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Long-awaited shooter Max Payne is apparently close to release after its lengthy development at Finnish company Remedy. Although the official line from Remedy and their partners 3D Realms remains "when it's done", George Broussard recently revealed that "when it's done is almost here". Our latest information from the game's publisher Take 2 shows just how close that could be now, with word that Max Payne should be available in the UK on July 27th. Meanwhile Electronics Boutique in the USA are now offering the game for pre-order, listing a July 26th release for America.

Good news for Dreamcast fans. It seems a long time since we've been able to say that, but according to IGN, they have their (American) review code of Solider of Fortune for the ill-fated Sega console, and the game is most likely scheduled for a July 19th release date. With any luck, they say, that won't change and Dreamcast fans will be able to stack it on top of their Crazy Taxi 2 and Sonic Adventure 2 game boxes and remember the good old days of Dreamcast domination. Er, in spirit anyway. The concern surrounding the release of SoF arises from the recent high profile cancellation of Half-Life Dreamcast by Sierra as predicted on these pages. Despite calling it correctly, we were more angered than anything at that news. Hopefully Soldier of Fortune will allow us to relieve our bottled up tensions once and for all. Related Feature - The Dream is over for Half-Life

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for PS2, Xbox, GameBoy Advance, PC, PSOne and GameBoy Color was announced at the beginning of April, and has had fans choking on their own anticipation since then, but today is the first time gamers will be able to actually see the famous Birdman in his third incarnation. The video was originally shown at E3 in Los Angeles last month, but until now the public has not had access to it. Without further ado though, we suggest you head over to Activision's Tony Hawk website and its downloads section, where the video can be found at the top of the right-hand menu. It's a Windows Media download and is supposed to stream, but even on our 512Kbps ADSL connection it was a bit jerky, so if you would rather download the file on your own and view it later, right-click on this link and select "Save as…" from the drop-down list. The movie is a bit grainy, but it's clear that the visuals in Tony Hawk's 3 will be pretty exotic, and the character models look better than ever. The game boasts 10 "massive, living levels" and claims to be "bigger, better, online", which we frankly cannot wait to see. But we needn't tell you this, right? You've downloaded the movie at this point and need no cajoling to give it the once over. Enjoy. Related Feature - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 GBA Preview

Diablo II creators Blizzard have unveiled the 1.08 upgrade patch for users of the game on Windows and Macintosh systems. The patch also includes previous fixes, so if you've just installed Diablo II, this is all you need. There are a number of skill adjustments that will no doubt anger veterans for a few days, with more than a page of changes in total and beyond that, there are creature modifications a bunch of miscellaneous tweaks and a few bug fixes. Various frequently asked questions have been answered in a FAQ accompanying the release. You can download the update and read various notices here. Related Feature - Diablo II Review

While most futuristic flight combat games are set in the distant reaches of space, Madia and Buka Entertainment are quite literally bringing the genre back down to earth with Echelon. As a pilot for the Galactic Federation you will find yourself flying a variety of fanciful aircraft through the valleys and mountains of a planet under attack by the ubiquitous rebels, in this case using stolen alien technology in an attempt to overthrow your government. We took a look at a press preview version of the game to find out more...

Sony have slammed Nintendo's GameBoy Advance sales reports claiming that they sold three times as many PlayStation 2 consoles in the same period and could have sold far more if they had anticipated the demand. We love this sort of thing, so we'll paste bits of it here and draw our own conclusions. The statement, apparently issued directly to MGON's PlayStation Center, begins. "While Nintendo must be commended for the sales of their machine, in reality the PlayStation 2 sold three times as fast when it was initially launched, and we could have sold as many as three times the amount we achieved had we anticipated the demand." Sony launched the PlayStation 2 in the United States with 500,000 units - and we're comparing the American launch, not the Japanese one now - and apparently that's precisely how many consoles Nintendo are claiming to have sold. The only difference being that the Japanese pocket monster hasn't run out of stock yet. "Also worth pointing out is that the PlayStation 2 cannot really be compared with the Game Boy Advance, due to the different price brackets of the systems. The PlayStation 2 is a complete multimedia package, and costs four times as much; it's pointless even making a direct comparison." Which, given the circumstances, is probably why Nintendo didn't make a direct comparison. They simply said the GameBoy Advance was the fastest selling console in American history. Given that they have now surpassed 500,000 sales and it took Sony took a while to get their stock situation sorted, that's probably correct. "It will however be interesting to see how the GameCube performs at launch, compared with the PlayStation 2. Then, and only then, could some sort of comparison be made." It will be interesting, but since you're being pedantic, Mr. Sony, so shall we. The GameCube is launching at the same time as the Xbox or thereabouts. As such it would be incredibly foolish to draw direct comparisons between its sales and those of the PlayStation 2. Now, that's if we focus on America. If you want to draw attention to the Japanese situation… do you really think Nintendo will let you hang onto that for longer than necessary? Call us fanboys, but we doubt it. Related Feature - Nintendo US flogs 500,000 GameBoy Advances

As we speculated yesterday, Sony will be distributing Sega's PlayStation releases in Europe from now on. The press release claims that Sega "has been intensifying efforts to expand global software sales", which seems to be shorthand for "getting the hell out of Europe while the going's good". Under the agreement, Sony will manufacture, distribute and market Sega's games for PlayStation 2 in five different European languages. Several titles are in development from Sega for PlayStation 2. We reported yesterday that Sega was dropping its European distribution of Dreamcast games, passing the responsibility over to French outfit Bigben Interactive, and the rights to its PC games to Empire. In light of today's news, Sega has effectively pulled out of European publishing. Related Feature - Sega to drop European publishing?

Square, Enix and Namco have struck up a business agreement that will allow all three to use Square's PlayOnline facility for online gaming. The release can be viewed here, although unless you're fluent in Japanese we suggest you follow our translation, courtesy of the venerable Video-senki. Despite PlayOnline's lacklustre performance to date, it's still in existence and will become more important shortly. The three developers listed; Square, Enix and Namco, intend to create their own company to handle the continued development of PlayOnline and other similar ventures, including expansion of the service to the West (woo!) and parts of Asia that aren't Japan. As a result of the deal, all three companies' online work will be routed through PlayOnline exclusively from now on. A possible spin-off of this agreement is a monstrous possible RPG crossover, Dragon Fantasy, which would combine the talents and intellectual properties of Square and Enix. Another possibility is arcade developments, presumably as Video-Senki puts it, massively connected together. "There'd be little point otherwise." As a result of the PlayOnline deal, Japan is split down the middle, with some users subscribed to SegaNet and others POL. Video-Senki asks, whither Nintendo?

Dreamcast Phantasy Star Online Version 2's American release date has been delayed. Retailer Gamestop.com has apparently been forecasting this for a few days (with a possible new date of August 15th), but until the other day Sega hadn't backed down on their July 10th date. However, if you check out the PSO V.2 section of the Sega website now, it lists the game's release as TBD.

In a surprise release this morning Nintendo has told journos that Mario Kart Advance, due to win the hearts of millions in the tail end of 2001, has been cancelled. However, the game's developer Nintendo has followed up this shocking news with the announcement of Mario Kart Super Circuit, which is, in effect, the same game with a different name. Actually it is the same game, just with a new moniker. We thought that we'd tease you though. Not much else going on this morning to amuse you, after all. Still scheduled for an August 27th release in Japan, Mario Kart Super Circuit will entice a lot of Christmas shoppers into buying a GameBoy Advance when it lands over here and in the States nearer the festive period. Related Feature - The Portable Avant-Garde

Sega have released the "Dreamcast Map Pack" for Quake 3, containing all 23 maps from the Dreamcast version of the game. Some of these were previously exclusive to the console port, while others are modified versions of maps from the original game. The idea is to allow PC and Dreamcast users to play against each other online, but thanks to id Software's policy of releasing patches that break back-compatibility every few weeks this is going to be somewhat futile in practice - a new 1.29f patch has just been released for Windows and Linux, but PC owners will have to downgrade all the way back to 1.16n or lower to play on the Dreamcast servers, at which point they will no longer be able to play on any of the PC-run servers out there. You will also have to use GameSpy or Pingtool to find the servers in the first place, because the in-game browser won't list them.

TV shows about computer games have been a decidely hit and miss affair in the past, from incompetent documentaries on the threat of violent games to Gameplay's abortive Blam!, which was such a thinly disguised attempt to get people to buy games from them that the end credits had to admit that it was officially classified as an advert. The BBC tried to buck the trend with Bleeding Thumbs, which was set to use a customised version of Unreal Tournament, but that was cancelled before ever reaching the airwaves.

It's 1985 and Gorbachev has become leader of the Soviet Union, bringing about the end of communist rule. But while we survived perestroika and the collapse of the eastern bloc more or less intact, Operation Flashpoint offers a "what if" scenario in which a maverick Russian General opposed to Gorbachev's reforms decides to force the Kremlin to relent by invading a chain of islands off the coast of Eastern Europe.

When Quake III first hit our screens in the middle of '99 it was as a test version intended to help Id ship a game not encumbered with the usual patch requirements. Two years on we're still downloading and installing new patches - the latest of which is called 1.29f Beta - and it's difficult to be reticent with our criticism of it. Firstly, it's another Beta, with nearly an entire page of "notable" changes before we even reach the minor ones. Of course, updates to the network code (intended to try and help modem players better enjoy the game) have once again skewered backwards compatibility with previous versions, but that's something of a pre-requisite for any Id Software patch nowadays. Friendly additions include a few "pro" map updates from new Id employee Fred Nilsson, who as an avid fan of tournament deathmatch went through and modified a number of popular maps, a new AutoUpdate system to try and keep players onside with the latest updates, and several new weapon effects for the railgun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle and lightning gun. Although cheating doesn't seem to be as much of a problem in Quake III as it is in Counter-Strike, that's largely because CS players outnumber Quakers by 10 to 1. Because there is a problem, Id have taken measures to try and keep it under control by tightening areas that were unhealthily loose. Joining these graceful additions are pages of bug fixes that once again show us how "it's never done". If you would like to amuse yourself with them, a complete listing can be viewed here. A complete list of download mirrors for the 25Mb file can be found at QuakeIIIArena.com, but they are under a lot of strain at the moment.

Nintendo says its GameBoy Advance sold through 500,000 units during its first week on the market in the US, and claims this makes it the US' fastest selling game system ever. It went on sale on 11 June and total shipments are on track to reach more than one million by the end of June. The GameBoy Advance goes on sale in the UK on Friday 22 June priced £89.99 - apparently it's a good time for the launch because kids are looking for something to buy for their summer holidays. And nothing else is happening in the games market. Indies have been selling GameBoy Advance imports for ages. Nintendo says the Advance displays more than 500 times as many on-screen colours, and is several dozen times as powerful, as the GameBoy Color, which has been a steady, though unexciting, performer for retailers.

Sega has all but relinquished its role as a publisher of Dreamcast in Europe, handing responsibility for past and future products to French distributor Bigben Interactive. The move has fuelled speculation that Sega will pull out completely from Europe in the near future. The handover includes sales, marketing and distribution of Dreamcast products across Europe, starting with Sonic Adventure 2 on June 23rd. With this deal, Sega retains the rights to publish its own software on other formats, but the industry believes that this will also be abandoned in the near future as well. Empire have already secured the rights to Sega software on the PC, and rumour has it Sony will soon announce that it will do likewise for Sega games on its consoles. Related Feature - Sega Europe appoints new head

People associate the idea of gaming on the go with Nintendo, and with over 100 million GameBoys sold since the console's inception, that's hardly surprising. There have been pretenders, like Sega's Game Gear and more recently the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but nothing has ever really rivalled Mario and co. on the go. Nintendo's latest revision of the GameBoy formula is called "GameBoy Advance", and it ups the ante by quite some way, changing cartridge size for the first time in history and beefing up performance to overcome 16-bit consoles like the Super Nintendo and even bump the underside of more recent units like the PlayStation. Indeed, much of the GBA's gaming catalogue is occupied by former SNES properties, like Mario Kart, and PlayStation hits like Castlevania. From a marketing perspective, the only strategy involved is how best to roll out the many hundreds of games in development. Due out on the 22nd of June, sales won't be as impressive as they would be in the run up to Christmas, but with so many different communities of fans clawing for a unit, the launch will be difficult to screw up. The sorts of people that will buy GameBoy Advance come from many different backgrounds. Some will be former GameBoy and GameBoy Color owners, eager to find out what all the hype has been about, whilst others will be veterans of the 16-bit era, drooling over SNES revamps like Tactics Ogre Gaiden and positively fawning over the likes of F-Zero Advance. The rest will be swept along by the hype and excitement surrounding this new format. For us, there's no alternative for those haul flights to exotic press events. [Yes, shame you never get to go to those, my young apprentice - Dark Ed] Some feel that the GameBoy Advance signals the re-birth of the handheld games industry. "The handheld market is likely to pull in players that may not have bothered with games before," Asam Ahmad, Senior PR Manager at THQ told us. "This can only be good for the industry as a whole as gaming becomes more integrated into social activity and hence broadens the market."

The Official UK Tribes 2 Cup was only announced a couple of months ago, but almost straight away rumours emerged that the finals wouldn't be taking place at the i8 LAN party after all. Now we have confirmation of that, with news from Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing that they will instead be holding the finals of the massive competition at the LAN Arena gaming center in Maidenhead. Amongst the reasons for choosing the venue is the fact that it includes a well-stocked bar, "bound to be a main attraction for the event". Trying to come up with a reason for the switch in venues which didn't involve alcohol, VUIP's Jon Rooke added that "we have an extremely good relationship with Lanarena, and see their gaming sites as the future of LAN gaming in the UK".

When we first saw the Dreamcast version of Half-Life in action at ECTS last year it was looking mighty impressive, but since then Sierra / Havas / Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing has been strangely quiet about it. Rumours started to spread earlier this year that the title had been ditched, coming to a head at the end of May when several retailers and online stores started cancelling pre-orders for the game. With the arrival of Half-Life : Blue Shift, an over-priced stand-alone mission pack made up of the high poly models and handful of new levels which were supposed to be exclusive to the Dreamcast version, the writing seemed to be on the wall.

Tom Hall has revealed that his Quake 2 engined role-playing game Anachronox has finally gone gold after what seems like an eternity in development. Contrary to earlier rumours that the company's Dallas studio would be shut down as soon as the game was finished, Tom told fan site Planet Anachronox that "we are taking the weekend off, then working on a demo and a few cool improvements we didn't have time to get in before the deadline", adding that they should be ready by the time the game hits shelves around the end of the month. We can only hope that that isn't marketing speak for "we had to kick it out the door in time for a second quarter release, but we'll have a patch ready for you by the time you get the game home". What the future holds for the troubled developer beyond that remains to be seen.

With the sequel nowhere to be seen, it's about time we were due another Half-Life add-on, and luckily for us, Gearbox have teamed up with Valve to produce "Blue Shift", an official stand-alone episode set deep in the bowels of the Black Mesa complex. Blue Shift started life as a value-added episode for the ill-fated Half-Life Dreamcast, and we should have twigged from that that it would be somewhat brief. Unfortunately though, 'brief' doesn't do it justice. Blue Shift is downright tiny, taking a mere three hours to complete for hardened Half-Life players. Newbies may have a bit more trouble, but this reviewer played through it before lunch without losing a single life. That's not the only problem with Blue Shift, either. Although I'm hard pressed to criticize what you get, the complete absence of everything we've learnt from the likes of Counter-Strike and everything since is frankly bizarre. I fear that the task Gearbox's designers were set was "a smaller version of Opposing Force" or thereabouts. After all, this was the padding for the Dreamcast game [Wistful sigh - Ed]. In terms of the storyline… we've done an abandoned scientist and a marine separated from his unit, so now it's time for a security guard. Our latest hero's name is Barney Calhoun, and like Freeman before him Calhoun is dropped in the middle of a cataclysmic crossover between two worlds and forced to fight for his life, not just against alien intruders but the secret government forces sent to depopulate the Black Mesa facility.

Back in February Microsoft were somewhat embarrassed to discover that a small Florida-based holding company called XBOX Technologies had trademarked the name of their forthcoming console system back in March 1999, six months before they filed their own application. At the time XBOX's CEO John Van Leeuwen declared that "there's no way that we can co-exist", adding that "either we find a business solution or we get into a legal battle".

Do you play DVD movies on your PlayStation 2? Right, well then this one's for you. Hot on the heels of their GameBoy Advance Action Replay announcement, Datel have issued another release, this time unveiling their "DVD Region X" adapter for Sony's next generation console. As you will have guessed by now, DVD Region X lets you play imported DVDs on your PlayStation 2. If you're not familiar with it, the "region" system gives each DVD a different number (from 0 to 6) depending on which market it was made for. Only DVD players of that region are supposed to be able to decode the discs, although in practice many players have vaguely hidden settings to overcome this. The reason we don't see many "multi-region" players any more is the movie industry's steps to clamp down on the trade in imported discs, and those who would allow people to watch them. Many DVDs are released on Region 1 (USA and Canada) first, followed by their Region 2 (Japan, Europe and South Africa) counterparts many months later. The consumer will often accept paying a few quid more to get the movie early. Thanks to a law passed earlier this year, it is now illegal to sell R1 discs on British soil, which has stopped a number of vendors from doing so (although not Play247.com for some reason, who are still thriving), and since then many of the newest top-spec DVD players have been genuinely single region only. From today, the PlayStation 2 joins the ranks of those who would kick sand in the face of the movie industry, thanks to Datel. But Sony may not be too happy about their console's part in this. Another part of the great corporation Sony Computer Entertainment springs from is Sony Pictures Entertainment, a company with a claw in movies, television and video/DVD. Ever heard of Columbia TriStar? Same thing. These companies produce DVDs, and are none too happy about the continuing trade in DVDs outside their home territories. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a perfect example, released on Region 3 (that's South East Asia and Hong Kong) and imported because it included English subtitles, Sony were so fed up with the exporting from HK that they remastered the disc without the English subs! So the question is how Sony will react to a peripheral aimed at beating the region lockout on PlayStation 2 consoles, something until now nobody has managed on Western units. Datel tells us that the DVD Region X works by simply plugging the "Region X" memory card into either slot and the included CD into the drive, then swapping it for a DVD at the appropriate time. This sounds remarkably similar to the methods used to play pirate PlayStation games or to load copied games from CDR with a "boot CD". The trick is to fool the console, and Datel have evidently managed to fool its region coding this time. One thing missing from the Datel press release is information on whether it overcomes the new Region 1 DVDs we've recently seen with so-called "enhanced region protection". We asked the company about this, but had heard nothing by press time. Datel have already started shipping the DVD Region X from their website for £19.99. The last time they tried something as defiant as this was on the PlayStation with a boot CD to overcome the detection system that was thwarting importers. Back then, the story goes, they received a slap on the wrist and promptly denied the device ever existed. We'd be surprised if they back out on DVD Region X now, but we're also rather surprised to see them chance it in the first place. Related Feature - Cheat!

Climax might not be one of Britain's best known developers, having spent most of the last decade porting games like Warcraft II, Diablo and Battlezone to console systems like the PlayStation, N64 and Sega Saturn. But with studios in London, Brighton, Hampshire and Nottingham working on several new games, including an online strategy title based on the classic Warhammer fantasy battle system, they could be about to enter the spotlight.

THQ has made a pretty penny recently from milking the GameBoy and N64, while other companies lost a fortune on the bungled PlayStation 2 launch. So it comes as no great surprise to learn that the publisher behind Red Faction, Summoner and any game you can think of with the letters WWF in the title will be supporting Nintendo's brand new GameCube, with as many as fifteen games coming to the system next year. Many of these will be kids games based on popular franchises like the Rugrats, Rocket Power, Jimmy Neutron, SpongeBob Squarepants (don't ask) and Scooby Doo, but there are also a few more serious titles in amongst the gaggle of cartoon conversions.

There's more good news this week for French developer Kalisto, which looked to be on the verge of collapse just a few months ago after posting revenues almost 90% lower than forecast, resulting in a loss of over $25m. The company has announced that it will be receiving a €15m boost from American investment fund Global Emerging Market which will allow "the continuity of our creative activity, without losing our independence" according to founder Nicolas Gaume. A report in the Financial Times yesterday also mentions that Kalisto expects to earn Fr80m in sales during its current financial year, a far cry from the mere Fr19m it managed last year.

Of the various games Rockstar exhibited at E3 this year, one which really caught our eye was "State of Emergency", a game that simulates a citizen uprising in a near future urban setting. When we first heard about SoE, our thoughts immediately turned to the idea of an urban pacification simulation. Perhaps some sort of clever strategy title where players have to try and bring increasingly rowdy crowds under control using various police and army personnel and equipment, rather like the old Super Nintendo classic, "Firemen", where the fire was the crowd and you were the police. We should have twigged earlier. The word "pacification" doesn't really connect with Rockstar's recent history of near future action games. In stark contrast to our hopes above, State of Emergency is a game where a sinister establishment called the American Trade Organisation is being overthrown by the American people. It's your job to move around a big city dodging the authorities and causing as much riotous mayhem as possible. In other words, it's a smash 'em up, and the ultimate objective is to destabilize the ATO through your actions. All in all, State of Emergency is a rather alarming concept for a game. Far from being GTA without the cars, it sounds more like the sort of thing the real authorities will have good reason to object to, transcending the boundaries between the computer screen and real life with its vicious antics. "Hit everybody! Smash everything!" the press release gleefully instructs. Blimmin 'eck, we reply.

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has expressed concerns over the speed of broadband rollout and the effect of this on Xbox. His comments pretty much contradict entirely the "we're about online gaming" address made by Chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach at E3. Ballmer told that FT that Microsoft has grown "more pessimistic" about broadband technology, and that the rollout has been slower than expected. Furthermore, he explained that "the fundamental reason people will buy Xbox is to play games locally." Hitting the nail firmly on the head, he mused that "it is possible that some won't buy the Xbox because they don't have broadband capability." Of course, this isn't Microsoft's fault (and Ballmer says so), it's the fault of the numerous telcos that aren't rolling DSL and cable out to those that want it fast enough. Unlike Sony, Microsoft haven't made a strategic decision to 'side' with anyone, so they're really left at the mercy of the telcos and their consumers' interest in procuring broadband. Microsoft has invested a hell of a lot of money into advancing broadband development on the quiet, but the Xbox is quietly becoming more of a liability than anything else. Investment firm Merrill Lynch are claiming the loss per Xbox unit will be more than five times that of Nintendo's losses on GameCube, and that's before the failure of the broadband revolution is taken into account. Lets not forget what happened to the last console that threw all its eggs into the broadband basket. Related Feature - Out-boxed?

Last year Human Head's third person fantasy action game Rune put you in the big fur boots of Ragnar, a viking looking for revenge after the death of his father at the hands of a group of Loki-worshippers out to start Ragnarok, the viking answer to armageddon. And now you can bring three of your biggest hardest mates along with you as you track down the evil Conrack and his henchmen, thanks to the newly released Rune Co-Op mod.

While there is a Warhammer fantasy battle online game under development at the moment in deepest darkest Nottingham, it's been some time since we've seen a Warhammer 40k based computer game here at EuroGamer. In fact, the last one to cross our desks was the fairly entertaining Panzer General 2 engined Rites of War back in 1999. But all that could be about to change, with the announcement that THQ have picked up the rights to publish games based on the popular table-top sci-fi gaming system on PC and next generation consoles and hand-held systems.