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Microsoft, every geek's favourite monopoly, have announced that they are giving gamers an early Christmas present by slashing the prices of several of their recent releases this month. Included in the offer are space combat sim "Starlancer", which drops from £30 to £20, and several titles now going for a song at just £15 - urban racer "Midtown Madness", the imaginatively titled World War II flight sim "Combat Flight Simulator", addictive massively multiplayer RPG "Asheron's Call", and online action-strategy game "Allegiance".

Last Friday Intel surprised the world by cancelling its so-called "budget PC on a chip" Timna product. The chip would have faced off directly against the Duron and Celerons of this world, but according to the CPU behemoth it was canceled due to problems with the MTH (Memory Translator Hub), which was employed to allow the board to use inexpensive SDRam instead of the Rambus RIMMs for which it was originally designed. The now-infamous MTH made its first appearance on early i820 boards, and forced a recall of those, so it's surprising Intel haven't learnt their lesson.. and of course need I even mention the absurdity of putting Rambus in a budget PC? Although Timna's cancelation six months before its proposed release is a fairly major announcement, many see it as a smokescreen for the announcement several days beforehand of another Pentium 4 delay. Originally the expensive 1.4 and 1.5Ghz parts were expected to see release on Halloween, but now they have been pushed back until November, missing the Christmas rush as far as OEMs are concerned. In fact, OEMs and not a supposed problem with the 850 chipset (which Intel have since fixed anyway) may be one of the main reasons the P4 is being delayed. Many of the major OEMs have openly stated that they have no plans to offer P4 systems this year, citing price and performance issues with regard to current memory and graphics card architecture. A 1Ghz PIII is just as formiddable as 1.4Ghz P4 in the modern marketplace it seems, let alone an Athlon part. Current forecasts indicate that perhaps Intel will choose to cut the prices on its PIII parts in the run up to Christmas to make them more attractive to shoppers, before releasing the P4 in the new year to a hardy reception, perhaps at levels above and beyond the chips we've seen so far. In other related matters, it seems that new PIIIs will use the C stepping, which is minutely smaller and allegedly more efficient than the previous B stepping. For those who don't know, just like most modern games, processor development continues past the initial release, and when the team working on the project have updated it to a certain extent, they release a new version of the core of the processor, and the term "stepping" is used to describe these updates. As you may know, Pentium III "CopperMines" used the B stepping and performance was vastly improved thanks to changes in the way the cache operated with them. Similarly, these C stepping PIIIs are supposed to improve performance and produce better yields at higher frequencies. That said, Intel's much discussed 1.13Ghz part, which was widely recalled due to instabilities, used the C stepping, and naturally people are concerned Intel don't release more duff chips. The chip giant is assuring the world that this is not the case, but people are understandably cautious.

With Half-Life mod Counter-Strike apparently more popular than Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament combined, and upcoming first person shooters like Tribes 2, Halo and Team Fortress 2 seeking to push online team-play to new levels, it's beginning to look like multiplayer tactical combat games are the way of the future. Digital Illusions certainly think so, as they are hard at work on an ambitious game called "Battlefield 1942" which, as the name suggests, is aiming to bring World War II to life on your PC.

The news is breaking all over of the full US lineup, with many sites (such as GameCenter) carrying rough approximations of the release schedule for November, whilst others (including IGN) have details of releases all the way into 2001! The magic number of titles that look set to be released alongside the unit is 27, although that said figures have shown through general concensus that most people intend to buy three or perhaps fewer titles before Christmas. There's also exhaustive details of more PS2 shenanigens courtesy of Sony's recent "Gamer's Day". The most interesting informatory nuggets include the news that the bundle will not as was previously supposed include a playable demos disc, that Sony is working on 10 titles in-house as of now, and that Gran Turismo 2000 will be released in first quarter 2001 and almost certainly renamed to the more sensible Gran Turismo 3 - Sony's reasons for the change are fairly obvious. Over here the hype continues, albeit rather uselessly - after all who are they hyping it to? The people who haven't secured their consoles yet? Basically all the pre-order application forms are gone, although Gameplay.com does claim to have some going (and this writer can confirm their existence). The price is still an issue for some people, although the more erstwhile will recall that this isn't the first time a console has retailed for $299 over there and £299 over here. Despite a petition to try and bring Sony to their senses, the £100 or so difference in price is unlikely to change. Meanwhile, writers continuously debate over Sony's decision to lower the console allocation for the USA. It seems that the Western launch of the beige box's sequel is to be very different to its Far Eastern one..

And so the guessing game begins.. according to Daily Radar, Rage have now announced that their "E-Racer" title which has been mooted a lot of late is in development for the Xbox. The title is of course an on and off-line racing title (as the hideous name implies), and it should be a good example of the Xbox's Internet capabilities.. Also announced were two further (as-yet undisclosed) titles in development for the format, a racing game and an action/strategy title. The company denies that they will be conversions of titles already produced for other formats, but in spite of this our money would be on an Xbox version of the company's "Wild Wild Racing", the PC version of which is now nearing completion. As for the other, Daily Radar reckon it will be the company's "Incoming Forces" title, which is of course a conversion of the jaunty shoot-em-up that was used to demonstrate the exhaustive graphics capabilities of early 3d accelerator cards, the sequel to which has been long awaited. Although DR reckon on Incoming Forces, we're more inclined to bet on Rage's eclectic action/strategy romp Hostile Waters, which seems to fit the bill more snugly. As we said, they're not prepared to let on exactly what they're developing, but nonetheless it seems fair to say it'll be enough to add a few more notches to Microsoft's belt..

Last Christmas saw the release of Quake 3 Arena, the latest in a long line of first person shooters from id Software. Almost a year on and yet another new patch has been released for the game, adding some new features and removing some old bugs. Normally we would be applauding a company for supporting their product for so long, but the new patch doesn't stop there; it also changes some vital parts of the game, resulting in an outcry from the small but highly vocal online community surrounding the game.

With their Quake 3 engined third person shooter "Heavy Metal : FAKK2" now available even here in Europe, and a free multiplayer add-on for the game about to be released, the big question is what are Dallas based developers Ritual Entertainment up to next? For the moment they are still putting the finishing touches to "Blair Witch : The Elly Kedward Tale", their contribution to the Gathering of Developer's trilogy of spooky action-adventure games based on the hit movie "The Blair Witch Project". But beyond that?

King Arthur and his companions have had a hard time of it over the last couple of decades, reduced to bit parts in revisionist fantasy epics, and starring in big budget Hollywood tripe like "First Knight". Memories of Monty Python's classic Holy Grail movie made it hard for anyone to take them particularly seriously and, apart from the refreshingly dark and gory "Excalibur", people have generally left King Arthur well alone since then.

The "Rustin Parr" part of the game's title refers to the man at the centre of the concern, whose background you'll no doubt recall if you've seen the attrocious (and thankfully unattached) film. Rustin Parr was a reclusive fellow living away in the hills, and after a year of voices in his head and visions of an old lady he became powerless to resist the impulsions planted in his head. Unable to stop himself, he drove into town and found the nearest child he could, took him back to his dusty mansion in the hills and strapped him down in the basement. He collected many more children, and violently tortured and slaughtered them all, except one, whom he forced to watch. When all this was done, he freed the boy and strolled into town, saying that he was "finished". The voices suddenly went away. If you base your decision to play Rustin Parr on the recent film then you've made a mistake. The game in itself is a fantastic adaptation of the Blair Witch mythos and has nothing to do with a few teenagers in the woods with a wobbly camera. As Doc Holliday, you have to head into backwater Burkittsville on the edge of the woods to investigate for the SpookHouse, and inevitably your adventure takes you as close to the Blair Witch as anyone can humanly get. BW is very cinematic, right from the off. For those of you who didn't play Nocturne (and this is a standalone game so it's not required), it's played from a third person perspective and as you navigate around the world the camera moves to various fixed positions for ease of motion. You run or walk around, pick stuff up, raise and lower your weapons to face enemies and chat to non-player characters. Cutscenes all take place in-game, but that's not a concern since graphically the game is very pleasant. There are scant few areas where I felt playing the game became difficult due to the camera either, but some people dislike this style of play. The game can be controlled by various methods, through combinations of the keyboard, mouse and gamepad, but I had a few problems with some of them, particularly the point-and-click mode, which flat out didn't work properly. Clicking on a switch on the wall (no matter how I tried it) didn't work..

The latest UK release schedule just arrived from Virgin Interactive, with several notable changes. Perhaps the most important update is that the wild looking action-strategy game "Sacrifice" from Shiny is now due on November 24th, along with Rebellion's stealthy squad action game "Gunlok". December is looking like being a busy month for Virgin as well, with several top games now confirmed for release at the tail end of the year. Icewind Dale add-on "Heart of Winter" should arrive in the first week of December, with Star Trek strategy game "Starfleet Command II" on December 8th, stunning action-strategy game "Giants" on December 15th, and "Art Of Magic" ending the year for Virgin on December 29th.

Due for release this December, "Starfleet Command Volume II : Empires at War" is the latest Star Trek strategy game to come out of Interplay. With new races, new weapons, new ships and new missions, as well as improved multiplayer support and an online "metaverse" to take part in, this could be the 3D space strategy game that Trekkies have been waiting for. If you want to find out for yourself if this is the greatest thing since the Vulcan death-grip, there is now a 75Mb playable demo available from the following sites -

Australian company Auran might not be well known in the gaming community, but it was their Tactics Engine which powered the hit real time strategy game "Dark Reign" back in 1997. Now they are releasing their latest work to the public for free in the form of AURAN Jet, a "fully integrated 3D game development application" which includes almost everything you need to make your own 3D games, from code samples to 3D Studio Max plug-ins. The idea is to allow developers and hobbyists to make their own games without paying any upfront fees, while non-commercial use of the system is completely free.

It hardly comes as a surprise that LithTech, the DirectX based game engine developed by Washington based Monolith and their LithTech Inc subsidiary, has made the jump to the Xbox, the DirectX based games console developed by Washington based Microsoft. The LithTech engine is already available in PC and Playstation 2 flavours, and now Monolith have officially announced that an Xbox version has been cleared by Microsoft as part of their "Tools and Middleware program".

Last weekend a horde of around 8,500 hardcore role-players and table-top wargamers invaded the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham for "Games Day 2000", an event organised by the Games Workshop to showcase their range of best-selling products, including the ever popular Warhammer gaming system.

Frag 4, the latest of the Frag series of events organised by The CPL, is now underway in Dallas, Texas. 700 gamers pre-registered for the event, which will host a huge Quake 3 teamplay tournament, Counter-Strike and Quake 3 Rocket Arena competitions, as well as the CPL's first women-only Quake 3 tournament. $30,000 in cash prizes are up for grabs, making this the lowest paying CPL event in recent history, but the level of competition should still be high with top Quake 3 clans from Europe and the USA battling it out in the teamplay tournament, and some of the top female players in the world turning out for the women's Quake 3 event. You can find all the latest results on the Frag 4 website, and several other sites are covering the event including Cached and Challenge-US.

Gift is one of the more .. interesting titles we've come across recently, putting you in the shoes of anti-hero Gift, a fat lazy red guy who waddles around whacking people with a stick as he tries to rescue the amply imbued Lolita Globo, who is suffering from the delusion that she is Snow White. The game is due for release on November 10th in the UK, but in the meantime you can grab a 13Mb playable demo of Gift from the game's official website - look in the "goodies" section.

With the 2000 Olympics taking place down in Sydney at the moment, athletics games are undergoing something of a revival, with Sydney 2000 (PC / PSX / DC), Sergei Bubka (PC) and Virtua Athlete 2000 (DC) all putting in appearances in the last few weeks. Not to be left out, French publisher Kalisto have a launched a whole decathlon of athletics web games on their site. Events such as the 100m sprint, long jump, high jump, pole vault and javelin are included. Unfortunately all of the instructions only seem to be in French, and the control method is something of a nightmare - my best time in the 100m so far is .. um .. 32 seconds actually. Still, if you want to give it a go head over to the web games section of Kalisto's website. It doesn't cost anything, and the worst that can happen is that you will destroy your mouse buttons and give yourself a nasty Repetitive Strain Injury...

- 14 Degrees East / Binary Asylum UK Publisher - Virgin InteractiveUS Publisher - InterplaySystem Requirements -   Pentium 266 or equivalent   32Mb RAM   195Mb hard drive space   3D graphics card

PlayStation fans have plenty of reasons to get excited this weekend. To say Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is long-anticipated would be a gross understatement. We'll have one of the first and most in-depth reviews of the game available in the near future from a true fan of the series. V-Rally 2 Platinum is also on general release today for the PSX. The original V-Rally was a big name for the console in its infancy and the sequel carried on the legacy. If you have a spare £20 you could do a lot worse. It's a good weekend for puzzle fans as well. Magical Drop on the PSX and Wetrix on the GameBoy both see the light of day. The latter was a big hit on the 32-bit consoles and Nintendo's N64 with its isometric 3D rainfall/land-building action and it should translate well to the handheld format. And speaking of the GameBoy, owners of Nintendo's little pocket of joy might just as well stay inside this week - the only other title coming out is Winnie the Pooh from Ubi-Soft, and one would speculate that was a very kiddish Christmas title. In fact, it's a very barren week on the whole for Nintendo, who are preferring to gear up towards the release of the PlayStation 2 - the big guns will be out over the next few weeks, including Mario Tennis and Zelda : Majora's Mask. It seems that the PlayStation 2's imminent arrival has acted like a huge magnet for release dates across all formats. Nothing terribly impressive is coming out, with all of the major companies preferring to spearhead an attack on Sony's console at the end of October State-side and November here in Europe. Titles available on the Dreamcast this week are limited to Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Pod 2.

Counter-Strike is the most popular online game in the world at the moment. How long that will last is anyone's guess, but Valve have definitely sat up and taken notice, as a retail version is scheduled for release soon so that people who don't own Half-Life can buy it as a standalone unit. This move was originally frowned upon, until it was learned that 1.0 will also be available as a free download. The modification is currently at version 7.1 for the public, and features new skins, maps, sounds, real-life weaponry and even an advanced HUD with radar system. Although gamers were recently angered by changes to the netcode which favoured high pingers (to the extent that gamers with high pings could theoretically kill people through walls), it remains the most popular team-based online game for the time being, and version 1.0 will herald an exit from the mod's "Beta" stages. Full details of new additions to the game (for it really should be described as a game rather than a modification now) have not been publicly released, but today's update at the official website includes pictures of a new weapon, the SIG SG-550 sniper rifle. Fans trying to find something new within the game to occupy themselves until then could do well to check out the progress of the officially-backed "Real Bot", a mod for the mod, as it were.

The latest UK release schedule just arrived from Sierra, with updates on their line-up for the rest of the year. Space-bound real-time strategy game "Homeworld Cataclysm" will be hitting store shelves tomorrow as planned, while the ancient Greek flavoured city building sim "Zeus" is now due on November 17th, and tactical combat game "SWAT 3 : Elite Edition" is set for release at the end of October.

Funcom's stunning adventure game "The Longest Journey", which follows a young art student called April Ryan as she travels across two worlds to save the universe, first appeared in its native Scandinavia late last year, with the UK version (as well as French and German versions) released some months later. Now the game is finally crossing the Atlantic, and American gamers will be able to get hold of this gem from November, thanks to US distributor Tri Synergy. With an epic storyline, interesting characters, stunning settings and excellent cinematics and voice acting, the game is well worth a look if you don't already have a copy.

Sony have announced the full European launch details for their eagerly anticipated next generation console. Most European countries (including the UK) will receive the Playstation 2 on November 24th, while Iceland, the Czech Republic, Israel, Cyprus, Malta and Poland will have to wait a little longer, although units should still arrive there in time for Christmas. There will be 500,000 units on sale across Europe on launch day, although certainly here in the UK all of our initial allotment have already been sold through pre-orders. Another 500,000 units should be available by the end of this year, with a further two million by the end of March 2001.

If you've ever watched an episode of the Tweenies or Sesame Street and felt you wanted to unload both barrels of a shotgun into the furry critters darting around the screen then you're qualified to play Fur Fighters. Your characters (for there are six of them) are members of an elite group set to bring about the downfall of the evil General Viggo. Having done this once already the great General took the added precaution this time of kidnapping the our furry heroes' families, and obviously your job in FF is to rescue them from his clutches and prevent him taking over the world. Simple! As if controlling a furry special forces team weren't surreal enough, the world you wander around is occupied with lots of other talking animals, and they seem to catch a stray bullet with startling frequency. At one point I was awaiting a young enemy fellow as he emerged from a port-a-loo and one of my bullets whistled past his head and impacted on the skull of a hopping bunny that just so happened to be coming on-screen at the time. Ah well, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Despite the fact that in a Machiavellian, subconscious way you're taking out your frustrations with the shape of childrens' television on these poor animals, you do actually find yourself trying to avoid doing it after a while. Perhaps there ought to be more games than encourage humanity rather than destruction.. (Get out of my sight -Ed) But anyway, off you run into the big bright world outside to rescue your chums and kin.

Sony's fans and naysayers alike joined in criticism of the console giant's latest announcement this week. According to sources inside Sony, the US launch will only see some 500,000 units, not the promised 1 million. So half a million then, for the whole of America, a figure that was sold twice over in one weekend at the Japanese launch. Of most disgust to fans was Sony's smokescreen "confirmation" of launch titles. The company proudly announced some 26 titles that will be available to fans at launch. Of course, this is yet another ill-fated move for the company. After all, who is going to buy 26 titles at launch? Even die-hards would find it hard to justify picking up more than three or four, and third party sales projections indicate most families that pick up a console at launch will buy less than ten titles before Christmas, with the majority buying less than five. Earlier this month it was explained to journalists that although the PS2 will be available from November 24th in this country and the rest of Europe, you'll be hard pressed to buy a unit from a store shelf before next Spring due to shortages. The ratio of supply and demand will be at an all-time high, and it seems that every retailer (in the UK at least) is out of pre-order forms. Although Sony will undoubtedly end up selling all of its US and European consoles and making a big song and dance about it, there will be thousands upon millions of Westerners crying out for a unit, but it seems protestations will fall upon deaf ears. Insatiable demand was always going to be a problem for Sony, but one of the main reasons manufacturing is so set back is that they've been adding bits here and there to try and combat Nintendo and Microsoft press announcements. The latest change - the addition of hardware DVD playback - may have set the process back some weeks. Sony seem to have bodged the Western launch of its console up royally. Oh and as if this were not enough, the hardware DVD playback we just mentioned uses a certain Cirrus chipset, and as previously reported on these pages, dedicated DVD specialist Wharfdale has already been forced to shop elsewhere for its kit due to a shortage.. yes, another shortage that could have adverse effects on Sony's kit in the West. Somebody hand me a slapstick.

British publisher Codemasters have announced that they will be distributing "Operation Flashpoint", a Cold War tactical combat game from Prague based developers Bohemia Interactive Studio. Set for release early next year, the game will feature a mission based single player campaign through which you must lead a squad of up to twelve soldiers, as well as full multiplayer support. With a wide range of soldiers to choose from when assembling your squad, as well as the ability to jump into any of the vehicles in the game and drive off, Operation Flashpoint certainly sounds promising. Hopefully we should know more soon, but in the meantime read the press release for the full story...

Verant's "Everquest" is arguably the most successful massively multiplayer role-playing game to date, with over 50,000 players often online at once. Nick-named "Evercrack" thanks to its addictive qualities, players often lose themselves in the creaky 3D graphics for hours at a time, and a second expansion pack for the game (titled "Scars of Velious") is about to be released. Now the game's Producer, Brad McQuaid, has spoken about how he sees the future of massively multiplayer games in an interview with RPGVault.

While Microsoft's long-running "Flight Simulator" series is a decidely pacifist experience, where the most excitement you can have is doing a barrel roll in a Boeing 747 over Heathrow, the software giant has also spawned a more violent flight sim series, imaginatively titled "Combat Flight Simulator". The latest installment takes the action out into the Pacific during World War II, with well over a hundred missions to fly as either the Americans or the Japanese.

In-keeping with the Lucasarts School of point-and-clickery, Stupid Invaders is a sublime mix of ingenuity and hilarity. While it's almost certainly going to be branded with an "18" age classification in this country, the developers simply treat that as an invitation to intensify the gore, filthy language and chauvinistic flair of our visiting space alien buddies. But lets back track a little. What the heck is Stupid Invaders? Obviously it's a point-and-click adventure game, but this is no ordinary adventure title. It involves the plight of four aliens whose spaceship has crash-landed on Earth. Sadly for them their options for escape are narrowed significantly when three of them are kidnapped, leaving just our hero, an orange alien who looks rather like a disproportionate jellybean. Also rather unfortunately for them (and as the game's name infers), they're a teensy bit dim. Apparently the application process for space travel isn't quite as rigorous elsewhere in the universe as it is here. Ho-hum. Because our friend is somewhat daunted by his surroundings (and of course the wrong side of smart) your guidance is very useful, and by making use of the objects and creatures around you, you must rescue your crew and flee the planet back to safety, avoiding the many bounty hunters on your trail as you do.

The first game ("Dukes of Hazzard : Racing For Home") might have gone down like a lead balloon with critics, but apparently it still sold by the bucket-load for some odd reason. Not about to look a gift-horse in the mouth, Southpeak Interactive have announced that they are now working on a sequel, due out on Playstation as early as this November. "Dukes Of Hazzard : Daisy Dukes It Out" will see you racing against a "mysterious newcomer" to Hazzard County, a man with the unlikely name of Black Jack Perril who is trying to set up Daisy Duke to take the fall for a series of bank robberies. No, really. You couldn't make this stuff up.