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Intel's i845 chipset is a complete non-starter according to hardware guru Dr. Tom Pabst and others. The chipset, which allows users to combine the power of Pentium 4 with "normal" SDRAM has flopped completely, demonstrating pathetic office benchmarks and even more abysmal gaming ones. With the price of DDR-RAM so low, why are we even bothering with this, Dr. Tom asks. The i845 chipset, codenamed Brookdale, has been in the works for a long time, and will also support DDR memory in the near future, but thanks to its contractual obligations to Rambus, Intel is unlikely to promote the two together any time soon. Which leaves us with PC133 SDRAM. According to Dr. Tom's benchmarks, the inclusion of SDRAM in a Pentium 4 system helps it to slip right off the pace. In the gruelling Sysmark 2001 benchmark, a Pentium 4 system equipped with Rambus PC800 RDRAM is 7% faster than a machine running SDRAM, and that makes a lot of difference. Even the 1.7GHz Pentium 4 RDRAM system is outpaced by an Athlon 1.4GHz, and the same system with SDRAM cannot muster Athlon 1.2GHz results. Moving on to gaming benchmarks and the results are very similar. The Pentium 4 system with RDRAM really dominates here, demonstrating its extensive use of memory bandwidth, with a DDR-based Athlon 1.4GHz system not far behind. In fact, the Pentium 4 SDRAM system is loitering so far behind here that it almost touches the Pentium III SDRAM results. Up the ante and ask for more of it, and it does brush them. Dr. Tom's verdict? At least until DDR becomes a reality on this platform, "I wouldn't even touch an i845 motherboard." Related Feature - AMD Athlon using DDR SDRAM Review

Although the results won't be quite as advanced as Tekken Command Battle on the i-Mode phone, Nokia and Genie have teamed up to produce a number of software titles for Genie users according to trade website Telecom.paper. Under the terms of the agreement, Nokia's Mobile Entertainment Service (NMES) will provide Genie users with a selection of new mobile games from the third quarter of this year. The company's entertainment service includes games from developers/publishers Rage, Eidos, Activision and Morpheme.

Final Fantasy fans will get a double treat if they manage to track down the American release of the Final Fantasy movie soundtrack. The film, subtitled The Spirits Within, debuts in the USA on the 17th of July, and apart from the delightful score composed by Elliot Goldenthal (writer of the score for Heat, amongst others), buyers of the soundtrack CD will pick up a free preview of Final Fantasy X. FFX, the next big release in the long-running series, isn't due out in Japan until later this year (although it is apparently finished), and features the story of Spira, a prospering technology-driven civilization nipped in the bud by an unfriendly force of nature known as Sin. Its preview will be more than enough to sell the soundtrack CD to excited fans, although we fancy the score is a bit special, too. Related Feature - Final Fantasy X completed

Gaming fanzine The Madman's Café is reporting that SNK's inimitable King of the Fighters series is set for release on Game Boy Advance. News of the announcement apparently made its way onto Japanese wires earlier this week, with development to be headed up by a third party, Marvellous Entertainment (we reckon this is them). SNK will not be involved in development, but have sanctioned the game. At the moment the game is tentatively entitled "King of the Fighters - Game Boy Advance Edition", but we'll be surprised if that doesn't change. The storyline fits snugly in-between the Orochi Chapter and the Nests Chapter, which will be familiar to followers of the series. Akihiko Ureshino, writer of a KoF novel, will pen the scenario, and newsgroups are already overflowing with excitement at the prospect. Character designs and other graphics are expected to be lifted from the popular King of the Fighters '99 Evolution. Over 20 characters will be present, including popular names like Kyo, Iori, Andy, Mai and more. More than one new character is also expected to join them. Very little is known about the game beyond these scant facts, although it is thought that the game is 30% complete or thereabouts and should be released in December. Screenshots are available at The Madman's Café.

Japanese owners of i-Mode phones will soon be able to enjoy single or multiplayer Namco games while on the bullet or negotiating the seething Tokyo masses, it was revealed today. This service is just one demonstration of how advanced Japanese mobile phone culture has become. Over here we're giggling like schoolgirls over the introduction of digital mobiles; all the while these phones have been available in Japan for years. i-Mode phones boast full colour displays and unrivalled reception coverage, unlike their Western competitors, and this latest service from Namco merely extends their boundaries. The first of the i-Mode games, Tekken Command Battle, will be for one or two players, and features three commands (attack, parry or throw). Instead of mashing the phone's controls recklessly, patrons will be asked to type quickly and meticulously; the first person to type a certain pre-selected word will get the move in first, and the faster the typing the more powerful the attack. Other games on the Namco roster scheduled for introduction to i-Mode phones are chomping spectacular Pac-Man and all-time classic Galaxian. Hopefully we'll have more to say about these in the near future. So, if you live in Japan, own an i-Mode phone and fancy playing Tekken on the bus or flying car or whatever you have out there, you can do so by logging on to Namco's EZWeb service and stumping up some cash. The charge for the gaming service is apparently 300 yen (about £1.70) per month. Beats the pants of Snakes, I can tell you. Speaking of Tekken, the fourth release in the long-running beat 'em up series is scheduled for arcade release in the UK this July.

In one of the more bizarre press releases to pass across our desks in recent weeks, European e-tailer Software First has revealed the top ten games most commonly shipped to inmates in British prisons. Yes, it appears that consoles systems are commonly available in jails across the country, with the PlayStation apparently the most popular amongst felons. No doubt Sony are already working on a bizarre new prison advertising campaign directed by David Lynch...

Konami's early GBA line-up is impressive, to put it lightly. "Krazy Racers" is being treated like Goemon Kart, "Silent Hill" is probably going to revolutionize the idea of adventure/horror on handhelds (and to promote it K are shipping a bunch of journos out to an abandoned castle in Southern France and scaring the pants off them for a weekend), and last but definitely not least, "Castlevania: Circle of the Moon" is arguably the best 2D game in the long-running series, and sits among the top five Game Boy Advance launch titles. You see, Konami know a thing or two about gameplay, and it shows. The Castlevania series is one of the most challenging and constantly spellbinding we've ever come across, and Circle of the Moon is no exception. It doesn't stray from the basic Castlevania formula, so you spend most of the time using your whip creatively to outfox zombies, bats and other demonic forces, while collecting hearts to stay alive and power your secondary weapon; Holy water, a boomerang, a dagger or a stopwatch. In terms of storyline (as if it required one), Circle of the Moon gives you control of Nathan Graves, whose kidnapped father is currently at the mercy of the oft-resurrected Dracula. The structure of the game disregards the SNES-based Castlevania's principles of "levels", favouring a PSX-like continuous castle, with your progress charted by the futuristic auto-map. Quite why Graves decided to create a map on the fly despite obvious intel from the Belmonts of yore will remain a mystery. Also, like the esteemed Belmonts before him, Graves starts out with next to nothing; a simple whip and a lot of enemies to overcome. In the first hours of his quest, he learns gradually more advanced techniques like running, double-jumps and even an Indiana Jones-like whip swing.

The Magic Box is reporting that the much delayed PlayStation 2 hard disk, which includes 40Gb of storage space, but also a broadband Ethernet adapter and 56K modem, will be released in Japan on the 19th of July. The external model will cost 19,000 yen (£108) while the internal model will cost slightly less, at 18,000 yen (£102). Units will be sold through the Japan PlayStation online store and a revised vertical stand will be released with space for the external hard disk. The reason for the two different versions is the distinction in Japan between versions of the PS2 itself. Several models exist, and between the two, the internal and external drives cover them all. Seven games have been confirmed as compatible, including Final Fantasy X, also due out in Japan on the 19th of July, and Capcom Vs SNK: Millionaire Fighting 2001, due out in September. Only a couple of compatible titles (Atelier Lilie and A-Train 2001) have already been released. Snooping around the Japanese PlayStation store, we found the various details on this page. Apart from the image above, you can also see pictures of the external drive, the adjusted stand and what looks to be a brand new USB mouse and keyboard. Related Feature - PS2 price drops in Japan

Gameplay's demise continues apace this week, with their bizarrely named Toga Holdings Unit (which includes the entity formerly known as Gameplay Technologies) the latest subsidiary to be sold off at a bargain basement price. In this case the lucky purchaser was an unknown Israeli investment group, which paid the princely sum of $1 - equivalent to 71p or €1.18 at current exchange rates. This is somewhat more than the 1 Krona (7p) paid for their Nordic boxed games division, but rather less than the gargantuan £1 they earned by selling their UK boxed games division to a management buy-out team in May. The sale of all three divisions combined raised less than the value of a single Gameplay share during the company's peak in March 2000.

The US and Japanese governments have demanded that Sony abandon its plan to outsource PlayStation 2 production to Taiwan. The reason? The console could be used for military purposes. So say sources cited by Taiwanese website DigiTimes, which also claims Sony has complied with the requests, halting contracts with local manufacturers Asustek and Acer. DigiTimes' sources are almost certainly from within one or both of those companies. Both manufacturers were due to begin shipping PlayStation 2s to Sony this month, with a plan to ramp up production to 300,000-400,000 consoles per month.

Black & White's troubled arrival into the world continues, with the official patch still nowhere in sight due to some kind of hold-up in the quality assurance department at publisher Electronic Arts. According to a post on the official Black & White website, this latest delay is "owing to rigorous testing", something which had been notably lacking in the original game. Luckily those of us who aren't squeamish about such things have been able to download an unofficial patch released by developer Lionhead for the last few weeks, and it did indeed fix many of the out-of-the-box bugs and gameplay issues.

Austrian-based developer AGD Software is currently hard at work on a new sci-fi action game called nTrap, which will put you behind the controls of a range of hi-tech vehicles, from submarines and hovercraft to fighter jets and space craft. As an nTrapper in the Earth Defense Corps, it is up to you to steal information, recover lost technology, intercept industrial spies and capture fugitives in the name of your planet. And with all of that vital information encoded in the bodies of living beings, you will have to use customisable weapons and "network trapping" devices to catch your quarry intact rather than reducing them to their constituent parts, which should put a different spin on things.

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 is the successor to an acceptable Dreamcast boxing game. In both cases, publisher Midway brought in Crawfish Interactive to head up conversions to Nintendo portables. The original Ready 2 Rumble Boxing on Game Boy Color was judged to be a decent rendition of boxing. Unfortunately though, the second time around things got worse instead of better. The first mistake was putting the same development team on the project. No disrespect to them, but if they didn't get it right the first time round, giving them a console with larger goalposts and telling them to try again isn't going to help. In fact, they've produced what is arguably the least favourable of all Game Boy Advance launch titles. There are 11 boxers in total, including six from the original game, and, to put it simply, the game consists of three bouts of pummelling, during which time you may build up your RUMBLE metre to execute a Rumble Flurry. Apart from the Championship mode, the game features a smattering of sub-games including a training mode that consists of five different exercises (two of which are daft and three of which are potentially replayable), and if you play the Championship mode for long enough you can unlock secret characters like Shaq and The Prince of Pop, Michael Jackson.

Ninja Gaiden is a sort of hybrid of Final Fight-style side-scrolling beat 'em up gaming and Mario style platform leaping. It's one of Tecmo's hottest properties, along with Monster Rancher and (here's one you'll have heard of), Dead or Alive. The Ninja Gaiden series is apparently held in higher regard by the developers at Tecmo than those other titles though. Described as "the big one" in the past, Ninja Gaiden is set to attack a next generation system some time this year. But the problem is, Tecmo can't decide which one. In a somewhat unusual but not altogether unwelcome move, the company is asking for you to vote for your preferred system on its homepage, in the hope of discovering which is the most popular and most likely candidate for receiving a Ninja Gaiden update. The choices are PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox and Game Boy Advance, and at the moment, Nintendo's GameCube is steamrollering the polls with over 66% of the vote. Nearly 23,000 people have apparently voted for a new Ninja Gaiden on GameCube, more than the rest of the votes put together. You can view those ever-changing results here. If you want to vote for yourself, there's still plenty of time, so head this way. Whether Tecmo will use this poll as a basis for its game is as-yet unknown, but it's nice to see a bit of democracy in the gaming world, for once. Related Feature - Dead or Alive 2 Dreamcast Review

Dreamcast developer No Cliché, who were working on a horror/adventure called "Agartha", have cancelled the project and made most of the development staff redundant. "Due to Sega's decision to stop development in Europe," the announcement on the company's website reads, "No Cliché stopped its activity. Almost all employees have been made redundant. "Agartha" the horror/adventure game is cancelled." "The managing staff is working on the company's rebirth. News on this site as soon as we can." No Cliché certainly isn't the first company to feel the brunt of Sega's exit from the console market. In recent months, the much anticipated Dreamcast version of Half-Life was shelved by Sierra, along with high profile cancellations of Soul Reaver and Commandos 2 from Eidos. The Dreamcast version of critically acclaimed God game Black & White currently hovers in limbo awaiting a publisher daring enough to take up the challenge, and several other game studios have been worryingly quiet in recent months. Related Feature - Sega completes European exit

When German publisher Topware collapsed in February, a new company called Zuxxez was set up by former CEO Dirk Hassinger and a group of other Topware survivors to take over the publisher's games division and its Polish development studio, responsible for the Earth 2150 series. Four months later Zuxxez has launched its website with details of some of the projects it rescued from the chaos at Topware, including a range of real-time strategy games based on the latest versions of the Earth 2150 engine.

As if appearing in a string of games, an action movie, a series of comic books, and numerous Lucozade adverts wasn't work enough for Lara Croft, Eidos and Paramount are set to milk the Tomb Raider franchise again next year with .. Tomb Raider : The Ride. Yes, Paramount Parks are planning to open a "unique multi-sensory adventure ride" based on the Tomb Raider movie at their Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati, Ohio.

Microsoft are describing Windows XP as the biggest update to its operating systems since the move to Windows 95, which is strange, since that was meant to be true of Windows 2000, also. In fact, there's a lot about Windows XP that Windows 2000 users will be familiar with, and a lot of changes to the formula. Supposedly a convergence OS, we see more of 2000 in XP than we see Millennium. Microsoft doesn't just plan to converge its operating environments; it also plans to include standard-setting software in a number of categories. It has finally integrated CD-burning and the latest version of WM Audio, which some say is neck and neck with MP3 in terms of quality and compression. A stronger emphasis has been placed on "always-on" Internet functionality, with more security measures like a personal firewall and digital signatures for potentially distributable music files, and of course it has added the notorious Product Activation system, of which more later. Windows Update will play a more critical role in everyday computer use, with updates downloaded silently if requested, and eventually all driver updates will be centralised through Microsoft's download vessel. Microsoft are pushing XP hard, integrating hundreds of unique products and technologies, and backing it all up with an extraordinary marketing budget (apparently a rather inexplicable $1 billion). The company wants us to upgrade, and thanks to their considerable muscle, will probably make it quite a compelling argument.

One of the Dreamcast's best-loved games is about to be turned into a movie courtesy of Richard Donner, the director of Superman and the Lethal Weapon movies. We're not entirely sure how well a game which revolves around getting from A to B as fast as possible will translate to the big screen, although our favourite French director Luc Besson had a fair stab at a cab-based action movie a few years back with the imaginatively titled "Taxi".

In an unlikely move, Digital Illusions, best known for shallow racers like Motorhead and current license-holders for the Shrek videogame, have released a patch for ailing armed combat game Codename Eagle. Now, we're big fans of Codename Eagle, and you can usually spot a EuroGamer staffer at a LAN party thanks to the presence of a CE CD proudly displayed atop whichever machine we're lugging. Although our less than generous editor decided it was worth a paltry 4/10 (and perhaps his judgement was within reason), the glorious entertainment value of multiplayer CE with flocks of WASD-controlled aeroplanes and tanks is unrivalled. Also, this writer would lay claim to being the only person to successfully pilot a biplane for the whole of the "transport plane from aircraft carrier to aircraft carrier" mission, while upside down. Anyway, the patch. Amongst the additions are refined network code and the ability to support up to 30 players in multiplayer combat, as well as a new vehicle, the Battle chopper. Motorbikes can now carry two people, a new CTF level has been added, and commands like teamchange have been implemented, bringing the action into line with the rest of the first person multiplayer gaming genre. Along with the patch, which weighs in at a bulky 11Mb, Digital Illusions have blessed us with a Codename Eagle freeform deathmatch movie, meant to introduce and entice people to pick up the old game. You can download both of those, from here. Related Feature - Codename Eagle Review

Not content with scooping Sega's Dreamcast releases, French publisher Bigben Interactive and its UK subsidiary Planet Distribution have gained exclusive rights to Spectrum's brands and licenses. Under this agreement, BBI and Planet control such potent brands as 4Gamers (Gore) and the Jaguar Racing license, both of which it will promote throughout Europe. Spectrum has effectively surrendered day-to-day expansion plans to BBI/Planet, expecting the publisher to cover a full range of services including everything from warehousing to invoicing. The arrangement takes effect immediately, and both companies will now join forces at a united Manchester office. Alain Falc, BBI group chairman commented. "We welcome the highly talented Spectrum team into the BBI Group and we are confident that they will strongly contribute to the further growth of our business."

Nintendo have unveiled the first solid details about the GameCube's launch line-up in Japan, two and a half months ahead of its release. It has six games lined up to go out before Christmas, each retailing for 6,800 yen ($55). On September 14th, along with the console gamers will be able to take home Luigi's Mansion and WaceRace: BlueStorm, both first party titles. Luigi's Mansion, as you may remember from E3, is an in-house developed game starring Mario's oft-forgotten taller brother, Luigi, as he explores a haunted mansion collecting ghosts. WaceRace: BlueStorm on the other hand, developed by Seattle-based NST and supervised by Shigeru Miyamoto, is the sequel to the classic WaveRace 64 and will no doubt spoil us once again with its luscious visuals. A little over a month later, on October 26th, buyers will be able to collect Miyamoto's personal brainchild, the peculiar yet lovable Pikmin. Shortly afterward, some time in November, HAL-developed Super Smash Brothers Melee will be released, and some time before the end of the year, Eternal Darkness and Animal Forest will complete the line-up. If there are any changes to this line-up, we should hear about them at SpaceWorld in August. Related Feature - Nintendo question Xbox release date

Before Quake, before Doom, before even Wolfenstein 3D, id Software made its name in the early 1990s with a series of shareware platform games starring eight year old Billy Blaze. By day he was just another school kid, but when he donned his brother's NFL helmet he became Commander Keen, saviour of the universe. Or something like that. Plot was never a strongpoint for id...

Two years ago a trio of developers with "a long standing desire to create a really good castle builder" left Impressions to form their own studio. During their time at the company they had worked on the Lord of the Realms strategy games and the popular Caesar series of city building sims, but now it was time for them to try something a little different.

THQ and HotGen Studios have announced a new deal with satellite operator Sky to launch an online football management game called (imaginatively enough) Sky Sports Football Manager. Launching in August, the subscription-based game will give you the chance to manage a wide range of English soccer teams and compete against both computer-controlled sides and other human players, with statistics for thousands of footballers from around the world included.

Rumours have been circulating for the last few weeks that Ion Storm Dallas and British-based publisher Eidos were about to part ways, with Tom Hall's role-playing game Anachronox allegedly the last game to emerge from the studio. Just last week Mike McGarvey of Eidos told trade magazine MCV that "I'm sure those guys will be making games in the future, but whether or not it's with us remains to be seen". Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Texan company, which has been haemorrhaging money for the last five years without producing a single hit so far.

Electronics Boutique has announced its designs on expansion into continental Europe, and has issued 17.2 million new ordinary shares to help fund the ambitious plans. Initial moves have been made into Spain and Scandinavia, with the acquisition earlier this month of the CentroMAIL chain of 69 stores and mail order division in Spain earlier this month and four stores from Scotland AB in Sweden last week. The latter means that EB now has the largest chain of gaming stores in Sweden. Also just parsing on the company Visa is the purchase of four more stores from Nordic Games on Tuesday. "Our initial moves into Sweden and Spain are a precursor to the development of our group outside the UK," said chairman Peter Lewis. The company is said to be eyeing up further potential purchases across the rest of Europe. Back home in the UK, sales for the first 21 weeks of 2001 are said to be up 19% on the same period last year. A recent report showed that the retail sector of the games industry is one of the only relevant areas not to be hit by the downturn in technology stocks.

Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter is to become the star of his own game, courtesy of Universal Studios and developer Arxel Tribe. The two companies are currently planning a 3D action/adventure game based on the villainous food connoisseur, with releases for the PC and consoles already pencilled in. The player is said to take control of roving FBI agent Clarice Starling, whose work at the Bureau comes under scrutiny when she plays the fatal part in a drugs sting operation. This in turn draws her back to Lecter, who contacts her in light of the events and once again restarts the hunt for his whereabouts. It's based more on the film than the book, since that's the license, but we're still a little confused as to how Arxel will exploit this one. After all, Hannibal isn't really the usual license fodder. Some sort of medium-paced adventure title with action elements sounds most likely, but Product Manager Fabian Dupontroue speaking to FGN Online makes it sound more like a shoot first, then ask questions type of game. "It will be action orientated with investigation elements," he told them. Tomb Raider in Kevlar with locations as varied as a fish market in Central America and Florence, Italy, then. Universal will announce the game officially in the near future.

Those of our readers with a long memory and a few grey hairs may remember the original Z, which was released way back in 1996. Although it was a real-time strategy game, Z replaced the now traditional harvesting and mining of games like Warcraft and Command & Conquer with a resource system based on occupying territory.

Sega has announced that Infogrames will be the ones to distribute its Game Boy Advance, GameCube and Xbox titles, finally satisfying rumours to that effect. Last week, the company announced that its PS2 titles would be released through Sony and that French publisher Bigben Interactive would handle its Dreamcast operation. On Game Boy Advance, Infogrames will publish ChuChu Rocket, Sonic the Hedgehog Advance, Puyo Puyo and Advance Columns, while on GameCube the company will publish Phantasy Star Online, Virtua Striker 3 Ver.2002 and Super Monkey Ball. Elsewhere, on the Xbox, Infogrames will publish Gunvalkyrie, Jet Set Radio Future, House of the Dead 3, Sega GT 2002, Panzer Dragoon and Crazy Taxi 2 on Sega's behalf. Sega's European president Yoshio Sakai said that the decision to use Infogrames was based on the company's strong European distribution network, its experience and its vision, blabbering something about creating new worlds to explore and how integral this was to the companies' mutual success etc. It was stirring, anyway. This pretty much completes Sega's exit from Europe. Related Feature - Sony to publish Sega