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While Operation Flashpoint isn't due for release until June 22nd and we have yet to receive final review code for the eagerly anticipated Cold War combat game, Codemasters have today announced that the final version of the game will soon be available to play over the LAN at London gaming bar The Playing Fields. The public premiere starts at noon on Saturday June 9th, and the game will be exclusively on offer at TPF for the following week. It's certainly a novel idea, but given how popular the game proved with punters and press alike at the game's launch party at TPF a few weeks ago it's perhaps not surprising.

Many moons ago I reviewed the Dreamcast incarnation of Worms World Party, and as much as I loved it, I harboured cravings for the PC version of the same, to play over my ADSL Internet connection with like-minded invertebrates. So, with this in mind I pulled up my favourite online store and the game duly arrived a couple of days later. However, despite its swish packaging and the fun it promised to be, I had my suspicions about it from the get-go. The problem was the CD checking "solution". Like a lot of recent games, Worms World Party performs a little disc-checking prior to play in order to try and curb piracy, which it quietly does while displaying a "Loading" image. Unfortunately it took two minutes and forty seconds to get past this "Loading" and into the game proper, by which point I was almost convinced it had crashed. The "Loading" claim was certainly a little tenuous for a machine that has been known to break physical laws of speed and elite-ness. Trying again, I inserted the CD, waited for the autorun, then hit "Play" and listened. The disc span up, then gradually span down until I could hear nothing. "Loading" was then displayed for another two-minutes-forty before I arrived. I reasoned this might be device-specific, and installed on my laptop (which uses another brand of DVD-Rom). Loads up in three seconds flat, but my laptop is no beast, and I didn't buy it to play it on a 14" LCD screen, I bought it to play on my PC. I pulled up worms.team17.com, the home of Worms on the Internet, which forwarded me to the relevant page (here). I found no information on this, but that apparently a patch was imminent. This was on the 11th of May. In an effort to try and get round the problem in the meantime, I wrote off a hopeful email to the "Support" address at Team 17. Their response was that my DVD-Rom drive (a sporty Pioneer slot-loader) was having trouble with the Laserlock CD protection system. Notice it was my drive having the problem, not their game. "This problem has been found to exist when attempting to play the game on certain models of Pioneer and Toshiba DVD-ROM drives," they told me. "We are aware of the problem and a patch is being engineered in order to address the issue." That's comforting, but what do I do in the meantime? The FAQ they pointed me to suggested that people who experienced long load times disable DMA (Direct Memory Access) on their CD device to slow it down. Apparently the Pioneer drive is simply too fast for the Laserlock protection system. Incredible. Disabling DMA improved the load time by miles, but my drives require DMA to play DVDs properly, and as it also requires a reboot every time I want to change the setting, I just gave up and left it on, hoping someday that a patch would arrive, and tossing Worms World Party into the back of my drawer. It is perfectly reasonable for Team 17 and Titus to want to protect themselves from the greedy arms of piracy in whatever way they can, but lets face it, they can't win. As if I needed proof of this, Worms World Party was on warez newsgroups the day I bought it, with the Laserlock protection hacked out of it. I downloaded the aforementioned warez to prove this, and yes, upon double-clicking the executable the game booted up instantly with no Laserlock waiting period. So as it stands, the pirates aren't inhibited, just incensed to overcome the locking, and the paying customer is the one who suffers. Incidentally, if you too bought a game that uses the Laserlock protection system (it isn't made obvious how you check this) and experience problems, then you can email support@laserlock.com directly to try and help them address this. Anyway, the good news is that this morning, at about 10am, I received an email from my Support contact at Team 17, who knew me as nothing but a customer, informing me as requested that the new patch was now available at the Worms World Party website. I can now report that the patch does fix the Laserlock "bug", and the game is eminently more playable because of it. In the time it would take to overcome the "Loading" image previously, the player often got bored and decided to do something else. Also joining the patch is a new Mission Pack, with Team 17-designed maps, created with the forthcoming Map Editor. You can check all of this out at their website. Thank you, Team 17, for sorting out your game! Related Feature - Worms World Party Dreamcast Review

NVIDIA is using Intel-style tactics to help maintain its leadership of the PC graphics market, sources close to Taiwan's graphics card manufacturers have claimed. NVIDIA has apparently been asking board vendors not to produce products based on rival graphics technologies - Imagination Technologies' and STMicroelectronics' Kyro II, in particular. According to sources cited by DigiTimes, one vendor cracked under the pressure and not only pulled its Kyro II-based board but had to write a grovelling apology to NVIDIA.

have come up with a novel way of dealing with voter apathy in the form of a WAP game called Election Roulette. "Imagine a world where Prime Ministers are elected by playing a macabre game of Russian Roulette with the leaders of the competing parties", the game begins, instantly setting the mind boggling. Apparently in the bizarre parallel universe that Quantum Sheep's brains inhabit, elections are handled in just this way, with each party leader making an election pledge before putting the gun to their head and pulling the trigger. The last man standing becomes Prime Minister. Well, it makes about as much sense as our current electoral system, and could be a lot more entertaining.

Sony has announced that it is dropping the price of the PlayStation 2 in the UK, effective immediately. According to a report in trade rag MCV, high street stores including Electronics Boutique and HMV have already reduced their prices to match, although a quick survey showed that online e-tailers haven't followed suit yet. Until yesterday a PlayStation 2 cost £300 in the UK, equivalent to around $420 or €500 at current exchange rates. From today that drops to £270, which according to SCEE marketing director Darren Carter brings us into line with the rest of Europe. "Because of exchange rates across Europe we altered our trade rate so that the UK doesn¹t fall out of step."

It never looked good for Microsoft. That's the verdict we're forced to pass on the Xbox after its press coverage at E3. They made all the big announcements first; release date, price, hardware and software, leaving Nintendo to mop up in a big way, with a number of cheap marketing shots to unsteady big M. For example, the patent gamesmanship of announcing a release date three days earlier than Microsoft's minutes after Microsoft concluded their press conference. Having unveiled their controller already, Microsoft were open to a sucker punch in the form of the impressive GameCube controller, which journalists were swooning over within seconds of the doors opening on the first day, this being their first opportunity to actually hold it.

Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing (try saying that after a few pints) has announced that their official UK Tribes 2 Cup has garnered the support of hardware manufacturer ELSA, who will be supplying the LAN-based final of the competition with their GeForce 3 based GLADIAC 920 graphics cards. Given that the GeForce 3 is just about the only thing currently capable of running Tribes 2 smoothly at high resolutions, this is obviously a Good Thing™. As VUIP's British PR honcho Frazer Nash commented, "Tribes 2 is a game designed for next generation technology, and ELSA is breaking all boundaries with their new Geforce3 graphics card - the two combined will make for a beautiful partnership". You can almost taste the saccharine. ELSA will also be giving all eight members of the winning team (tribe?) one of the cards to take home with them, which is sure to bring a smile to somebody's face when the finals take place on Thursday 23rd August.

Computex, the hardware industry's annual trade show in Taiwan, has kicked off with a number of interesting announcements, not least of which is the confirmation we've received that MSI (amongst others) has unveiled its NVIDIA Crush-based offering. You'll remember we spoke about Crush on Friday, the rumoured NVIDIA motherboard chipset. Now known as "nForce", the chip powered a number of boards debuting at the show, including the MSI 6367 and an unnamed ABit board. nForce's specs are still shrouded in some degree of mystery. Back in November we knew that it used DDR memory and a 266MHz front side bus, but we also now know that it features an integrated GeForce 2 MX 3D core, 4x AGP, and that the MSI 6367 also includes onboard ATA100, audio and suspend-to-RAM functionality. Furthermore, nForce is based on the North and South bridge parts NVIDIA designed for the Microsoft Xbox, and comes in two variants, 11 and 12 for two separate North bridge (IGP) components, 64-bit and 128-bit. A launch party is scheduled for tonight on HMS Belfast, while the chip mops up jaws at Computex. Amusing, is it not, that NVIDIA would choose a battleship (decommissioned in 1971 fact fans) from which to launch its latest market-destroying product. Tonight, Nvidia is expected to unveil the nForce Platform Processing Architecture comprising an Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) and a Media and Communications Processor (MCP). The IGP integrates the GeForce 2 MX core with 64-bit and 128-bit variants, and the MCP chip integrates audio, and according to The Register also comes in two variants, one supporting Dolby Digital sound, and one not. Although we've heard that there will be two nForce setups, the above factoid points to a possible four combinations. The onboard sound chip provides AC97 sound with 256 voices in hardware but also six channel Dolby Surround. We'll know for sure this evening. Related Feature - Athlon roundup

As you can see from the screenshots, visually GTA3 is a bit of a patchwork right now. The best likeness we could come up with was the idea of the original Driver time running on the Unreal engine, with all its associated sharpness. Unreal was always noted for having much more pronounced polygons than its contemporaries. Presumably, the latter two versions (PC and Xbox) will be optimised to take advantage of the high-end GeForce 3 display adapter from NVIDIA though. The task of rendering an entire city is quite an arduous one for a console graphics chip, which is one of the reasons GTA2 was a top-down adventure and not 3D. A lot of memory and speed will be required in order to build up an appreciable level of detail through intricate textures and a decent draw distance, and Rockstar are confident both the Xbox and PC will be able to offer that now.

Akaei, the British-based publisher formerly known as AAA Game, has announced that it will be releasing two new PC titles this month - The Grouch and M : Alien Paranoia. Both are 3D cartoon-style action-adventure games developed by Eclipse Software and Spain's Dinamic, and seem to aiming for an anarchic Stupid Invaders kind of style.

Spawned from legendary British developer Bullfrog, for the last couple of years Mucky Foot has been hard at work on Startopia, a sci-fi strategy game which puts you in control of a huge toroidal space station full of bizarre alien life forms. With the game nearing release, we caught up with Mucky Foot's Gary Carr to find out more...

Sports Interactive have released the first solid details of what fans of their long-running Championship Manager series can expect from October's big new Season 01/02 update, the last one before a full Championship Manager 4 is released next year. "The world of football never stands still, which is why fans of Championship Manager demand these annual updates", according to chairman Paul Collyer, who is no doubt perfectly happy to oblige their demands given how well each annual season pack sells across Europe.

It's been a while since we reported an interesting piece of Athlon news, and all of a sudden loads of the stuff turns up at once. First up, you may recall that we recently spoke of the Palomino's future as "Athlon 4". According to ZDNet in Germany, which you may need to run through Babelfish if you don't speak the lingo, as far as notebooks are concerned it's Athlon 4, but for desktops and servers, the designation will be "Athlon MP". Although previous Athlons will be capable of co-operating with forthcoming SMP motherboard chipsets in multiprocessing modes, by adopting the MP suffix, business users will apparently be more inclined to buy it. JC reckons this is because the Pentium 4 isn't yet treated as a workstation or server CPU, and likening the Athlon to it would be a mistake given AMD's aspirations in those markets. A more interesting piece of news, also from JC's, is that 1.4GHz Athlons and 950MHz Durons have been sighted in Japan. The chips are due to launch publicly either this coming Monday or Wednesday. Overclockers.com, always a source of good information on processor trends, is reporting that the very same 1.4GHz Athlons ship with a new code on the core (you will recall all the excitement over "AXIA" cores a few weeks ago - same thing). The new cores are apparently five letters long, labelled "AYHJA", produced in weeks 19 and 20 this year. We're already seeing reports of 1.6GHz and above using these chips. Given our success with AXIAs (your humble correspondent is using a 1GHz chip running at 1.55GHz), the chances are these early reports aren't too incredible. Only a couple of American retailers have the chips yet, so don't get too excited. Judging by how long it took for AXIAs to filter through over here in the UK, we can expect AYHJA to hit in the next few weeks, certainly before July. If the new Athlon and Duron speeds launch next Wednesday, they will do so at the launch of the new AMD 760MP motherboard chipset. The chip, long awaited, will finally provide multiprocessing support for Athlon owners, and that can only mean Palomino, Athlon 4, Athlon MP-whatever, is very close by. The first boards based on 760MP will probably be announced next week - Tyan have already ripped the covers off their new "Thunder" MP board for Athlons, retailing at about $300 in the USA. Another thing worth mentioning while we're on the Athlon trail, is that memory standards body JEDEC, has officially adopted DDR333 and PC2700 standards for Double Data Rate memory. The memory runs at 167MHz and is capable of pushing serious amounts of data, and JEDEC's decision validates the sales claims of a lot of retailers trying to shift so-called PC2700 memory. At least now it's official, heavyweights like Crucial and Mushkin will take to it. We'll bring you more on that when we get our hands on some PC2700 sticks ourselves. Finally, we ought to give some space to the rumoured AMD/NVIDIA chipset crossover, "SNAP" (Strategic NVIDIA AMD Partnership). It's been difficult to get a straight report on this anywhere on the net, because both companies have been denying parts of it. Our contact at AMD this morning told us that the company had no comment for us. NVIDIA didn't respond by press time. From what we can make out, NVIDIA might be contributing a Socket A motherboard chipset (codenamed Crush), and through their collaboration with AMD, might give Intel (presumably Pentium 4) motherboard setups a run for their money. The deal can't be too Intel-unfriendly though, as NVIDIA will want to have them onside to keep their Xbox contribution moving along smoothly. The Inquirer reports that Abit, Gigabyte and MSI will all have boards using Crush 11 and Crush 12 chips showing at Computex. That's if it even exists at all. A lot of people seem to think it does though. Speaking of Computex, the annual Taipei hardware show, it's coming up soon, and presumably a lot of the gossip we've been hearing about a number of things in the hardware industry over the last few months will be straightened out for us then. Related Feature - AMD Athlon 1.33GHz Review

Massively multiplayer World War II flight combat sim Aces High has been getting periodic updates since its release, adding a host of new features and vehicles over the months. The latest patch brings the game up to v1.07 and adds the game's first amphibious vehicles, the Amtrack and Amtank (not to be confused with American railroad operator Amtrak). Also included are the Japanese Ki-61 and American P-47D planes, along with the Russian IL-2 Sturmovik which is currently getting a lot of attention as the star of its own highly anticipated game. This brings the total number of ground vehicles and planes available in the game to 47, with anti-aircraft batteries and costal defences also being added to the game.

Randy Pitchford did his best to impress us with the Dreamcast version of Half-Life at last year's ECTS, demonstrating some impressive scripted sequences and showing us how the game would be Half-Life all over again, and then some. To say warning klaxons were firing when the supposed Dreamcast extras were announced as a forthcoming PC release - Blue Shift - would be an understatement. From a sales point of view, Sierra made a wise decision with Blue Shift. Half-Life still rides high in the gaming charts as the most popular first person shooter for the last few years, and with Counter-Strike dominating the online arena, and one successful mission pack already on sale, why not scrape every piece of original content together and give the people what they want - more of the same? And that's precisely what they've done. Blue Shift is due out next month, and features the extra campaign, where you take up the role of a "Barney" security guard, as well as a completely revamped set of models and textures for the original adventure. The observant among you will have spotted that this is the meat and bones of what the Dreamcast version was going to be. And I say "was", because there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Sierra have canned the game. IGN have spoken to a number of retail managers at stores in the USA, and the game has apparently been removed from catalogues and pre-orders have been refunded. There's no official announcement (either to the press or to retail) on its future, and parent company Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing's UK office wasn't able to confirm or deny the reports at the time of writing, telling us that they were still waiting to hear back from Sierra USA. But we doubt that store owners gave up on it of their own accord… According to Adrenaline Vault, Electronics Boutique's American website actually lists the game as cancelled to customers who have it in their shopping basket or on pre-order. It's very hard to get word either way over here, but our local EB informed us that the game was not on their release dates list, and when we sauntered down to HMV, they told us that central office had advised them not to include it on projected release charts, and that "this sort of note from management usually means the game's no longer coming out". Of course, with the Dreamcast itself out of production (and supply completely dried up in Japan already), you can understand Sierra's reluctance to bother with it. You can also appreciate that after the billing the game has received (big stands at E3 and ECTS, plenty of print copy and a lot of screenshots and footage), they're also reluctant to announce its cancellation. Better to consolidate by moving everything over to another PC mission pack. At least people are still buying PCs, after all. Related Feature - Half-Life Dreamcast Preview

The sun finally seems to be about to set on Ion Storm, with rumours emerging earlier today that publisher Eidos was about to close down the company's ill-fated Dallas studio. At the time of writing Eidos were unable to give us any official comment on the reports, while Ion Storm's Tom Hall would only tell us that he doesn't like commenting on rumours, before assuring us that his team are currently finishing Anachronox and that it's going well. American site the Adrenaline Vault claims to have confirmed the studio's imminent demise with co-founder John Romero though, and given their links with Ion Storm through the site's parent company New World (which runs the CPL from Ion Storms' offices) it seems likely that they are correct.

In an unsurprising move, gaming industry organisation ELSPA (the European Leisure Software Publishers Association) has sent a letter to the British government "expressing its dismay" at Stephen Byers' suggestions that the EU should allow grey imports, or "parallel importing" as it's known in the trade. The Department of Trade & Industry believes that lifting restrictions will allow retailers to import goods more cheaply and force down the sometimes extortionate prices we pay in many parts of Europe. Obviously this is of grave concern to the companies which make their money by over-charging European retailers and consumers. Companies like the publishers which ELSPA represents. Cynical, moi?

It's been a long time since we've had a new Alone in the Dark game - perhaps too long! The point and click horror genre has morphed into the survival horror genre, where staying out of arms' reach of ghouls and ghosts and keeping the pace is just as important as finding out who killed the Colonel in the Billiards room with the candlestick. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, only the second AitD game to grace the PSOne, has been pretty well advertised - even on Television - as the next step in horror gaming. After the atrocities of Fear Effect 2, publisher Infogrames couldn't have picked a better time to release it, and it hits home all the sweeter for it. The subject of the story is once again supernatural detective Edward Carnby, whose adventures bring him to Shadow Island to investigate the mysterious death of a close friend. Together with anthropology prof. Aline Cedrac, the quest for his killer takes them over his notes and research on the sinister island, and the game earnest begins with their unfortunate plane crash on the edge of the island, from where you decide which of the two leads to take control. The pair uncover all manner of disturbing ills, including the terrible truth about the dead fellow, gruesome scientific experiments, suspense and excitement. It sounds odd, but it's rather like Indiana Jones crossed with Hellraiser. The story is rich and unfolds in an interesting and consistent manner - I've no complaints about the way the game drags you around and spooks you. There are a nice couple of twists in there too.

While Eidos may have announced disastrous results today, the UK games market in general is actually booming. A new report from ELSPA today confirmed what we had all suspected already, with games sales said to be up 24% by volume and over 5% by value in the first three months of 2001 compared to the same period last year. This good news comes despite the bungled PlayStation 2 launch, the demise of the Dreamcast, a growth in budget releases on older systems, and heavy discounting at retail which has led to high street stores slashing each others wrists and then whinging to publishers about poor margins.

Eidos seems to have got off to a poor start this year, with revenues plumetting by almost 50% to £23m for the first three months of 2001 according to Bloomberg, leading to losses of £29m compared to a profit of £37m in the same period last year. Results for their full financial year (which ended on March 31st) were just as worrying - turnover was down from £200m to £150m, with losses of £96m compared to a profit of £49m the previous year. All this despite the massive success of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, which topped the charts on PC, PlayStation and Dreamcast last October.

Hack 'n' slash role-playing game Icewind Dale has already spawned an official add-on called Heart of Winter, but apparently developers Black Isle Studios still weren't satisfied. And so for the last few months they've been working on a new free add-on for the game, originally described as a "downloadable dungeon set" but now turning into something even bigger.

ATI is opening its entire range of graphics chips to third-party add-in card makers, the company has announced. In essence ATI, which has always produced its own boards using its own chip technology, is adopting Nvidia's strategy of selling chips and board reference designs to third-parties. Unlike Nvidia, it will continue to sell boards under its own brand.

With Independence War 2: The Edge of Chaos, Particle Systems aims to build on the original's success. In this adventure, you assume the role of Cal Johnson, who resides in an outer colony called the Badlands Cluster. Cal earned himself a spell of 30 years in the slammer after hunting down the loan shark who killed his father, and 15 years into his sentence, he joins in an escape attempt, and once out in the open, steals a ship and becomes a space pirate with his fellow escapees. A slightly different tale to the rebellion-crushing antics of the first game, but no less cruel or calculating. Like the original, it uses realistic space physics, based on the priniciples of modern day science, although they still take a while to get used to, and this time you get to feel the effect of the physics engine on more than one ship, adding a much needed new dimension to the gameplay. This time four unique vessels will present themselves, the Tug, the Storm Petrel and the Light and Heavy Corvetted. The Tug is your escape vehicle, boasting durability but a lack of a speed, while the Storm Petrel is a light, nippy fighter without much in the way of weaponry. The Light Corvette is the closest of the new ships to the original Dreadnaught Corvette, and packs an average strength punch in every category, while its big brother, the Heavy Corvette carries more armour and firepower. Instead of abandoning one for another, you collect all four ships and store them in your ex-terraformers' base, where you can upgrade weaponry, computers and armour. Another improvement over the original IWar is the addition of a new 4-way heads up display, operated by joystick, controller or keyboard depending on your preferred control system, which allows you to issue commands to your wingmen and such. With a few easy hotkey combinations, it should be possible to get your supporters to do anything, from covering your smoky behind to laying down suppressing fire while you regroup.

Gameplay PLC is once again in trouble this week, announcing disastrous results for the six months to January 31st after putting off the bad news while abortive take-over talks took place over the last few months. Although revenues leapt to £44.5m from just under £6m in the same period the previous year, losses also rose by a worrying 440% to £56m. The company had cash reserves of just £11m back at the end of January, and hundreds of job cuts since then and the recent offloading of their UK boxed games division to a management buy-out for less than the price of a Pokemon booster pack hasn't been enough to turn things around. Gameplay has apparently now resigned itself to the fact that it doesn't have the necessary cash to reach profitability.

When Sega stopped manufacturing Dreamcasts on the 31st of March, nobody really knew how long it would take for supply to dry up. As of yesterday though, Japan's is totally wiped out, thanks mostly to the incredible retail price of £49.99 that the consoles have been going for over there. Rumour has it a similar measure will be introduced shortly for the United Kingdom and European pricing of Dreamcast if they haven't all gone by then. With many great new Dreamcast releases still forecast for this year (including the Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure sequels to name a couple), prices in Japan for the consoles will likely go from rock bottom to sky high. If you do want a Dreamcast and haven't got round to buying one, we suggest you get your backside in gear and head down to your local electronics store. They're not long for this world. Related Feature - Nightmares & Dreamscapes

It's a little known fact that I'm actually a closet football fan. Not just the part where the England team knocks the socks off Mexicans in ostentatious style, or teach the Germans how to spell "1-0"… but the jumpers for goal posts side of it, and moreover, the gaming aspect. Although last year's FIFA 2000 tournament at the Millenium Dome Battletop event didn't evoke too much interest (it was won by an organiser apparently), the competitiveness and excitement of the beautiful game does translate superbly to the screens of PC and console owners. But the truth of it is that there's a lot of junk clogging up the genre right now. EA's FIFA brand still dominates proceedings, but games like Virtua Striker and tournament spin-offs pollute the crowd, and leave us with too much stuffing and not enough content. This is true of the console systems especially, where footy games are like weekends to the average shop owner. So the news of one more footer game isn't going to inspire much emotion in the sceptical EuroGamer sports department (i.e. me). The one we're talking about today is EON Digital's "International League Soccer" on PlayStation 2, adorned with the Diadora name and the endorsement of Republic of Ireland captain and £50,000 a week Manchester United midfielder Roy Keane. Due out on June 8th, it features all the usual International sides, 3D graphics and a scaleable control system to benefit both the novice and the pro. The game features proper weather effects (which go beyond the aesthetic and actually affect gameplay), which apparently complement precise, detailed 3D graphics, although this isn't terribly well demonstrated by the low definition ones on the game's website at the present time. The best part of the equation we can make out is the World Ranking System, compiled via www.internationalleaguesoccer.com (catchy). The system works by pitting the player against three countries chosen by the player, and allowing the player to upload results to the website if he or she wins all three games. You'll need a PC to do it though, since the PS2 features no Internet connection at the present time. According to the above website, players will be given codes to input into the website upon winning the games, and can enter their details along with the code in the hope of winning prizes. It's not just about winning though apparently, it's about impressing the judges with flashy moves and technique, through which you earn points. It all sounds fairly complicated. We'll be sure to explore it thoroughly in our review of the game when it makes its way out of the door in June.

ATI has unveiled its new "TRUFORM™ rendering technology" which it will be using in future graphics cards, presumably including the soon-to-be-announced successor to the Radeon. The Canadian company promises that this will produce "the smoothest, most natural 3D images ever seen on both existing and next-generation 3D games" through both DirectX 8.0 and OpenGL. Before you get too excited though, this is actually just a new name for the n-patch technology which they showed off at the Windows Game Developers Conference in London last summer.

British developer Synaptic Soup, the company formed last year by a trio of key members of the Evolva team, today announced that their Cipher engine is now available for licensing. Featuring impressive graphics, 3D audio and full support for the PC as well as next-generation consoles, Cipher is the engine behind Synaptic Soup's own debut game Crazy Car Championship, and has been used by NVIDIA to showcase their latest GeForce 3 graphics card.

The Moon Project has had something of a troubled history. Developers TopWare Interactive filed for insolvency in February, just weeks after releasing the game in their native Germany, and then US / UK distributor Mattel Interactive was taken over by France's UbiSoft. But we've finally got our hands on review code and the game should be available here in the UK within the next month. So the question is, was it all worth the wait for English-speaking countries?

Nintendo's GameCube was well received at E3, attracting many passing eyes, but also receiving a lot of action from the huddled masses. A lucky thing, really, because if it had not, President Hiroshi Yamauchi was threatening to shut it down indefinitely, in one of his characteristically understated E3 interviews. Not content with that, he's back again, with a revealing exchange of words with a Japanese newspaper (mirrored on C&VG's website). The first thing he said of course, was that "naturally we'll go ahead with sales as planned". Thanks, Yam. The next question levelled at Yamauchi concerned the Xbox, and he was anxious to stress the difference between the two consoles. "Xbox has a built-in hard drive and is being touted as an extension of a PC. Microsoft is going after performance only, and does not understand that the game is played with software." At this point, he confirms what a lot of life long Nintendo fans have been chanting like a mantra for several months now. "A Nintendo is ultimately a toy. It is the most advanced machine for playing games, and it is totally different from the Microsoft product. It is just like trying to compare a sumo wrestler and pro wrestler; they play by totally different rules. We do not consider Microsoft to be our competitor." We'd love to stop ripping quotes out of the interview, but almost everything Yamauch says hits home in some way. For instance, after damning the price tag of the Xbox for a while, the interviewer changes tack and asks about online gaming. "The Internet games available today are for hard-core gamers. I don't believe the general public is going to be very interested in them. And I doubt that Net games will turn out to be profitable." he uttered, resolutely. "Unless the business proves profitable, Nintendo will not be involved in Internet games." At this point, we ought to discuss the presence of Phantasy Star Online Version 2 on the Nintendo games roster for GC. According to sources on the floor at E3, the game will not be played online, despite its moniker, which while crucial to the PSO formula, isn't the end of the world. Nintendo aims to include up to four player split screen multiplayer, ala classic Nintendo games like Mario Kart, allowing gamers to experience PSO for themselves or with friends while sat not inches away from one another! We suspect the "Online" suffix may die a death, but PSO did start out life as a bona fide single player RPG, so hopefully users won't feel too alienated. Back to Yamauchi though, and the final thing he commented on was the software strategy for GameCube. Thanks to what he calls sluggish sales of exclusive software on GameBoy Advance, "when it comes to the domestic launch of Game Cube, Nintendo will release only two software titles". We advise you to take in the whole interview, so you can hear Yamauchi's comparison of the GameCube and Xbox situation to that of the Pro and Sumo wrestler. And on that bombshell… Related Feature - Nintendo's announcement