Latest Articles (Page 3569)

Electronic Arts have confirmed that they are planning another round of lay-offs, expected to take place later this week. The exact numbers involved aren't known yet, but the axe is expected to fall hardest on their online portal EA.com, which has been haemorrhaging money over the last year. The company recently acquired Pogo.com, and no doubt many of the staff facing redundancy this week are victims of "consolidation" as EA.com integrates some of Pogo's staff into its own operation and sacks the rest. EA spokesman Jeff Brown is reported as saying that the company's game development studios will also be shedding some more staff, following the exodus from their Redwood City offices just three weeks ago when an unknown (but reportedly large) number of developers were laid off as part of "a routine adjustment". Despite this, EA are still confident that they will have at least as many staff at the end of this year as they had at the beginning of it.

Japanese newspapers, unlike their British tabloid counterparts, are rarely wrong-footed when they break news on corporate shakedowns. So then, when several major publications reported yesterday morning that Capcom intended to move out of the arcade business, it was not until an angry statement was issued by the company that anyone took issue with the reports. According to Capcom's press spokesman, the news media's reports that Capcom are to leave the arcade game business "is not based on any of our official announcements, and, in fact, is not something we have decided yet." The rumours were that Capcom needed to shed its costly arcade development strategy to focus on console titles, and although the spokesman admitted, that the company is "going to be concentrating on our gaming business on consoles," and that "the operations of our arcade division will be scaled down accordingly," the company fully intends to "continue to provide arcade games during the next year." Capcom also took the opportunity to confirm that this year's Tokyo Game Show (at the end of the month) will be the platform from which they will show off "Capcom Vs. SNK Millenium Fight 2000 PRO" on Dreamcast, and allow punters to challenge the team that developed the "Capcom Vs. SNK" series! The original arcade version of Millenium Fight 2000" changes only in name on its way to the Dreamcast, and we're not quite sure what the "PRO" entails. We're hoping it's good, though. Capcom's lack of interest in the arcade format can be attributed to a sharp incline in performance of arcade machines. In previous eras, games appearing in the arcade were showcase titles that eclipsed home videogame console versions, both in terms of graphics and often gameplay. In recent times though, the consoles sat next to ours televisions have actually overtaken many arcade builders - so much so that games like Millenium Fight 2000 are having to be souped up to attract punters on the Dreamcast. It's no wonder that operations are being scaled back in this area, when punters can get better and more impressive titles at home on their Dreamcasts and PS2s, instead of having to burn through yen in expensive arcades.

Asahi Soft Drinks is about to launch "Asahi Chara," some sort of new energy or fitness drink in Japan, and has closed a deal with monstrous gaming corporation Namco to use Pac-Man as its logo. Although this writer hasn't seen any surveys recently on the subject, one would assume that Pac-Man is probably the best known gaming "character" of all time. You can stuff your Marios and Donkey Kongs, after all, they're new blood.

Thursday 8th March saw the official launch of TIGA, The Independent Games Developers Assocation for the UK. Set up by an impressive list of top British games companies (including Lionhead, Elixir, Rebellion, Blitz and Kuju) and attracting attention from the likes of the Bitmap Brothers and Lost Toys, the organisation met for the first time at the Department of Trade & Industry in central London.

Kazoo today claimed to have become "the UK's first agent for computer gamers", aiming to help pro-gamers find lucrative sponsorship and endorsement deals. As they point out, the last couple of years have seen a boom in pro-gaming, with huge tournaments taking place featuring hundreds of players and offering upwards of $100,000 in prize money. But although top players can earn a small fortune in prizes, there is potentially just as much money to be made from sponsorship deals, with games-mad Korea currently leading the way and playing host to large numbers of people who are paid regular salaries to sit around playing Starcraft all day.

EON Digital Entertainment has secured the PAL distribution rights for the PC and Dreamcast versions of Team 17's "Stunt GP". EON are a leading UK publisher of games on all formats, and intend to release the game later this month, in light of critical acclaim from parties who have seen it and who have deigned to give the game the honourary title of "ultimate Next Generation racer". Journalists in the UK should receive copies later this week, with the gaming hitting stores this or next Friday according to trade magazine MCV. According to the press release, the infamous creators of the Worms franchise have "worked to create a game featuring high-octane action, stunts galore and state-of-the-art aesthetics, with up to four players haring across a host of gravity-defying courses in a number of remote-controlled toy vehicles." Team 17 have tried hard with Stunt GP to try and reinforce the belief that they are not simply a one-hit wonder responsible for the spineless Worms series. The official Stunt GP website is already available, with screenshots and information on the title.

French videogame publisher Light and Shadow Production and UK based computer games developer and publisher Empire Interactive have early this morning announced a co-publishing agreement that will see "Antz Racing" released on Sony Playstation 2, Xbox, Gameboy Advance and PC formats. "Antz Racing" as the title pretty much gives away is a game based on DreamWorks' animated movie spectacular "Antz", which grossed an absurd $179 million at the American box office, and has sold over 10 million copies on VHS and DVD. "Antz Racing" is a Mario Kart-alike that thrusts you into the spindly body of your favourite Ant in a race to Insectopia. You will have to race in everything from Sardine tins to Coke cans, beating off the challenge of Z, Princess Bala, General Mandible, Colonel Cutter, Azteca, and the good-hearted Weaver. The game will take place during all four seasons and in five gaming areas: the Anthill, the Forest Park, the Frozen Pond, the City, and Insectopia. Bonuses will be dotted along the way and the tracks will be strewn with giant obstacles. Hopefully "Antz Racing" will prove to be a bit more than the obvious clone of Nintendo's seminal racing series that it sounds like. Jean-Claude Goulon of LSP commented that the graphics will be "close to the CGI movie experience," so at the least we can expect a festival of eye-candy.

Conker's Bad Fur Day is now out in the USA, and it has caused such a storm over there that its release in Europe via THQ will likely prove to be the biggest and most important for quite some time. Just to give you something to gauge it by, IGN64 gave it 9.9 out of a possible 10 marks. You would be correct if you commented that we're seeing shades of the original Rareware game, Donkey Kong Country's popularity. To celebrate this rather spectacular showing (and since we've got CBFD assets coming out of our eyelids), we have posted 16 screenshots in a gallery. If you want to find out why the game is going to be so special, just take a look at some of these shots. Expect more in a week's time. Related Feature - Conker's Bad Fur Day Screenshots

Operator logos are just about the only thing that distinguishes my bulky Nokia 7110 from the millions of other units doing the rounds all over the country. There was a time when it was unique, you know! Nobody had one! But nowadays, well, the only thing that can keep me sane and above the rest is that "what's that logo?" factor. Praise be then, to people like Vivendi and the others involved in this latest promotion of Tribes 2, for giving me something to be recognised by again. The promotion consists of a great new "Tribes 2" operator logo (for free or whatever it costs you to receive one). Fill in the details on the promotion's website and within seconds you will receive your new operator logo, which reads "Tribes 2" in a snazzy font. And it does only take seconds - we tried it. Now all that I need is a matching Tribes 2 protective jacket for my phone and I'll be happy. I don't think I'll hang around too long waiting for that one, though. Get your free operator logo from here, courtesy of Vivendi (Sierra Online), and Logos Unlimited, the country's top mobile phone customization website! Related Feature - Tribes 2 Preview

We got the chance to see and play Panzer Front last week, and judging by the Japanese code we were privy to, the game is shaping up to do some serious damage in the action-strategy genre. Puns and all. Arcade and simulation fans should both be right at home once they have adjusted themselves to the control system, which not only lets you handle each of the tank's tracks simultaneously, but independently of one another too. There's no left or right, just forward and back keys for each track. It's a bold move for the developer, but could well pay dividends with fans seeking a realistic interpretation of the inner workings of a tank. The game will plunge you into the heart of the battle, giving you control of several tanks which can be cycled through and given orders. Instead of using the classic portrayal of Good versus Evil, the game allows you to handle things for Allies, Axis and more, in modern conflicts as well as old. The lack of Nazi insignias and similar emblems is probably down to the game's prospective audience in Germany and neighbouring countries, who have an almost blanket ban on the subjects. German, American and Russian forces are available, and depending on the conflict you may be called upon to take up any of their positions. Panzer features more than 25 stages from various conflicts, with many based on real-life events, as well as 38 unique tanks from World War II right up to the present day. These are all authentically modelled on their real-life counterparts, with an impressive level of graphical detail for the ageing PlayStation, and realistic physics.

- RageSystem Requirements -   Pentium II 266 or equivalent   64Mb RAM   600Mb hard drive space (full install)   8Mb graphics card

Virtuoso, the new sales and marketing division of Koch Distribution, have announced that they will be launching "Thames Racer" in the UK on Friday 30th March, following on from last year's arcade racing game London Racer. This time the action takes to the water for some James Bond style action, as you pilot a selection of overpowered speedboats along the Thames in London, as well as through the canals of Venice and Amsterdam. Each of the three cities included in the game features a selection of recognisable riverbank landmarks, such as the Rialto Bridge and Marco Polo square in Venice and Tower Bridge and the Tate Gallery in London.

The latest installment in the popular Settlers strategy game series was apparently nearing release when UbiSoft took over German developer / publisher Blue Byte last month, but since then things have been eerily quiet as UbiSoft absorbed the company and its games into their own line-up. Now we have word that Settlers IV will finally be released on Friday 30th March. According to UbiSoft, "the reasons behind the unfortunate delay of the product were essentially quality assurance issues", with the company wanting "to guarantee that the game's distribution went as smoothly as possible".

Industry legend Isao Owaka was in the headlines recently for donating 85 million yen's worth of stock to his beloved Sega to save them from the pain of the Dreamcast's death knell. Unfortunately, all the stock in the world couldn't save Isao, who died of heart failure, age 74, Friday afternoon Japanese time. Isao Owaka's career was noted for success and perseverance. After failure with the Saturn, Sega bounced back with the Dreamcast and won the hearts of millions. The console is still considered the gaming industry's finest, as new games continue to pour out for it, including the breathtaking Shenmue, Grandia II and more. Hopefully Mr. Owaka will be remembered for his guidance in the production of Dreamcast - he finally had his company back in the running, and with its new third party development business model, Sega should be making gamers happy for many years to come. Isao Owaka, rest in peace. Related Feature - Sega to become platform-neutral, Team up with Palm

Crawfish is a company with a lot of GameBoy Color games under its belt, and a history of good ones too. We've reviewed a few, including Street Fighter Alpha, and the company has worked on ports of Driver and others. Nowadays though, the company has designs on the GameBoy Advance, and with the Japanese unit due to launch next week, it seemed like a good time to collar them for a few moments and have a chat.

Developed by a Russian company and making its debut as the first game to be distributed in the UK by German publisher CDV, Sudden Strike was a truly European effort. Now the popular World War II strategy game is getting a make-over with a planned May release for Sudden Strike Forever, an expansion pack described by its developers as "version 1.5 rather than simply an add-on pack". Amongst the new features are three new mission for each of the three campaigns in the original game, as well as four new single missions with new settings and seasons, including the game's first desert battles.

The G800 is like one of those legendary Greek heroes you tell your children about, and it seems that Matrox, a privately owned company and thus not one that needs to report to shareholders, has adopted a fitting pseudo-marketing campaign for the project, where they release no public information and leak nuggets of information all over the place, spreading them through Chinese whispers on obscure forums and hoping the big news oracles will pick up on them. Well FullOn3D.com has. According to this rather odd thread on "MURC forums", the G800 may even be called the Matrox Condor II. Although that's fairly inconclusive, According to MatroxUsers.com, something interesting happens if you do a "View Source" on the as-yet unreleased G800.com. A secret message hidden in the HTML, reads "Whose word are you going to take? There's ours -- or the 28 million triangles knocking on your door." When we loaded up the page this morning though, all we got was "Spooky, isn't it?". Ho-hum. G800.com itself does offer a clue though. Firstly, a pop-up appears with a "Coming Soon" emblem. The title tags of the HTML in the pop-up have not been correctly defined though, and the URL reveals itself as "http://www.g800.com/condor.html". Condor again. The visible message to visitors is that "Yes, we know. We're way behind on this page. There's been nothing sitting on this server for over a year and a half now. Rest assured, however, that the wait is almost over and the delay in unveiling will be well worth any inconvenience. :)" Judging by the information at hand and the conclusions drawn by FullOn3D.com, we should expect to hear more about Matrox' G800 in the very near future.

We're not sure who the voluptuous young lady on Unreal2.com is, but she does a good job of selling the game. The new website, launched just recently by Legend, showcases the successor to the familiar Unreal organ. Unreal II, for those who don't know, follows on not from the multiplayer digression, but the original Unreal, taking place in the same fictitious universe as the original, albeit with different main player characters and locations. Instead of taking on the guise of a stranded prisoner, this time you're the lone representative of the Law in a distant sector of space, piloting a small ship called the Atlantis with the aid of three; Ne'Ban is your trusty alien pilot, Isaak is an engineer who keeps the ship running, and Aida acts as your Intelligence officer. Things are fairly normal until interstellar war breaks out, and you are caught in the middle of the fighting, and must balance your responsibility to protect the colonists, archaeologists, miners, and other civilians in your sector... with the duty to discover the source of the conflict and put an end to the war. This is presumably where the "Unreal Warfare" rumours came from, unless Epic is working on something else. [They are - Ed] The single player game takes the form of a series of missions linked by the narrative framework of the game's story. Missions may take place in the dense jungle of a tropical planet, in the ancient ruins of an alien city, deep underground in a warren of tunnels, on the molten surface of a hellish volcanic world, in the bowels of an alien industrial facility, in the endless oceans of a water-bound world, or on board an enemy starship. There are more than ten unique settings, each with its own distinct look and production design. More information can be found on the website, which makes interesting reading. The website also features a gallery of screenshots, including a couple of comparatives, which show how early design sketches were translated to code. It also features a FAQ, several wallpaper downloads (so far) and a Community Forum, which is already buzzing with anticipation.

A piece of RPG history is coming to the GameBoy Advance by way of Capcom. Nintendo's official GBA gameslist has included a "Breath of Fire" entry for quite some time, but it wasn't expected that we would have much more to report until the Tokyo Game Show at the end of this March. Instead, details have emerged early, that the game will be a like-for-like conversion of the original Breath of Fire to the system, albeit with a couple of upgrades. According to RPG gurus The GIA, who broke the original story, "the game will now support saving at any time and Capcom is going to take advantage of the GBA's link feature to enable item swapping between players." It is thought that Capcom will alter the visuals slightly in places so that they fit the GBA more appropriately. The Breath of Fire series is a long-running one, spanning several volumes, and each of them has met with critical acclaim, be they on SNES, PlayStation, or wherever. Are time-consuming RPGs like Breath of Fire to become the perfect antidote to long car and train journeys? Perhaps Squaresoft could re-establish their bond with Nintendo and start producing 16-bit class RPGs again. The world is certainly crying out for a mobile Chrono Trigger, for instance. According to The GIA, the Japanese release of Breath of Fire on the GBA will occur in July. We expect to hear more at the Tokyo Game Show.

Nintendo may find themselves the biggest home video-game maker soon, instead of the second biggest with the release of both the GameBoy Advance and the GameCube in Japan shortly. The GameBoy Advance, set to launch next Wednesday, is now to be sold in a volume of nearly 1.1 million units, up from the single million quoted previously. Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi also told Reuters in an interview that plans to release GameCube are on track. Although their is widespread confusion as the European release date of the GameCube has been shunted back to Spring 2002, the company's share price rose yesterday in Japan according to Bloomberg, against a weak Yen. The shares surged 5.5% to 21,100 yen, and some 934,000 shares traded. The reason, according to the analysts, is that Nintendo generates more than 70 percent of its sales abroad, and the yen's recent decline against the dollar boosts the value of overseas sales when converted to the weaker Japanese currency. News leaked out a couple of weeks ago that GameCube guru and industry legend Shigeru Miyamoto had seen the latest first party build of Metroid for the 'Cube and wasn't impressed. Despite this, and the associated sackings at Retro Studios, the company can do no wrong. Nintendo aim to ship more than 100 million GameBoy Advances throughout the world within the next few years. With an installed base rivalling that for the original GameBoy, it could very well be within their grasp. Related Feature - Advance Progression?

Sony's acclaimed SCE Studio Cambridge is working on what could be the company's final PS One title, to be published by SCE and released in time for Easter. "C-12: Final Resistance", is described as a blockbuster action title, and with the Cambridge group considered one of the only developers left that can really push the PS One, it should be quite an experience. The framerate is said to be constant, despite the high-resolution graphics and detailed textures. Large, animated on-screen characters cause no slowdown, and judging from the screenshots, look even more impressive than their counterparts in other PS One-stretching games like Resident Evil 3. The game's producer John Meegan doesn't even think that PS One has reached the outer bounds of its capabilities. "We've definitely pushed the machine to its current limits" says Meegan, "but I'd be delighted if somebody surpasses what we've achieved. It'd give us something higher to aim for in the future". We first saw C-12 in very early form at ECTS, but it was in such a dogged state that we hardly found anything to obsess about. Since then though, the game has matured greatly and established an eager fanbase of gamers who drool over every morsel of information and every screenshot. Sony's SCE Studio Cambridge is a 55-man operation now, and C-12: Final Resistance could just be their finest hour. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe will publish C-12: Final Resistance for PS one on April 13th. Until then, enjoy the few shots and renders we have on display in our screenshots area. Related Feature - C12: Final Resistance Screenshots

SETI (The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) @Home has long been resident on many expensive PCs, run by gamers and hardware freaks to show off their PC's oomph to anyone who cared to look or listen. Similar projects have emerged, including one to crack a useless form of encryption amongst other things. However, Stanford University in the USA has now started its own project, and it's gathering speed. The project is called Folding @Home. "Folding" is about trying to understand how proteins self-assemble (protein-folding). As the website says, it's the "holy grail of modern molecular biophysics." The challenge is to computationally simulate protein folding, something that would require more CPU power than the whole of the world put together. Or at least, that's the plan! The Folding group has developed a new way to simulate protein folding ("distributed dynamics") which should remove the previous barriers to simulating protein folding. "We have already demonstrated that our distributed dynamics technique can fold small protein fragments and protein-like synthetic polymers. The next step is to apply these methods to larger, considerably more important and complicated proteins. Unfortunately, larger proteins fold slower and thus we need more computers to simulate their folding. While the alpha helix folds in 100 nanoseconds, proteins just a little larger fold 100x slower (10 microseconds). Thus, while 10-100 processors were enough to simulate the helix, we will need many more to simulate these larger, more interesting proteins. "To achieve a significant speedup, we need lots of processors in a given run. Also, since a single run does not tell us much, we need to simulate several runs (10 runs would be a good start) per protein. Thus, we need lots of processors. By running our client that uses the Mithral CS-SDK, you can lend us your machine for as long as you like. The client allows you to run for as little or as long as you like. Even a single day's worth of running is helpful to us." The Science behind it all is very complex, but understanding what you could help achieve by taking part is not. The discovery of how proteins self-assemble could lead to more advanced research into Mad Cow, Altzheimer's and more diseases, it could help man build nanomachines and more. The benefits of finding out how Folding works far outweigh the benefits of discovering whether amoeba on Saturn can run traceroute! You can discover more about Folding @Home on its homepage at Stanford University, and download the client for any flavour of Windows, Linux or Solaris. If you generally leave your PC on through the night doing nothing much, would it hurt to contribute?

The original Aerowings was a bit of a non-starter. I'm not even sure it was released over here. It was low on action, despite selling itself as a dogfighting flight sim, and its sales suffered heavily as a result. Aerowings 2 makes up for this by focusing almost entirely on dogfighting, filling the skies with enemy jets and creating a profound and embracing game to wrap it up in. Even for the lowly newcomer, like me! I'll let you in on a little secret - flight sims aren't really my bag. Never have been. But Aerowings 2, through its softly-gently training and tutorial modes, has taught me everything I need to know about throwing a £2 million fighter plane into a barrel roll and coming out of it on the tail of my nemesis. The game is quite complex, but it's equally rewarding. There are lots of techniques to get to grips with, and the training scheme is very thorough. Of course, experienced pilots rejoining the series after the first encounter may find the early sections rather boring, or at least, less interesting than sharing a wartime story with some pals in the mess hall. That said, despite forcing the player to take part in the training regardless of their experience, it will offer a good grounding for the controls, and as the game wears on, more and more challenging and complicated missions unveil themselves, making up for the lack thereof earlier on. I'm certain that the later missions will give even the most practised baron of the skies a run for his money.

After the impressive release of Counter-Strike 1.1 a day earlier, Valve Software and Sierra released the Half-Life 1.1.0.6 patch last night, in packages to upgrade new installations as well as those running 1.1.0.4. Another patch, for the Opposing Force mission pack, was released at the same time. The patch addresses a lot of issues, including some in the game's in-built team game, Team Fortress Classic. The retail Counter-Strike update was also released. The deal is, that if you want to play any of the games online, you must upgrade to 1.1.0.6. You can download the new patches from the following URLs:-

Connectix' long-running battle against Sony to market its Virtual Game Station software has finally come to an end, with Sony buying the company. Speculation of the company's future now falls neatly into two columns; one where Sony kills it off and hides the body, and the other where Sony uses it to encourage legal emulation on the PC, something which both Connectix and Bleem have been trying to get the company to allow them to do for quite some time. According to The Register, the release following the move talks about defining "a series of development initiatives in the area of advanced emulation solutions", which could mean Sony wants to use Connectix to its benefit, or it could just mean it wants to hide the corpse behind some fictitious R&D. Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that it was cheaper for Sony to buy the company than pursue the case, so the purchase has nothing to do with a business strategy on Sony's part, other than to protect its assets. Whether VGS is put to use by Sony will be an afterthought. As with the suit against Bleem, whom we interviewed last year, VGS is accused of violating copyright and encouraging piracy through its support of copied PlayStation games. Sony even won a temporary injunction against the company, but that was overturned on appeal. Another suit, this time based on patent infringement was filed, after the Appeal Court said that it would probably have upheld the ban had Sony sued on those grounds originally. VGS will continue to be sold until June 30th, when Sony take over. From then on, it's completely up to them, and what will become of Connectix is largely unknown. Update - "Sony did not buy Connectix", or so says CEO Roy McDonald. "We continue to sell and support CVGS as well as our many other products including our flagship product VitrtualPC. The agreement opens the way for cooperative development of Sony and Conenctix in a wide range of advanced emulations solutions in and out of the gaming industry. For more information about our company see our website at www.connectix.com." Thanks for clearing that up, Roy! Related Feature - The bleem! Team

Laptops are not built for gaming, but NVIDIA want to change that with their new GeForce GO! graphics chipset. AMD also have aspirations for high performance laptops capable of gaming and other desktop-class tasks, and it seems that they are very close to realising their aim. Ace's Hardware is reporting by way of News.com that AMD's mobile Palominos (the next incarnation of Athlon) are only days away, but that thanks to a shortage of components for the mobile Athlon platform, actual laptops built on the processor could be months away. The article on News.com, Ace's say, indicates that major OEMs such as Compaq and HP have pushed back their schedules to June or July as a result of this lack of infrastructure. Mobile chipsets are apparently to blame. Solutions from VIA and ALi are apparently a quarter away from high volume production, scheduled to ship nearer the middle of the year. AMD's aggressive scheduling has put them way ahead of their market partners, and it could hurt them in the long run. "We plan to have production shipments this quarter in volume," AMD spokesman Ward Tisdale said, but the official announcement of the product won't come until at least one top tier PC manufacturer (e.g. Compaq) is ready to release a laptop based on it. The new mobile Palomino format will debut at speeds of 900MHz, and uses PowerNow! to conserve energy and increase battery life, making it the perfect mobile format. The mobile Palomino is based on the same core that AMD claim will do 1.7GHz in a desktop machine by the end of the year. HP, Compaq and others are thought to be working on laptop designs, but thanks to the shortages announcements could be as much as several months off. The mobile Athlon's little brother, the mobile Duron, is due to be introduced at speeds of 600MHz and 700MHz, but it is unknown how its development progresses. One would assume it does so in parallel. The chip will use a 1.4v core on a 0.18 micron fabrication process, and PowerNow! to help conserve energy. Related Feature - KT133E

SCE have admitted that they have no plans to develop their own games-orientated mobile phone devices. Despite a wide range of popular mobiles produced by mother company Sony, SCE will instead develop and target games at a preinstalled base of mobile phone users, thanks to its strategic alliances with NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone. To Develop portable gaming devices, according to one of SCE's senior directors Kenichi Fukunaga, would be a "costly enterprise that made little sense". "Making portable devices would mean having to compete directly with mobile phones," he said, before claiming that "We couldn't offer devices with the same capabilities and price." Obviously Mr. Fukunaga doesn't want to concede that Nintendo utterly dominates the gaming portables market for fear of looking bad, but we're pretty sure that's the message. Really though, if Sony really wanted to distribute a viable mobile phone gaming platform, they could do several things. Firstly, they could license Videologic's new PowerVR MBX, which does all sorts of graphics magic on mobile and 3G platforms. Then they could use their own mobile phone division to develop a phone of the perfect size, weight and performance. Then they could use their established brands to market it and sell millions. There's all sorts of possibilities to wrongfoot Nintendo on this one, but SCE have no intention of trying to do so. Instead of dropping millions on R&D for such a device, they would presumably rather focus on other more pressing matters. Why? Because like so many of their competitors, they are strung up on promises which they made at the beginning of the year, of features they are now forced to develop, like the PlayStation 2's high-speed Internet connectivity, and the PlayStation 3's chip design. Development elsewhere and huge competition from Nintendo are of course perfectly valid reasons not to waste time on the development of a mobile gaming platform, but if they aren't going to do it, the least they could do is give us the real reasons why not! Related Feature - Sony's plans made public

Former Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi has been working hard on his new animated TV series, "The Ripping Friends", which is set to debut Saturday mornings on Fox Kids later this year. Obviously a hot property, THQ have latched onto this and scored an exclusive contract to develop games based on the show. The Ripping Friends features the humorous exploits of the world's most manly men, four superheroes on their quest to make the earth a safer place to be more manly. The first game is due for the end of this year, to coincide with the show's launch. Ren and Stimpy is classic comedy, and Fox Kids' President Maureen Smith believes that Kricfalusi's next project is likely to plug the holes in their programming strategy. THQ's VP of product development Michael Rubinelli points out that the show actually invites the viewer to take part in the action, to do something instead of sitting there on the couch festering. "We think this type of involvement --that actually brings kids into the action -- is an ideal springboard for developing interactive games." From the press release... The Ripping Friends superheroes, Crag, Rip, Slab and Chunk, are the four manliest men in the world and live and train for their next mission in a super industrialized complex futuristic city called R.I.P.C.O.T. ("Really Impressive Prototype City of Next Tuesday"…but the 'n' is silent). While they live just slightly ahead of the rest of the planet, in the world of next Tuesday, one of their enemies manages to stay just out of reach in the world of next Thursday. Uhm, that pretty much says it all.

The PlayStation 2 has thus far been rather short on hit games, certainly on this side of the Atlantic, with titles like SSX and Timesplitters dominating the top spaces in the PS2 charts ever since their release last November. Now the third person action-adventure game Oni is apparently joining the rather short list of PlayStation 2 games to reach the top, with publisher Take 2 announcing that the game debuted at the top of the UK charts for the week ending March 10th, having already made it to number two in the PS2 charts on the other side of the Atlantic.

Before Duke Nukem was even a twinkle in a game developers eye, Bruce Campbell immortalised the phrase "hail to the king" as Ash in the Evil Dead trilogy. It's been a long time coming, but now a computer game based on the cult movies is finally nearing completion, and with the release date set for May more information and screenshots are starting to leak out from publisher THQ.