show at the end of this month is expected to showcase an announcement from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, and an announcement about rollout may well be forthcoming. What have Microsoft to lose by confirming the delay? Why, market share with Nintendo of course. The GameCube is expected to signal a return to fortune for Nintendo after the relative failure of its N64 console. Although the Xbox boasts an impressive hardware makeup, including the latest GeForce 3 -based XGPU from nVidia and more, Nintendo is being praised for going back to basics and focusing on the games. The GameCube's relationship with the GameBoy Advance will also be dangerous for Xbox, and with both products now expected to hit Japanese shores first, Microsoft's ability to gain a foothold will rely on extensive developer support, something which they have up until now been neglecting. Related Feature - Thinking About the Box

Just over a month ago we took a look at VIA's KT133A motherboard chipset, and spoke of its outstanding performance with the old and new Athlons alike. Last week though, and under shady circumstances, manufacturer VIA announced that they intend to revise the KT133A and produce a new KT133E, which will address the requirements of the new AMD Palomino's "PowerNow!" power conservation systems. Palomino and its little brother Morgan are enhanced versions of current Athlon and Duron technology. "PowerNow!" is a feature previously seen at last year's Comdex in AMD's new line of K6 laptops, which monitors the voltage and CPU frequency requirements of the processor and increases / decreases them when needed. The Tech Report's Comdex coverage features a video demonstration of "PowerNow!", which can be found at the bottom of this page. Back to the KT133E though, and does this mean that owners of KT133A motherboards are out of luck when it comes to Palomino? Thankfully, no it does not. Palomino and Morgan should both be able to adjust multiplier and frequency on the fly without the aid of a "PowerNow! aware" chipset, which the KT133E purports to be. The upshot of the KT133E's refinements though is the ability to vary the voltage supplied to the CPU, which will make it more attractive to new buyers. Whether motherboard giants ABit, ASUS, Gigabyte and co. from Taiwan will bother to repackage their KT133A lines to take advantage of the new revision is currently unknown. Of course, the other question is, does anybody really care about KT133-whatever, when PC2100 DDR memory is now shipping at $60 for 128Mb from the USA? Related Feature - KT133A - Performance for Less?

The starting video didn't run properly on my 850MHz Athlon with 256Mb of memory and GeForce 2, even though the whole video was being played directly from my (fast) hard disk, which isn't a good start. The Rat Bag Games logo animation kicked off with a couple of fester look-alikes spray-painting a wall, and it jerked and wailed all over the place, badly out of sync. The introductory animation for the actual game did likewise, but after hammering the spacebar it went away. I have no idea what format the video was using, but I'd recommend to the developers that they reconsidered it. The interface is very dark, but I had no real trouble finding my way into the options menus to do some configuring. I had told the game to Autodetect which resolution and video card I had, and had no doubt that it would have done so. The Video menu had the resolution set at 320x240, which should really have been a sign I suppose, so I bumped this up to 1024x768 and clicked on a few of the video options. The controls were simple, just the arrow keys, Shift for half-steering wheel lock and space to change the camera view. Z and X allegedly handle changing gears but I couldn't get them to do that. Although the eventual public release of the game will feature a full-fledged career mode, it was disabled in the version shown to us, and only Quick Race was offered. Three tracks were available and about 10 vehicles in three classes; Superlites, Super Modified and Sports Pick Up Trucks. I went for the default stadium of Bracken Bowl and a nice Sports Pick Up.

Electronic Arts announced last night that they have bought gaming website Pogo.com in a deal worth $42m. Pogo.com is probably better known for its past life as gaming service provider TEN, who helped form the Professional Gamers League before abandoning the notoriously fickle hardcore gaming market to concentrate on mainstream webgames such as card and board games. Pogo.com boasts 17 million registered members and is apparently the stickiest site on the net, with users spending an average of three hours on the site each month, but if none of those people are paying you then all the users in the world won't do you any good.

Although the Dreamcast is plump and lordy when it comes to racing titles, the water-based sub-genre has always looked a little malnourished - the same is true of most consoles. With the exception of Wave Race 64, there are but a smattering of titles one would call good, and very few if any that one could call excellent. Surf Rocket Racers, as the title suggests, is more of an arcade surf 'em up than a simulation. Treating the game as a simulation might have given it the edge over its already skeletal competition, but compared to tarmac, water is a fairly unpredictable variable, so it's understandable that developers CRI are reluctant to deal with it in the same way they might treat Formula 1. And it's partially due to this reluctance and partially due to inexperience that Surf Rocket Racers misses the mark. It's quite a pretty game; the framerate is a fairly constant 30fps and the water effects are reasonable, but at first it's actually difficult to establish if you are really floating on water or on some sort of rollercoaster suspended in a trough. The liquid your rider and his jetski floats upon is more jelly-like than fluidic, and although frequently the competition dash into turns and whip spray up into his face, he never really looks wet.

One of the best role-playing games of last year, Baldur's Gate II : Shadows of Amn built on the success of the original game while fixing most of its niggling problems. It's perhaps not surprising then that the hit game has now spawned an official add-on, as well as a soon-to-be-released DVD version and Collectors Edition. Subtitled Throne of Bhaal, the newly announced mission pack raises the game's experience cap to eight million, which will allow players to reach an awe-inspiring level 40, with all the attendant new spells and abilities which that entails.

Raven's first person shooter Elite Force is one of the best Star Trek games of recent years, and the first to be based on the Voyager series. Now publisher Activision have announced that work on an add-on pack is underway, set to feature a pair of new single player campaigns, 17 multiplayer maps, a dozen new player models and two new multiplayer games - a Team Fortress style class-based mode, and the appropriately titled "assimilation", in which you must eliminate a Borg intruder before you are all assimilated.

InterAct and MadCatz pumped out a couple of press releases between them to cover the topic of third party peripherals for the Xbox yesterday. Both companies are now officially licensed to use the Xbox name and logo in the manufacturer, distribution and marketing of peripheral devices. MadCatz will be providing a new controller, a memory unit, a racing wheel and their Panther joystick device, which has been acclaimed critically by many hardcore PC gamers. The Panther is described as the "Ultimate first person action combat controller", and features a trackball, joystick and a comfy interface. MadCatz recently launched the Panther for PS2, along with a similar range of peripherals to those that they have signed with Microsoft to produce. The controller mentioned in the press release may refer to the 900MHz Wireless controller, which MadCatz produce for PS2 currently and describe as "the best controller ever made". Using wireless RF as opposed to notoriously unreliable intra-red technology, the controller could finally turn the gaming controller into the "TV remote" of the future. C.O.O. Darren Richardson commented that "it is critical that peripheral companies work closely with the first party game system manufacturers to ensure compatibility and consumer satisfaction", a fact that anyone who has experienced shoddy peripheral devices over the years will agree with. The InterAct deal is a very similar one. According to the press release, the company will support the needs of gamers with everything from basic gamepads and controllers to arcade sticks and racing wheels when the Xbox is launched. Scott Loomis, the Xbox's 3rd Party Peripheral Program Manager claimed that Microsoft wants to "ensure that a full line of compatible accessories are available to enhance the Xbox user experience". InterAct is a subsidiary of the Recoton Corporation, which unlike MadCatz specializes in consumer electronics for every walk of life. They also own the GameShark products and more trademarks than you can shake a particularly large stick at.

Volition have released a playable demo of their promising looking 3D role-playing game "Summoner", which is due for release on PC and PlayStation 2 early next month through publisher THQ. Weighing in at a modest 63Mb, the demo gives you a taste of what to expect from the full game, with three levels to explore, three summoning powers to use, and a range of weapons, items and enemies. You can download it from any of the following sites -

One of the most unusual flight sims we've come across in recent weeks is Night Bomber. Not only is it the only flight sim that we can think of which focuses exclusively on night time operations during the Second World War, but it is also a non-commercial project which will be distributed free, with any profits that are made going to a variety of war-related charities from veterans groups to aircraft preservation societies. Despite this it promises to be commercial quality though, with veterans of projects for Microsoft, DiD and Microprose working on the game.

Id Software's Todd Hollenshead yesterday announced that Commander Keen is returning from the dead to join the ranks of Mario and co. on the GameBoy Color. The game will be developed by David A. Palmer Productions for Activision and id judging by the press release and will follow closely id's original Commander Keen series on the PC, with precocious 8-year-old superhero Billy Blaze on an all-new quest to save the world from his alien adversaries, the Droidiccus, Shikadia and Bloogs of Fribbulus Xax. Crikey. We tentatively reported on the possibility of a GameBoy incarnation of Keen back in December, suggesting that the GameBoy Advance would be the medium. So I guess we were half right! The other possible celebration of Keen's ten year anniversary, that the whole series will be released as freeware, seems rather unlikely while commercial opportunities still exist however. Related Feature - Keen lives!

UK publisher Codemasters has been a thorn in the pirate's side for some time now. Its counter-measures are improving steadily, and according to a press release received yesterday (despite the somewhat unlikely "February 29th 2001" header), their latest PlayStation title, LMA Manager 2001 will tackle piracy by self-destructing, Mission: Impossible style! All right so perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement, but the idea is fairly similar. According to Codemasters, the game, which is released on March 16th, includes encrypted code that enables the game to spot whether or not it's running on a duplicated CDR or not. If it is discovered to be doing so, the code automatically instigates a number of subtle changes that adversely effect gameplay - the release likens it to a software virus, but one that doesn't harm the PlayStation itself. The self-modifying software looks and plays like the real thing, but as players continue, elements of the gameplay start going seriously wrong, such as the player's chosen football team's performance becoming worse and worse (surely that's just a feature? -Ed). The changes that take place apparently become so serious that it renders the pirated game little more than a demo. Not only will the pirates find it hard to get around this problem, but buyers of pirated software will think twice about buying because they don't know whether or not they are receiving a working version. The move is an interesting one for Codemasters, who normally attempt to employ copy protection that prevents duplications. According to producer Simon Prytherch though, "that seems to be getting cracked more easily by ardent pirates so we're trying something new". If the approach proves successful, Codemasters will doubtless adopt it on more of their PlayStation titles and encourage other developers to employ similar measures. An obvious downside to the technique is that it is not a packageable anti-piracy measure. Each game will have to be programmed individually to react in different ways to the discovery that it is running on a duplicate. We're not quite sure why Codemasters didn't just create code that crashes the PlayStation when duplicate copies of games are used or something like that either. Surely creating an individual anti-piracy measure for each and every game is a little far-fetched? The other issue is one of reliability. What is the code makes a mistake? How are measures being taken to prevent that? We'll be watching this one closely, and hope to bring you more coverage of LMA Manager 2001's success in a couple of weeks time.

Peter Molyneux is truly a man who needs no introduction, the brains behind classic hits such as Populous and Theme Park. With his latest magnus opus (Black & White, one of this year's most eagerly anticipated games) recently sent off to Electronic Arts for final testing, Peter dropped in on a press event unveiling the forthcoming PlayStation port of the game to have a chat with the European press.

Publishing giant THQ have clinched the rights to market and distribute Conker's Bad Fur Day in Europe, according to a press release received this morning. The game has been farmed out to the third party publisher in what is believed to be an attempt by Nintendo to distance themselves from its risqué contents. The plot pretty much speaks for itself. After a wild night out, Conker the squirrel awakens to a Bad Fur Day. Experiencing the hangover of a lifetime, he gets lost on the way home and stumbles into a world of abusive paintpots, jabbering dung beetles, and flesh-eating dinosaurs. Now, this frying-pan-wielding fur ball is going to unleash his foul mood on everybody. Ouch. It certainly signals a departure from Rare's usual line of titles, which feature cuddly animals of all kinds rendered in stunning SGI bopping each other happily on the head. "We're excited to be a part of this unique opportunity to work in association with Rare to launch Conker's Bad Fur Day in Europe," said Tim Walsh, THQ's Senior VP of International Publishing. In a way it's unsurprising to see Nintendo farming the game out to THQ, after so much time has been spent building the company's reputation as a publisher of family titles. We tried to find out whether it was Nintendo who approached THQ or the other way round, but the company declined to comment.

It seems that NVIDIA's dominance of the market is pretty much complete now. With ATI announcing profit warnings and already facing significant competition in key areas like OEMs, consumer graphics retail and mobility chipsets, things are looking rosey for Santa Clara-based NVIDIA. Now it seems NVIDIA is charging along, forging working relationships with both Intel and AMD. So yesterday they used the Intel Developer Forum as a catalyst to launch dual press releases that highlight steps taken to optimise the driver set individually for the Pentium 4 and Athlon processors respectively. Generally speaking, GPU driver sets are geared toward a united goal, to improve the performance of each feature on a graphics card under a certain operating system, such as Windows Millenium or 2000. Optimisations on a per-processor basis are somewhat unusual, and when they do occur, they are frequently lop-sided, favouring one system over the other. This was particularly true of graphics cards released when the Athlon was starting to make its presence known just over a year ago. Both press releases for yesterday's announcement are fairly similar, with identical trumpet-blowing NVIDIA information, and individualized processor-specific spiel about features and support. David Vivoli at Intel for instance pointed out that "The Pentium 4 processor introduced many exciting capabilities for increasing system throughput and the GeForce3 is ideally suited to take advantage of them," while Ned Finkle at AMD explained that "The NVIDIA GeForce3 provides an excellent, high-performance video option for AMD's processor customers." According to the Intel release, the GeForce 3 GPU takes advantage of the new Intel SSE2 instruction set, "including 144 new instructions for 128-bit Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) integer arithmetic and 128-bit SIMD double-precision floating point". The system also takes advantage of the "Advanced Transfer Cache for higher data throughput, a 400MHz system bus, and a Rapid Execution Engine for higher execution throughput." Ned Finkle continued from the AMD corner that he felt "NVIDIA's use of DDR memory in the GeForce3 perfectly compliments the AMD Athlon processor's 266MHz front-side bus and DDR memory speeds". The Athlon, being a more conventional x86 processor born of the same line as the Pentium III requires no real explanation, but Intel's rather over-complicated technobabble probably does. "SSE2" for those who missed our Pentium 4 review refers to Streaming SIMD Extensions 2. SIMD, in turn, is lengthened to Single Instruction Multiple Data, and is a way of applying a single instruction to multiple datasets simultaneously. With so much repetitive data manipulation involved in gaming, it's not hard to see how the GeForce 3 could be trained to take advantage of this. The Advanced Transfer Cache is merely lower latency, higher bandwidth cache on the processor, and the 400MHz system bus will join it in helping memory-bandwidth heavy tasks like high resolution / 32-bit display mode games. It's actually more interesting to see the Intel optimisation than it is the AMD - because based on this, one would suspect that 3D games that use DirectX 8 and the GeForce 3 on a Pentium 4 platform would vastly outscore games running on the same platform but with an equivalent AMD chip. Memory bandwidth limitation may even become something of a moot point; after all, the Pentium 4 isn't exactly low on bandwidth. In our upcoming review of the GeForce 3, we hope to test this supposition for ourselves, but in the meantime, we'll have to rely on guestimates. Related Feature - GeForce 3 Preview

While American pro-gaming organisation the CPL continues to talk about working with the Gathering of Developers to create a purpose-built first person shooter specifically for their tournaments, Swedish developer O3 Games have gone one better by signing on a pair of professional Starcraft players to help design their forthcoming real-time strategy game "The Epsilon Conflict". Scheduled for release late next year, Epsilon Conflict is intended to be "the next platform for professional strategy gaming".

Australian developer Auran today unveiled the first screenshots of Trainz, their model railway game which will allow players to design their own layout (complete with trees, bridges, buildings and cuttings) and then watch their trains go round and round in circles. And if you think that's exciting, Auran are promising us that "future releases will allow collectors to run their trains on tracks with other players, simulating real life rail operations".

Canadian graphics card company ATI has issued its second profit warning in as many months, with revenues expected to plummet to $230m for the last three months. This is 60% down on the same period last year, and losses are likely to be four times worse than previously anticipated, compared to a profit of $45m this time last year. ATI has been facing increasingly stiff competition from NVIDIA in the last year, and the company is now struggling. The recent announcement from NVIDIA of GeForce cards for the Mac has put a further hole in ATI's fortunes, as previously it had enjoyed a virtual strangehold on the Apple graphics market. The company's share price had slipped almost 20% to a new all-time low of around $4.20 at the time of writing.

Inspired by Japanese manga, developed in Poland with support from a Swedish publisher, and apparently a big hit in Israel of all places, "Akimbo : Kung-Fu Hero" is the new PC platform game from Iridon Interactive and Chaos Works. It has already been released in several Asian countries, including Taiwan and South Korea, and now Europe is about to get in on the act, with the Scandinavian release expected some time in March. An English version will follow on April 6th, available at a mid-range £19.99 price point, while a playable demo should pop up on the game's official website within the next few weeks.

Ultimate Fighting Championship is a bit different to most beat 'em ups, in that it's actually based on a real life martial arts tournament (if you can call it that). The game feels rather like the original Tekken (which more or less marks it for success right off the bat), and captures with startling realism the effect you get when you tell two human beings to kick the %$#! out of one another, with very few limitations. The game kicks off in grand style to a pounding Megadeth anthem with a glitzy opening video, and gets better from there on in. The visuals are, as I've said, extraordinarily detailed - the faces are actually modelled on their real-life counterparts, and offer a practically faultless replica. At the opening of each bout, the fighters approach the ring in spectacular style, WWF-style to standing ovations and musical rip-roaring in the background. The crowd that cheers them on is one of the most impressive visual aspects of the game too - you can clearly see the spectators' faces, what they're doing, hear their jeering and yelling - it's incredibly atmospheric. After the exciting walk to the octagon where the battle takes place, the fighters measure up to one another, before embarking upon a furious rampage that can last anywhere from a matter of seconds to a quarter of an hour. The fighters' bodies glisten with sweat as they thump one another repeatedly, and as the fights wear on, they pant and look noticeably more haggard than they did at the start. Bruises start to manifest themselves, and blood splatters all over the shop as teeth come loose and lips split.

THQ and Electronic Arts have issued a release this morning announcing a multi-territory agreement providing THQ with the rights to publish FA Premier League STARS 2001, Bundesliga STARS 2001, LNF STARS 2001 and Primera Division STARS 2001 across Europe on GameBoy Color. According to the release, the EA STARS Series will be fully localised across England, France, Germany and Spain is due out Spring 2001. Speaking to EuroGamer, THQ's Senior PR Manager Asam Ahmed commented that the company has "always had a close relationship with EA and have published numerous licensed CGB titles for them. This deal extend this longstanding relationship." The STARS series is particularly popular on the PC with Premiership fans in the UK, breaking as it does from the traditional streamlined vision of football that the FIFA portrays. STARS 2001 will portray not only the grandiose scale of stadiums like Old Trafford and the finesse of teams like Manchester United, but will also get down and dirty with the lower end of the scale, giving players the opportunity to take control of whichever club they choose and through a complex points system allowing them to "upgrade" the attributes of each player using these points, or "STARS". The localised versions should ensure success all across Europe. Related Feature - GBA to host kiddyvision action title

"Hidden Invasion", announced yesterday, is to be an action adventure title, produced exclusively for the PlayStation 2 by Conspiracy/Toka. This is the first we've heard of it, and apparently won't be the last, as the people at Virgin are keeping schtum about the game's background and characters. From what we've learnt though, the player will be placed in control of a Special Forces leader sent out to investigate a "sinister threat", and the game will take on a survival/horror guise. It isn't called "Hidden Invasion" for nothing either. It's interesting to see a third party "PS2-only" title, when most developers are busy announcing multi-platform franchises and series updates. Perhaps the move is an indication of the industry's acceptance of the PlayStation 2 as a PC-equivalent in terms of technology and scope for development. The feature list looks just as packed as anything we've seen on the PC lately, with fully three dimensional graphics, a cinematic storyline divided into several chapters and a huge array of effect-heavy weapons for the main protagonists. Even motion-capturing has been brought into play, presumably for our as-yet unnamed hero. With details so thin on the ground we're usually sceptical about a game's worth, but "Hidden Invasion" has interested us enough to retain a bit of its mystique. Expect to hear more about it as we approach its third quarter release date.

As part of the Black & White PlayStation presentation in Wokingam yesterday, organised by publisher Midas Interactive, designer Peter Molyneux dropped in for an hour long question and answer session with the European press. A full write-up of what he had to say will be posted by us as a massive two part interview over the next couple of weeks, but one of the tidbits of information that slipped out was apparent confirmation that the PC version of the game should indeed be released on March 30th.

Starlancer is a space combat title, originally developed at Digital Anvil for the PC, and it gives you control of a pilot in the "45th Volunteers", who finds himself caught up in the 22nd Century version of the Cold War. The game offers a progressive storyline and enough opposition to keep you on the go nigh on constantly. As you proceed you gain access to more powerful ships and better weaponry, assuming a position of command and so on. Rather like the X-Wing titles from Lucasarts, each mission you face is a pretty linear affair barring the occasional surprise, and before starting you are treated to a short animated briefing, prior to ship selection, and once over you set off out into space. However unlike X-Wing and its cohorts, Starlancer forces you to improvise. The game helps you on your way, steering you in the right direction when needed, but although faced with an objective, accomplishing it isn't always a case of following straight orders. On that note, one of the game's early drawbacks is that many missions include instructions to shoot down torpedoes before they can blow up your principal carriers, and the game is often quite slow at drawing your attention to them. If fired, you have only a small amount of time to react and take them down, and on two separate occasions I had to replay lengthy sections because the computer didn't warn me of their presence in time, or I was busy cycling through the target roster while they winged their way into the bowels of my ships.

Take 2 today confirmed that they will be publishing "Fly! II", a sequel to the popular flight sim from Terminal Reality. Due for release some time in the third quarter (that's July, August or September for those of you who don't understand biz talk), the game will feature more detailed aircraft and improved terrain, multiplayer support, a range of new cities to fly over, and a real-time day and night cycle. There will also be new aircraft, including the first digital appearance of the Pilatus PC-12, which apparently garnered 56% of the vote in an online poll on which plane players would most like to see added to the game.

THQ chose yesterday to announce the development of a GameBoy Advance title based on the new "Power Rangers Time Force" television series, scheduled for release in the fall season. "Saban has done an amazing job keeping the Power Rangers franchise at the top of the charts," said Germaine Gioia, vice president of licensing at THQ, especially considering the popularity of Pokemon, we thought, before Gioia continued, "Power Rangers Time Force is an ideal brand for the interactive entertainment category providing a great source of quality content for exciting gameplay". PlayStation and GameBoy Color titles are also in development under the same guise. Saban tell us that Power Rangers is the most popular children's show of the decade. The game itself will, as with the TV series, allow players to travel around the world and through numerous periods to stop evil criminals from manipulating the timeline. Although the material isn't exactly ground-breaking by any stretch of the imagination, the new series has been well received.