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Apparently it's all too much for Retro Studios, the company to develop the GameCube version of Metroid, as they publicly seek help via our friends at IGN (whose review of the Electronic Arts toilets is still up in the air apparently). It seems that the company is after Sound Engineers and Programmers to head up the development on "next-generation products", something which will do little for the confidence of fans who treasure the Metroid series, which made its name with the inexplicably popular Super Metroid on the SNES five years ago. To be frank, this is a rather enigmatgic and altogether worrying cry for help from a GameCube second-party. Several days ago we questioned the sensibility of Nintendo revamping all of their classics for the GameCube after such limited success on the N64 with the likes of Mario Kart and Yoshi's Story. Surely attempting to reinvigorate such archetypal brands as Mario and Metroid once again is a little risky for the Japanese giant. After all, there is only so much more that can be done in each case. It would appear to be very easy to sit in an office in Tokyo and say "we need a new Mario game for the GameCube", but actually creating another exemplary title and living up to the legacy that is Mario or Metroid is another matter entirely. This sort of pussy-footing around with no particular brief other than "new Metroid game" is incredibly perillous, and the fact that the company doing the development itself hasn't the staff to do it yet does no good at all for its credibility. We'll watch the way this one unravells with baited breath.

, the German developer behind the impressive tech demo which NVIDIA were using to show off their GeForce 2 Ultra card at the recent ECTS trade show in London, has announced its first games. X-Isle is a first person squad-based shooter which forms the basis of the NVIDIA tech demo, and features a single player campaign as well as team-based multiplayer modes, while Engalus is a futuristic action-adventure game in which you play an assassin, rebel and mercenary called Jordain.

It's Friday so it must be UK release day! Soccer fans are in for a treat today, with two new EA Sports titles available - "Football Manager 2001" and "FA Premier Legue Stars 2001". EA have also released their big new add-on for The Sims, "Living It Up", which gives you a whole range of funky new accessories for your Sims characters, as well as a host of other new features.

For years now everybody has been saying that the internet is the future of gaming, but online focused games are still the exception rather than the rule. Pat Wyatt, Mike O'Brien and Jeff Strain, formerly of Blizzard, see that changing, and their new company Arena.net is based around the idea of selling their games direct to the public over the internet. And with previous work on Blizzard's Battle.net service and multiplayer code for Warcraft II, Diablo and Starcraft amongst other hits, the team certainly has experience on its side. According to Pat Wyatt, speaking in an interview with RPGVault, "Internet publishing has a number of clear advantages for game fans and game developers".

One of the more unusual massively multiplayer games currently running on the internet is SimCorps, which uses the results from matches played in a whole range of different games to effect the situation in a persistent online world. There are currently two campaigns running - one real world campaign based around a fictional invasion of the Panama Canal, and one science fiction campaign set in deep space over a thousand years in the future.

And so ends ECTS 2000, the first ECTS of the new millenium, or the last of the old for the pedantic amongst us. Three days of madness, exhaustion and the overwhelming cacophany of thousands of conversations and the buzzing of hundreds of badly adjusted and overheating computers, consoles and outsized video screens.

A noticeable diversion from the PC version of the game, and something that I noted immediately, was how much brighter and colourful the textures appeared from the original palette. I must stress that this doesn't mean the game looks garish, but rather it strangely suits its console environment I suspect a great deal more than the comparatively washed-out original. Randy explained that this was an unexpected side effect of the port to the Dreamcast hardware, indicating an especially "happy accident". Framerate-wise, things were steady apart from when venturing into a large, open area, but it's really only a minor niggle, and not something that ruins the game. Concerning, however, were the loading times between level sections, which appeared overly lengthy (around 15-20 seconds at some points), but I was assured this should be down to less than 5 seconds come release time. During play, I was experiencing frequent pauses whilst hefty amounts of information and music were being pulled off the CD.. I was told that this was simply a case of optimising the way information was loaded to the Dreamcast via the CD drive, and it's something I'm eager to see sorted out. Controlling the hero Gordon Freeman (or security guard, Barney.. more on that later) was immediately intuitive and suited the DC's control pad perfectly in its default mode. The settings for the buttons when you start the game are similar to that of Turok 2 or Quake 2 on the N64, with the 4 right-hand buttons providing forward, backward and strafing movements, and the analogue stick controlling the aim. My only gripe with the control set would be the position of the crouch, which is handled by the d-pad, right under the analogue stick. This proves rather clumsy when wanting to move, look around and crouch at the same time. Needless to say, the controls will be completely reconfigurable in the retail version, as well as support for the Dreamcast keyboard and soon-to-be-released mouse, for those PC gamers who really can't bear to give up on their roots. But let's face it, keyboard and mouse is truly the FPS Control Set of Champions™.

Those of us that saw the Pentium 4 1.4Ghz behemoth at ECTS earlier this week will testify that it was incredibly impressive in action, and that it seems to be the way forward for the x86 platform. But it appears that the very people who will sell it are not so sure, and there is a dilemna over how Intel are actually going to sell and market the chip. The Register has posted a summary of the situation, and the problems which Intel may face. Basically, the price tag is going to be exponential regardless of what they want you to think, Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers are seemingly unwilling to play ball, and the benchmarks will have to place it some miles further off the scale than its predecessors before people treat it as a viable option. After all, this writer is pretty pleased with his new 850Mhz Thunderbird Athlon - the performance differential between this setup and a P4-based unit will undoubtedly not be enough to sway me when it hits, and the price tag will hert, if you'll forgive the pun. It's an interesting dilema for the company, especially since the P4 should take Intel way out ahead of AMD, but now things are looking up for the latter, whose Thunderbird 1.1Ghz CPU launched last week at a price that makes Intel's 1Ghz PIII look silly. The real trick is trying to second-guess Intel's marketing campaign for this one. Even its most trusted OEM Dell must be running out of ideas. Is it a web machine? Nope, we've been there. Is it a games machine? No, apparently Intel are staying well away from games after the Columbine massacre last year. So what's left? Multimedia? Heaven forbid...

The Warlords series of games have had a relatively successful run, building a loyal following amongst turn based strategy players. Developer SSI have taken the brave step in shifting the games mechanics to a more mainstream real time strategy style for this latest incarnation though, presumably gambling the wrath of the die hard fans against a potentially larger audience.

Sega today entered the Internet Service Provider market for real with the launch of their ISP SegaNet. At the moment it's only available in the US, but details of the UK launch are doubtless not far behind. Sega has been in need of new sources of income for quite some time, as they face inevitable sales problems with the PlayStation 2 in the offing and the X-Box / GameCube dominating the presses. Their new price tag of £149 may help matters, as may their DVD player plus console for £299 option, which they hope will give Sony a run for their money this Christmas, but the ISP market (especially in the States where subscription charges are basically all you pay) is a very lucrative side option. SegaNet will have to prove itself before people start handing over their cash in large numbers, but with all sorts of rebate deals planned as well as 50 hours free with each Dreamcast purchased they should make a decent enough go of it.

UK Finalists in the online Chu Chu Rocket competition run by Sega throughout July will battle it out for goodies at Level 1 in HMV next Sunday. A young person by the name of.. Shaun_2.. (from Northumberland) will be representing the UK at the event against people from all over Europe, having beaten off the cream of the domestic talent in the UK qualifier on the 1st of September. The UK and Ireland representatives will be at Level 1 at HMV while their counterparts will be at similar venues in the likes of Madrid, Frankfurt and Paris. Read the entire press release for full details on the event, and our Chu Chu Rocket review for details on the game, which revolutionized console gaming by genuinely uniting gamers around the globe.

Publisher Sierra sent word that their space-bound real time strategy game "Homeworld : Cataclysm" will now be released in the UK on Friday September 29th, two weeks later than originally announced. Featuring a tweaked engine, better graphics, improved interface, new units and technologies, and a whole new single player storyline set years after the events in the original "Homeworld", Cataclysm looks set to be a great sequel to a great game.

Black & White was virtually in a class of its own this year, a stunning game in which you rule over a tribe of primitive villagers as their god. You can manipulate almost anything in the game world, train enormous creatures to do your bidding, lob terrifying spells of suitably biblical proportions at your opponents, and even make your followers dance along to your favourite CDs. The game is massive in scope, a beauty to behold, and looks like it could be terribly addictive - EuroGamer is likely to grind to a halt when I finally get my grubby hands on review code... Honourable mentions : "Sacrifice", "B17 - The Mighty Eighth"

One of the more unusual games we've come across in recent times is "Banja", a web-game all about "a little peace-loving Rastafarian" called Banja who lives on the island of Itland. The game features an entire island full of whacky characters to explore, a whole host of mini-games to play, cutesy cartoon-style graphics, and quite possibly the most funky game soundtrack I have ever heard. New events and zones are added regularly with new episodes every month, and the first episode is already available to play online. It doesn't cost anything, so what have you got to lose? Well worth a try if you're looking for something completely different...

Last year I made the mistake of passing over "B17 : The Mighty Eighth" at the European computer games trade show ECTS, writing it off as yet another flight combat sim. This year we weren't about to make the same mistake again, and so we dropped by Hasbro's stand early on the Sunday morning to find out more about the game which looks like it could shake up the flight sim genre...

Konami and Umbro today announced a union that will bring a much needed sponsorship deal to the International Superstar Soccer brand. The first title to show the fruits of this bonding will be an early PlayStation 2 footy title, the details of which both companies are keeping close to their chests. In terms of development this is largely irrelevant, except for the fact that it provides decent funding for the series. The press release was of course written by a consultant with a degree from the university of hype and a masters in exaggeration, but nonetheless it helps bring some decent branding to Konami's previously unlabelled series.

Our coverage of the third and final day of ECTS is now online, taking a look at some of the great (and not-so-great) console, hand-held and PC games which we saw on the last day of the show. Page 6 of our ECTS Diary feature covers the console side of things, including Virtua Tennis (DC), Smuggler's Run (PS2), and the DVD Dreamcast bundle amongst other highlights. The PC side is covered on page 7 of the Diary, covering games such as Oni, Gunlok, Sacrifice and Gunman, as well as featuring a rather fetching picture of one of Empire's sheep outside the show.

Although they now have a new company called Mythos, the Gollop brothers are probably still best known for their classic X-Com series of turn-based strategy games. Their latest title "Freedom Ridge" is something of a return to X-Com territory, with the player fighting alien invaders with a mixture of tactical combat, base building, resource management, and scientific research of captured alien technology.

Valkyrie, the developers behind the anime-inspired RPG "Septerra Core", are currently working on a new Unreal-engined game called "Seraphim" which puts you in the role of one of the eponymous fallen angels, banished to Earth after the war in heaven which formed the basis for Milton's "Paradise Lost". The game is taking some liberties with the Judeo-Christian myth though, and in an interview on 3D News the developers explained that they were "also heavily influenced by things such as Norse, Japanese, Babylonian and other mythologies. Add a bit of modern over-the-top Anime and a wrap it around an original fantasy world and you've got Seraphim."

Early September sees the normally fashionable Kensington district of London getting over-run by an army of geeks, gamers and journalists as the Olympia exhibition hall plays host to ECTS - Europe's biggest computer games trade show.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator series is one of the most successful and longest running computer game series in history, stretching from back in the early 1980s all the way up to the recent Flight Simulator 2000.

More live ECTS coverage from Monday's events here in London, this time looking at the PC end of things. It's been a busy day for me, taking in both NVIDIA and 3dfx as well as a whole range of games including Hostile Waters, Mafia, Anarchy Online and Neverwinter Nights. For the full story, read my entry in our ECTS diary, and look for more news, previews and screenshots from the show over the next few days!

3dfx has had a difficult time of it recently, losing their frame rate crown to arch-rival NVIDIA last year, and then facing a series of costly delays to their VSA-100 chip (formerly known as Napalm), which resulted in NVIDIA having a six month reign as undisputed speed kings with their GeForce graphics card while 3dfx couldn't release any new products...

Continuing our live on-site coverage today we take a look at Sony's offerings and the other stuff that's been going on at the show. Metal Gear Solid 2 and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing 2 were impressive, the former being demonstrated on a 9' x 9' wall screen! For the full low-down on today's events in terms of console coverage, check out our ECTS 2000 diary, updated throughout the event!

Fresh tonight on EuroGamer is our massive three page preview of "Black & White", the latest game from the demented mind that is Peter Molyneux, designer of classics such as Populous and Dungeon Keeper. We were lucky enough to get a first hand look at the game as Peter demonstrated it at the Electronic Arts "Show B4 The Show" party at their lush UK headquarters last night, and today we have a full report on the game, including a selection of the latest screenshots and some photographs taken at the demonstration. For the full skinny on what is sure to be one of the best games of the year (whichever year it ends up being released in), read our preview!

The highlight of the "Show B4 The Show" party which Electronic Arts held at their plush new European headquarters in Chertsey last night was undoubtedly "Black & White". Designer Peter Molyneux, a man who (as the announcer pointed out) needs no introduction, was on hand to demonstrate the game to a room packed to overcrowding every hour, on the hour, with many people returning to watch the show again and again throughout the evening...

Wondering what was on display today at ECTS? Take a look at this page in our ECTS Diary - it includes a lot of information about upcoming titles from Cryo and JoWood, including some the latest Tom Clancy title (he of Rainbow Six fame), some management simulation games that push the boat about a bit (Traffic Giant and Industry Giant 2) and some good old fashioned mayhem and slaughter in HellBoy and Jekyll & Hyde, although the latter introduces Metal Gear Solid-like stealth sections too. It was a pretty well-rounnded display, so take a look at the index to see the rest.

Our hands-on live coverage of the European Consumer Trade Show continues this morning with news of Nintendo's latest developments in our ECTS Diary. Unfortunately the GameCube wasn't available and the press advisors were tight-lipped on the subject. Nevertheless we got to try out the GameBoy Advance and lots of new GameBoy Color titles. Check out our up to the minute coverage of the event, and check back later for even more.

The big European computer games trade show ECTS 2000 is about to kick off here in sunny London. We'll be bringing you full coverage of the event over the next three days, with all the latest news, press releases, previews and screenshots live from the show - so stay tuned! If you haven't already check it out, be sure to read our ECTS preview for a sneak peek at what we can expect from this year's show, and check our ECTS diary for regular daily updates throughout the show. The first installment, featuring a look at last night's Electronic Arts party, is already online with more to follow!

Our ECTS 2000 diary has kicked off tonight, with a write-up of EA's "Show B4 The Show" event at their lavish headquarters in deepest darkest Surrey. The feature comes complete with photographic evidence where appropriate, and will be continuing throughout the next few days as ECTS kicks off for real. We will also be linking all of our other ECTS coverage from the diary to help you keep track of what we're up to here in London. For the full scoop, read our ECTS 2000 diary!