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Microsoft recently announced that they wouldn't be publishing Digital Anvil's 3D space strategy game "Conquest : Frontier Wars", saying "Microsoft had high aspirations for the game, and it simply did not progress as they had hoped it would". It looked like the end for the game, with the publisher saying that "in line with [Microsoft's] goal of delivering only top-quality games that deliver a fresh and immersive experience, they decided to stop work on Conquest and place the development team on other projects".

The latest release schedule from Sierra has just arrived, and the biggest surprise is the lack of movement. The mythological city building sim "Zeus : Master of Olympus" from the creators of the Pharaoh and Caesar games remains on track for a November 17th release, while "Gunman Chronicles" is still due in the UK on December 8th. The only mover is "SWAT 3 : Elite Edition", which has been pushed back to December 1st, while a new addition to the line-up is the "Diablo II Collectors Edition", which is presumably aimed more at the two people in the UK who didn't buy a copy of the game when it was first released rather than trying to convince fans to buy a second copy. For all the latest UK release information on well over a hundred games, check EuroGamer's comprehensive UK release date list.

British developers Climax have announced the creation of a dedicated "Vehicle Dynamics Engineering department", who will be working on the company's new DYNE technology, intended to "aid in the development of ultra realistic motor vehicles in racing videogames". DYNE includes a physics engine to control motion and collision detection and response, a graphics engine with curved surface support and other advanced features, and a "vehicle dynamics module" to cover everything from torque curves and gear ratios to suspension and wheelbase specifications. With support for PC, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast and Xbox already in the bag, and Climax's Brighton studio using the technology in "Mille Miglia" and other titles, we will no doubt be hearing more about this one in future. In the meantime, read the press release for the full story.

Over the last couple of decades the divide between PC and console has been clear cut. Consoles are small closed boxes which plug into your television, and are dedicated to playing games on, while the PC is a big ugly beige box which comes in an almost infinite range of upgradable variations, has its own dedicated monitor, and was designed first and foremost to be used for desktop publishing, word processing, accounting and other work-related software.

Most flight sims concentrate on providing satellite mapped terrain and flight models so realistic that you need to study a two hundred page manual and take a flight training course before you can even lift your plane off the ground without crashing it into the side of the nearest building.

Apparently this image, courtesy of Xbox365.com, is an early sketch (done in MS Paint no doubt) of the Xbox's exterior design. It looks surprisingly like a VCR or a "normal" console with its desktop design and central DVD drive. The lower access point for additional hard-disk storage devices is an interesting touch, and would fall in line with what was being said last month about larger hard-drive capacities as an optional extra. The multitude of extra outputs on the back is also an eye-catcher, with support for VGA, HDTV, S-Video (in and out) as well as proper AV support. The presence of 4 USB ports is also a giveaway as to how Microsoft may intend to offer peripheral controllers on top of the four front-mounted controller ports. It may be a little early to judge it (and from such a poorly drawn schematic), but the power connect almost looks the right shape for an ATX power cable. Take a look at the image for yourself to get a better picture of things to come. Other interesting points mentioned on the main Xbox365.com website include reference to the colour scheme (chrome, in this case, with other colours to follow).

The built-in hard-disk to be found in Microsoft's Xbox console due out toward the end of next year is apparently now to be provided by Seagate. The press release detailing the announcement contains all sorts of back-slapping and jolly spiel about each company's suitability for one another etc, however the eagle-eyed readers among you may remember that not so long ago CNet were reporting that Western Digital had got the contract. The latter it seemed was going to use its new Protégé line of ATA100 devices for the console, but judging by today's announcement, something has gone awry. We're as puzzled as you are. Neither Western Digital nor Seagate's webpages reveal any information on the matter. Perhaps it's some sort of cockup? Or perhaps Western Digital have lost the contract somehow without anyone noticing. Either way it's a touch spooky. More on this as we uncover it.

One of the big stories this weekend in hardware has been a set of benchmark graphs plotting the Pentium 4 processor against AMD's 1.2GHz DDR-based solution. The figures, available at this website, are based on a speech given recently, by Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, where he claimed that the Pentium 4 will offer a performance boost of up to 25 percent in MP3 audio encoding, 50 percent in video encoding, and 44 percent in video games such as Quake III Arena, over a 1GHz Pentium III, the highest currently available from Intel today. His words were borrowed, somewhat naively perhaps, from an IDG report released on Thursday. The claims remain to be confirmed, but in the meantime, rival chipmaker and motherboard chipset manufacturer AMD are facing a somewhat difficult situation ahead of the release of its 760 chipset. As we reported last week, the 760 (a DDR-based chipset) is supposed to debut in this country on Gigabyte's GA-7DX motherboard, but nobody, not even Dabs.com, who frequently manage to scrounge stock before anyone else, seems to have any idea where it is. Their Gigabyte products page, just like everyone else's carries no mention of the GA-7DX. It is now being reported by technology website RealWorldTech, that the 760 has been subject to a new revision which irons out heat problems and issues with AGP 4x. The new revision is now due on November 6th, today, but the question of when anyone will actually be able to buy it still remains unanswered. After a week that subjected Intel to all sorts of criticism, from gossip about its RAMBUS dealings to skepticism about the Pentium 4's performance from a leading European OEM, things aren't looking quite so bleak, and AMD may have a few questions to answer of its own. Related Feature - AMD 760 chipset; good news for Frenchies

Assuming that the country isn't entirely under water by next weekend, Friday November 10th marks the beginning of the UK's biggest LAN party to date, with somewhere in the region of 700 hardcore gamers gathering at Newbury Race Course for three days of fragging. The event (going by the name of "i6") is also playing host to Codemasters, who will be demonstrating some of their latest games, and Videologic, who will be showing off their Vivid graphics card and giving away prizes throughout the weekend. There are still a few places left, so if you fancy some lag-free multiplayer gaming, head over to the i-series website to find out more.

The other useful aspect of having him onboard for such a project is the experience he can lend to the production team. It's all very well programming what you think it would be like to powerslide round a corner at 70mph, but to have someone of Colin's stature in the motorsport sit down and confirm that it feels right is something very different. And it's for this reason that the original Colin McRae Rally and this sequel are about as close an approximation of the real thing as you are likely to get hold of without putting your own life on the line. CMR 2.0 features eight real life rally venues including Finland, France and even snowy Sweden, which can all be taken on sequentially in the Championship mode. Complementing this is a completely separate arcade section, featuring six cars on a collection of unique circuits. The race's weather conditions will play a large part in how it unfolds, and there is an impressive frontend system in place to keep you up to date prior to each outing. That said, the weather conditions noted on the frontend are merely a forecast, they are not dead set..

On Tuesday we reported on rumours that Monolith's first person shooter "No-One Lives Forever" was going to be turned into a movie by Fox, with Liz Hurley being head-hunted for the lead role of Cate Archer, the sassy secret agent from the game. Since then we've been trying to get to the bottom of the story, but with limited success, as nobody seems to be willing to either confirm or deny the rumours...

One of the more unusual games to catch our attention in recent months was "Tropico", which mixes the gameplay of classic games like "The Sims" and "Sim City" with a tongue-in-cheek Cold War setting, setting you up as dictator of a small Caribbean island. The game has now been delayed until next year as developers PopTop (of "Railroad Tycoon" fame) polish things up, but it should be well worth the wait. In the meantime, designer Franz Felsl explains the charm of the citizens who populate your tropical worker's paradise...

Normally console manufacturers do everything they can to prevent other companies from developing "emulators" that allow games for their consoles to be played on PCs or even (in some cases) other console systems. But with Sega recently announcing that they are cutting their losses on their console business after the relatively lacklustre sales performance of the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, and instead concentrating on developing games, all that could be about to change. Sega Vice President Hideki Sato has revealed that Sega are planning to introduce a PCI add-in card that will give PCs the ability to run Dreamcast games, and that it could be available as soon as the end of the year.

Quake 3 Arena - Q3F Beta 1G is now available, fixing some bugs from the last version of the Team Fortress clone

Expectations were high for Human Head's third person Viking action-adventure game, "Rune". After all, with a healthy mixture of gory dismemberment, silly horned helmets, big axes and plenty of tankards of mead, what's not to like? Add to that some gorgeous graphics courtesy of the Unreal engine, and a development team founded by former members of Raven, the company behind the Heretic and Hexen series, and things were certainly looking good. And although the final result is somewhat disappointing, we're happy to report that it's still well worth a look...

French publisher UbiSoft has announced that it has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Dargaud to make next-generation console games based on the "XIII" comic book series. We're not going to claim that we've heard of it before, but apparently "XIII" (which is made in France by Jean Van Hamme and William Vance) has sold 6.5 million books across nine countries (most of them French speaking) since its inception in 1984. Like the comic strip, the game will mix action and adventure as you play a mysterious man known only as XIII, a man who is suffering amnesia after a failed murder attempt.

December is starting to look busy for Virgin Interactive, with several titles relocating to the Christmas season in their latest UK release schedule. The promising looking stealthy action game "Gunlok" has been pushed back a week to December 1st, while off-road racer "Screamer 4x4" joins it after slipping from a planned November 10th release. "Heist" drops back a week to December 8th, while "Pizza Connection 2" is starting to look rather soggy after another two week delay - it's now due for delivery on December 15th, where it is joined by "Stunt GP" and "European Super League".

The last week has seen a whole slew of game demos being released, so without further ado... Fans of horned helmets and real ale everywhere will want to check out Human Head's third person Viking flavoured action-adventure game "Rune" (86Mb), while Codemasters and Spanish developers Rebel Act Studios have released a demo of their own third person fantasy action game "Severance : Blade of Darkness" (102Mb). Both demos are well worth a look, although the full version of Rune is on store shelves now, while you will have to wait until early next year for Severance.

Famous Israeli psychic Uri Geller has announced that he will be suing games company Nintendo over their use of a character called Yun Geller in their Pokemon games. Geller (the Pokemon) uses psychic attacks and carries a giant spoon, while Geller (the psychic) is an entertainer most famous for his habit of bending spoons through his alleged abilities. The character (listed as "Kadabra" on the official Pokemon website) can "send out waves of mental energy that cause headaches at close range", and evolves into a Pokemon called an Alakazam, which has a "brain as powerful as any supercomputer" and "incredible Psychic abilities" .. and two giant spoons. "Nintendo turned me into an evil, occult Pokémon character", claims Geller. "[They] stole my identity by using my name and my signature image."

When 3dfx first announced their latest range of graphics cards, many people were surprised to see how underperforming the VSA-100 chip which powered them was compared to other leading 3D graphics cards at the time. In fact, 3dfx's promise of gigapixel rendering was only achieved by stuffing four of the chips on a single card and running them in parallel. But although it sounded like a ridiculous solution at the time, 3dfx's long overdue but soon-to-be-released Voodoo 5 6000 is actually not much more expensive than NVIDIA's GeForce 2 Ultra, which will use a single super-fast chip and exotic memory to try to out-perform 3dfx's huge chunk of silicon. According to 3dfx chief technical officer Gary Tarolli though, multi-chip solutions can actually be cheaper than single chip cards.

The latest information from Eidos is that "Tomb Raider Chronicles", Lara Croft's latest third person adventure, has been confirmed for a November 17th release, giving us just a couple of weeks to wait for the .. um .. you know, we've actually lost count of how many Tomb Raider games this makes. Anyway, this one is based on yet another rehash of the age old Tomb Raider graphics engine, but comes with a level editor for the first time, giving you the chance to create your own missions for the game.

It's a bad week for would-be heroes everywhere, as 3DO's latest release schedule reveals a whole slew of games with the word "hero" in the title slipping. First up is "Heroes of Might & Magic Chronicles", with the first two installments of the episodic turn-based strategy game falling back two weeks to November 17th, and the third and fourth episodes now not due until January 12th 2001!

There's a bumper harvest of fresh new PC game releases this week, headed up third person Viking action game "Rune" from Take 2 and Human Head. Powered by the Unreal engine, it's one of the most beautiful third person games we've ever seen on the PC, and the gameplay isn't bad either. Also well worth a look is cartoonish strategy game "Cultures", which sees you guiding a tribe of .. um .. Vikings (I see a pattern emerging here!) as they colonise America.

Kuju's "Halcyon Sun" is rather different from most space combat sims. For a start, you won't find it sitting on the shelves of your local computer games store, it's only available from the Freeloader website. It won't cost you anything either, simply sign up at Freeloader and you can download it for free. And finally, you will have to wait another 24 weeks for the game to be completed.

Grand Theft Auto on the GameBoy was a big disappointment. It had lacklustre controls, a shoddy interface and was poorly executed in general. At the end of the day, it wasn't really fit to bear the name GTA, which beforehand had stood for originality and entertainment. The sequel has been upon us for some time now but it's only this week that GBC fans finally get their mits on it. Early impressions look quite favourable, so if you're looking for some hi-octane car action that one might make a good purchase. Nintendo 64 owners have a rare occasion to lift their chins up a bit too, with the release of what is sure to become known as the seminal Mario Tennis. Having sampled this gem of a game at ECTS, this writer can confirm just what a treat it is. If you thought Sega were the only ones who could do something decent with tennis, think again. Of course, this weekend wouldn't be anywhere near as enjoyable without some form of PlayStation release. With only three weeks now remaining until the release of its big brother the PS2, developers must be getting a little hot under the collar trying to get their last few PSX games out of the door. After the release of the PS2 things look a little uncertain for the format. The PSOne has been selling well according to Sony's own figures, but nonetheless, the emphasis seems to be on before, rather than after, and to this end several PSX games make their way onto the gaming stage this week. The unimaginatively titled Incredible Crisis from Virgin will be on store shelves, as will be the Codies' Prince Naseem Boxing, along with 3DO's WOL: Thunder Tanks. Joining them will also be the heavily advertised This is Football 2 from Sony. The original, which received cries of "No it isn't" from many quarters, didn't do so well, and Sony are pinning hopes on something of a reprieve in this sequel. And two weeks after its PlayStation counterpart went on release, Dreamcast owners finally get hold of Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. The PlayStation version was released to critical acclaim and the DC version looks like it good be even better. But of course, the big news this weekend is the release of M-SR, or Metropolis Street Racer. After a bit of a false start the other week, it looks as if the game is actually on store shelves this week. We've had a copy for about a week now, and we can confirm, unofficially pending review, that it is truly a killer app for Sega.

AMD are for one of the first times since the release of their Athlon over a year ago, finding themselves in an egg-on-face situation. The DDR RAM-based 760 chipset was announced publicly on Monday, and claims that it was "available now" on Gigabyte's GA-7DX were of course cheerfully received, that is, until people attempted to buy it. You see, the release pointed the finger at distributor NEC, whose European outfit is still claiming that the boards are nearly a month off. Eagle-eyed IT website The Register has been doing its usual utmost to uncover proceedings, contacting various strands of NEC all over the place, all of whom are none the wiser. Through telesales, the main office and even a section of the French operation there is no news. In fact, even the main Gigabyte website based in Taiwan carried no mention of the GA-7DX yesterday, nor today. In fact, there is nothing on the 760 chipset at Gigabyte, Jetway, MSI, ABit or ASUS' manufacturer websites. Nobody has details on this thing except AMD's press department. In fact, when grilled over the issue by The Register, AMD's European spokesman confirmed that "if that's the case, then the information we were given to write the press release must have been incorrect." Of course, this behavior is nothing new for the CPU and motherboard industries. It has been common practice for market-leader Intel to develop a chip in the comfortable confines of its testbases, then announcing it before it's prepared to cope with demand. The Pentium III CopperMine revision is a classic example; buyers read Intel's PR and hung on phrases like "available now", only to discover that it wasn't. Hardware suppliers have been carrying Intel pricelists for months, but many of them would deny that they have stock on more than a few. As for the psychological 1GHz barrier which Intel claim to have broken with their Pentium III 1GHz CopperMine; one doubts that you could round up more than a dozen of them in this country at the moment. The associated pricetag is more down to availability problems than manufacturing costs.. So as it stands, both Intel and AMD are major CPU manufacturers, and both are similarly important in the motherboard chipset market, yet neither can accurately report on the availability of its equipment. It seems that nowadays it's unwise to order anything without first scouring the web for some source of third party information on the subject. Although these press releases are there to sell you a product, the main emphasis is on stirring things up amongst the competition. At that, both companies are successful, at supplying the consumer, it would seem they are not.

The PlayStation 2 might be almost upon us, but with only a handful of the consoles available outside of Japan development on the original PlayStation is still going strong. Midas have already scooped the rights to bring Peter Molyneux's magnus opus "Black & White" to the PlayStation, which should be .. interesting, and now they have announced another PlayStation title - "California Water Sports". Set for release in January, when every surfer in the country with any sense will be huddled around their fire at home, the game promises a mixture of surfboards, bodyboards, windsurfers and jet watercraft to ride, while listening to the "popular surfin' tunes" of unfortunately named band "The Penetrators".

Part of the attraction of computer role-playing games has always been that they generally cast you as a hero, raising you out of the drudgery of your everyday life. Often you will find yourself saving the world, or at least a portion of it. Unfortunately this doesn't really apply in massively multiplayer role-playing games, because instead of being surrounded by non-player characters waiting to be saved you are in a world full of other humans, all trying to level their character and grab some loot. Or, if you're playing Ultima Online, the other players are all frantically making shoes and baking bread...

Although Capcom wouldn't like to admit it, one Street Fighter game is very much the same as another these days. However, for the most part I think it's fair to say that with each new chapter, the gaming giant has done enough to the series to justify its presence. With the release of Street Fighter Alpha 3, Dreamcast owners are about to be treated to a beat-em-up tour de force, perhaps the best arcade to console conversion Capcom have ever presented at our feet. It's taken ever so long to come into fruition, but it has been worth the wait, and Capcom have shown us once and for all what they are capable of. The reasons for Alpha 3's excellence are large and varied. The biggest has to be the fact that fighting in Alpha 3 brings the genre back to the heady days of the original Street Fighter II (and considering the amount of derivatives SFII played host to, I think it's earned that moniker). SFII's sublime emphasis on technique and execution rather than 500-hit super-combos is responsible for a lot of what we're seeing in Alpha 3. You have a cast of nearly thirty characters including classic battlers like Blanka and Guile, and through the game's ingenious use of "isms", their term not mine, you can shape just how you want to play the game, making it as complex or simplified as you like. Through the three "isms", you can shut off or turn on various features that have reinvigorated the genre in between now and initial SFII arcade release. Things like air-blocking, alpha counters and multiple combo levels are all within your grasp. By using X-ism, you discard all of the recent additions, giving the closest possible approximation to SFII yet. A-ism allows for super combos, air-blocking, alpha counters, you name it; anything that you've seen added to the series since SFII is probably in here, except for those final options to be unlocked by V-ism, which removes the super moves and instead uses Alpha 2's custom combo system. It's actually very hard to describe an average battle, because you can so easily change the way it unfolds at the touch of a button, by altering the speed of proceedings or blocking out a few of the moves.

We've said it before and we'll no doubt say it again - episodic gaming is the current buzz word in the gaming industry. And now British company Freeloader.com are jumping on the bandwagon by releasing their own "world's first episodic internet game", following on from such world's first episodic internet games as "Siege of Avalon" and "Arabian Nights". Developed by Britsoft developers Kuju (who are also responsible for the decidely odd-ball "Microsoft Train Simulator"), "Halcyon Sun" is a space combat sim which will be released as twelve episodes, available to download for free via Freeloader's website.