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If your wife / girlfriend / mother keeps telling you to get out from behind your PC and get some exercise, RoWeb UK may just have the perfect solution. Taking place over the weekend of February 2nd to 4th in Andover, their next event will combine a Counter-Strike focused LAN party with the rather more energetic game of paintballing "to see if people are as good on the ground as they are in the game". As with all of RoWeb's events the focus is on putting the party back into LAN party, with a resident DJ, light shows, cinema visits and the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol all on the menu.

If you use the Utopia Dreamcast Boot Disk to power pirated games, Sega have a plan to stop you. Its latest run of games use an enforced software method of anti-piracy, preventing games from working under any circumstances other than legitimate ones. The move will bring an end to its MIL-CD plan however, which was to bring encoded music and more Internet features to the console. Pirates have proved pretty tough nuts to crack, and the Dreamcast warez scene in America is immense. Over here the problem isn't as big, with only a few small pockets of piracy existing. Sega are nonetheless determined to put a stop to it - we shall have to wait and see what the pirates say to that.

This eagle-eyed writer was busy wittering away the early hours of the morning by taking stock of the local net-based hardware vendors in the area, when in a drunken haze his eyes stumbled upon the Scan Processors Page, and a 1.2GHz Athlon, which had finally been priced by the Bolton firm. Now, in normal circumstances, when Scan opt to put a price up, it means they have stock. If this were the case here, they would be the only place in the UK to have one, full stop.

People on the other side of the Atlantic seem to have a strange obsession with big-wheeled all-terrain vehicles, or "Sports Utility Vehicles" as the Americans quaintly call them. This fascination with gas-guzzling behemoths has given rise to a whole string of off-road racing games over the years, including Terminal Reality's "4x4 Evolution", one of the better efforts of recent times. Featuring literally dozens of real-life 4x4 vehicles to drive and a range of freeform courses to race them around, the game proved popular even on this side of the pond.

Gaming giant Nintendo has started production of its next generation handheld console, the GameBoy Advance, ahead of its March 21st launch date. The handheld, which is expected to steal the crown of the GameBoy Color is projected to sell in bulk during the first year as the take-up increases. The American launch will follow the Japanese one fairly closely, and the UK / Europe should get it in Autumn-time - in all likelihood this will be the present to have in your stocking come December 25th 2001. As we know, the GBA features a 32-bit processor, colour LCD screen, and of course compatibility with all old GameBoy / Color games. Nintendo aims to produce 24 million units before March 2001 - the original GameBoy and GameBoy Color have in total sold over 100 million units.

Do you remember the Nintendo 64 version of Earthworm Jim 3D? Allow me to refresh your memory; the conversion was carried out by Scottish dwellers VIS Entertainment, who subsequently worked on an N64 version of Tom & Jerry, and it was really rather good. So good in fact, that the news of their intentions to develop titles for Nintendo on the GameCube met with rapturous reception in some circles. Speaking to IGN, a spoksperson for the company said that "With news just out on GameCube, VIS entertainment will aim to capitalize on its existing experience with Nintendo to offer innovative product for the new plat". Of course, they aren't yet announcing which titles will be developed, but it seems likely some form of Earthworm Jim game would not be unlikely.

If you were in the market for something to download today, then you might do a lot worse than to shoot over to one of the download sites below to pick up the new Monolith-endorsed demonstration video of the Lithtech engine on PlayStation 2. The engine sports all the big-named features; environmental lighting and effects, breath-taking character animation, sublime graphics, and with any luck should produce a rather good game at the end of the day, if "No One Lives Forever" is anything to go by. The 27Mb demo features footage of some Deus Ex-like futuristic action / adventure title, but Monolith claim that despite the competance of this demo, the PlayStation 2 version of "No One Lives Forever" and Irrational Games' "The Lost," which will also be based on Lithtech, will use a decidedly more advanced version of the technology. The Lithtech engine receives major updates once every few months, CEO Jason Hall has told reporters, so whatever happens the new PS2 titles will measure up to the PC titles of that period, and then some. Jason also hinted that other games will be announced shortly based on the engine. You can download the demo from any of the following locations:-

Russian developer Nival Interactive are probably best known for the "Rage of Mages" games published by Monolith, which met with mixed reviews thanks to a mish-mash of real-time strategy and role-playing elements which didn't quite gel and some rather uninspiring graphics. No such accusations could be levelled at their new game though...

It's been a pretty tough few days to swallow for paying customers of doomed service provider RedHotAnt. After receiving a disturbing blanket email on Monday announcing the closure of the service, the word today is that some users may be able to look forward to refunds. Leading UK Internet website ISP Review, has been following the case of a young man called Neil, who signed up on the very day the service closed, as unbeknownst to him, RHA were still taking one or two registrations despite being unable to honour them. After speaking to Trading Standards and other authorities, Neil seems to be getting somewhere. "[Trading Standards] have called Clive Allon (RHA) and it now appears the RHA are doing something towards refunds," he told ISP Review. "It looks like they are being done on a pro-rata basis, and depend on how long each user has been with them and length of line usage." "This seems to leave me in a very strong position, and also may give some hope to everybody else in this matter." We would advise anyone who feels hard done by in light of the closure to contact local authorities and Trading Standards about the case, as although refunds were initially denied, the argument does seem to be getting through. Related Feature - RedHotAnt goes off the boil

Frederic Diot of Datamonitor, a gaming industry analyst has aired his predictions on the state of gaming over the next few years. According to Diot, the PlayStation 2 will be the most popular console followed closely by the Xbox. He doesn't hold much hope for Nintendo's GameCube after the firm's failure with the Nintendo 64, nor for Sega, who will have been fed to the dogs by that time.

According to this story at ZDNet, video game sales declined in 2000, presumably due to the introduction of the Dreamcast at the end of 1999, the subsequent release of the Neo Geo Pocket Color a few months later and the PSOne / PlayStation 2 making it onto store shelves in the Autumn / Winter shopping season. After what is described as five years of "explosive growth," analysts are reporting a drop in sales, and blaming the consoles themselves. Another culprit is apparently the "wait-and-see" attitude adopted by some gamers in light of the new console releases. Many people feel uncomfortable buying both the Dreamcast and its new rival, and would rather wait to see who comes out on top before committing. With new consoles hitting the ground at £300 or more a pop, this proves unsurprising. The NPD Group Inc., have conducted a study of the market, released today, which claims that sales of consoles, games and accessories fell from $6.9 billion in 1999 to some $6.5 billion in 2000, a 5.8% drop. With the Xbox, GameCube and GameBoy Advance on the horizon, the trend may well continue.

"Whistler" is an unlikely name for Microsoft's new operating system. "Windows 2K1" or something like that would have seemed a more likely candidate, but as we close in on the product's final stages of development, it seems ever more likely with each passing day that Microsoft will be keeping the nonsensical codename. Beyond the name, Whistler is Microsoft's next generation kernel, which will supposedly unite NT levels of stability with 9x levels of performance. That sounds remarkably familiar, does it not? Ah well, if you were actually wondering what the company intended to do with the operating system besides rehash Windows 2000 ad campaigns, then you ought to weave your way over to an article on this website, "Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows." The article, which is entitled "Whistler Build 2410: On the Road to Beta 2," features up to date information on the new system and the advanced, simplified menu system which has been integrated into it. There are of course plenty of new screenshots of the system in action as well. It all looks very smooth, with some interested new additions, like a bastardized verison of EZ CD Creator so that anyone with a CD writer can drag and drop items to disc using Explorer, and personalised network protocols, aimed at mobile users, so that you can move your machine between home and work networks without reconfiguring. Read the full article here.

One of Pro Rally 2001's biggest selling points is that it is at the pinnacle of realism. Having watched the game in early form at ECTS last year, we thought they might actually have a point, but having played the thing we now firmly contest their claims. Ho-hum. The whole game is basically an exercise in tedium. Everything is vaguely acceptable and very little stands out. For starters, the Driving School that sets out to teach you how to play. It's a poor copy of the same thing from Gran Turismo, and despite the years' gap in between, it's much less fun. The tasks set are far too difficult, with very little leeway. Hitting the time limits dead on is about as close to overcoming them as you get. Not content with that, if you take even the tiniest nick of damage you fail, despite the fact that there is no mention of this in the manual or within the game. When you eventually fail, there's no incentive to start again, and thanks to the stodgy interface it isn't exactly an intuitive process anyway. Several menus have to drone past before you can get back into the action. It actually takes less effort to quit the game and uninstall it than to get back into the action. Um.

The last year has seen a rapid boom in the number of ISPs offering unmetered internet access in the UK, followed predictably enough by a rapid collapse in the market as they all realised they didn't have a clue how to make any money from such services. It didn't help that BT continued to drag their heels over introducing free internet access packages for them to use, with some services going bust and others (such as AltaVista's much hyped deal) simply failing to materialise.

If you, like us, thought Homeworld: Cataclysm was a rather excellent adaptation of the Homeworld formula, then you are in all likelihood also still playing it, online and off. The patch fixes problems with recorded game playback, AI consistency, cheating through modified data support and other small bugs. Other issues the patch aims to overcome involve the game's balance. To this end, EMP stun time has been increased for most capital ships amongst other things, and there is a huge list of minor statistical changes. The patch weighs in at about 2.67Mb. You can download it from the following locations:-

If you've never owned an Action Replay cartridge for one of your consoles, here's where that ought to change. The Action Replay 2 for PlayStation 2 is going to feature all kinds of abilities. Here's an ever-so-brief rundown. Click the link just back there for the extensive press release:-

If you thought Sony would have trouble hitting 500,000 PlayStation 2s for each launch territory, you were not on your own. If you suspect their latest announcement is about as likely to bare fruit as a lump of coal, you are certainly not on your own. According to an unnamed Sony spokesperson (we reckon it was Chris Deering), the company has produced nearly 5m units since its launch in Japan in March, (we put the number at closer to 2.5m, but we shall let them have their fun) and they intend to reach an annual mark of 10m units this year, i.e. on the first of April. Speaking to MCV, the spokesperson said that Sony needs to "boost to its output equivalent almost to two million units a month to meet the target." That's roughly 66,667 per day, a startling figure. "The key to raising output," according to Sony, is "boosting production of components." Well we would never have guessed. Apparently the firm is slightly below its targets at the moment - thanks to shortages in its graphics synthesizer part. They now claim this is the only thing holding the console back. And if you believe that... Related Feature - PlayStation 2 Launch Coverage

If we had told you five years ago that people would be giving big name games away for free over the internet to anybody willing to answer a couple of questions, you would have thought we were barmy. But that's exactly what British company Freeloader does, and amazingly they are one of the few dot coms that hasn't gone bust yet. Their impressive line up of games includes classics like "Beneath A Steel Sky" and "Hidden & Dangerous" as well as new titles like "Halcyon Sun", and it's hardly surprising that they've already had hundreds of thousands of people from around the world sign up for their piece of the action.

Computer Artworks (of "Evolva" and "Organic Art" fame) have announced that they are producing a cross-platform game based on John Carpenter's gory sci-fi movie "The Thing", almost twenty years after the film was first released. With a plot involving a team of scientists stranded in Antarctica fighting a hideous alien organism capable of absorbing and then imitating other life-forms, it should come as no surprise that the result will be a horror survival game in the vein of "Resident Evil". As Creative Director William Latham exclaims, "if ever there was a franchise with fantastic games potential, this is it! The Thing has arrived and it is crueler, more intelligent and more terrifying than any other previous opponent!"

Dealing with The Learning Company has always been a confusing affair, as their games have come out under a whole host of different labels including Red Orb, SSI, Mindscape and Mattel Interactive, mostly thanks to a string of mergers and take-overs during the 1990s that left toy manufacturer Mattel owning the remains of several publishers of computer games and edutainment titles. But following the recent sale of The Learning Company to Gores Technology Group a change of name has been on the cards. And now we know that their new name is - drum roll please - GAME Studios. Hardly awe inspiringly imaginative, but at least now we won't have to carry a piece of paper around with us every time we talk to the company to remind us which labels they release games under...

If your vision of LAN parties in the future is 100 gamers traipsing in, each with a laptop slung under their arm, then you may not be too far off. NVIDIA's decision to enter the mobile arena with the GeForce Go graphics chipset may well be one of the defining moments. Up until now, laptops have had a hard time of it with gaming. They can handle things reasonably well, but in order to even verge on decent levels of performance, slider bars have had to be moved almost completely to the left and options unticked. The GeForce Go though, will meet with some very hefty processors, like 850MHz mobile Pentium IIIs, so just what is the point? The solution to all this may well be to couple it with a cheap mobile processor, and as of today, just such a thing will hit the market, the mobile Duron. AMD have today announced that they can ship 600MHz Duron parts in bulk to any notebook manufacturer. NEC has subsequently announced a new "LaVie U" series of notebooks, using a 700MHz Duron CPU, designed for consumers who need portability and price assurance, apparently. Available in Japan on the 25th of this month, the notebooks will also include a 13"/14" TFT display, 20Gb of storage and depending on the model, a CD-R/RW or DVD-Rom drive. The latter will include a connector allowing you to hook it up to a television. So when will we get a Duron / GeForce Go powered notebook? Sometime this year, if all goes well. We anticipate the notebook market doing rather well this year...

The VIA KT133A motherboard chipset is an unlikely creature. It offers a higher system bus, ergo improved performance on bandwidth-heavy tasks, yet does not require the user to spend copious amounts of money on expensive DDR memory. In short, it's a go-between for users of the KT133 not so eager to upgrade to the AMD 760. If you are starting to feel the pain of an outdated setup, a KT133A-based product may be the motherboard that sets you up for the next few years.

In the huge expanse that is space, you would think that all of its species could find a little room for peace and tranquillity. But as is always the case in any space epic, everyone wants to rule the universe! I guess it would make for a pretty miserable and boring computer game if all of the different lifeforms exchanged polite chatter and sipped tea together.

If the "Age of Empires" series is your idea of heaven and you are getting desperate for another fix of historical real-time strategy, German publisher CDV might have just the thing for you. "Cossacks : European Wars" from Ukrainian developer GSC Game World spans three centuries of warfare in Europe, including the English Civil War and Thirty Years War, and at first sight it looks strangely familiar. Then you realise that the game's epic battles can comfortably accommodate literally thousands of units, with vast maps to fight over and sixteen nations to choose from. Add an expansive technology tree to research your way through, reconstructions of real historical battles and seven player online modes, and you begin to realise the sheer scope of the game.

With the game reaching the final stages of development, a demo has been produced for consumption alongside Sega releases in Japan, a tactic similar to the one Konami are going to use to introduce Metal Gear Solid 2 to the market in playable form. We tracked down a copy and gripping the young hedgehog by the tassels, attempted to find out just what Sega have been up to for all this time. Story-wise, the main protagonists are Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, with a liberal sprinkling of Dr. Robotnik along the way. Interestingly though, Sega have introduced a new bad guy into the mix, a little fella who appears to be an evil, psychotic manifestation of Sonic with a ruthless snarl and darker skin than our hero. Although neither the demo or the movie we have seen show anything more than a couple of facial close-ups, it's fairly certain he will be the major opposition when the time comes. Sega have had nothing to say about him… However, they have been telling anyone who will listen about the scope of the game. Despite the name, Adventure 2 will stray from the original's roots and opt for more of the fast-paced "classic Sonic" action we came to know and love on the Mega Drive. Adventure fields may be limited if they do indeed appear at all, but on the whole the game will be made up of self-contained action areas.

- Michael Mann Producer - Michael Mann / Pieter Jan Brugge Starring -   Al Pacino   Russell Crowe   Christopher Plummer Filmed - America, 1999 DVD by - Touchstone Home Video

When the Babbages CPL event ended in Dallas last month, problems with the software running the Quake 3 tournament were the main topic of discussion. But now even more bizarre reports are emerging, with Mark "Twillight" Henry and his sponsors PC Ambulance claiming that the player was physically assaulted by CPL Commissioner Mike Wardwell at the event. What we know for sure is that Mark was removed from the building for "rude and disruptive" behaviour, and during the argument Mike Wardwell placed his hand on Mark, who later called the Dallas police and is trying to get a warrant issued for Mike's arrest!

If you think that first person shooters are solely the domain of hormone-ridden geek boys, think again. Award-winning porn star Asia Carrera is a self-confessed Unreal Tournament addict, who spends the day "looking forward to unwinding with a good frag". She's very much in the minority though. "My pornoland compadres like to drink, do drugs, party, and other equally unconstructive pastimes that just don't interest me. Yeah, I'm a geek, what can I say. But when my porno pals and I all turn 50, let's take a survey and see how many of us have sucessful non-porn careers and a financially secure future..."

Computer games and dolls action figures seem to go hand in hand, with a whole range of merchandising tat available. Everything from Starcraft and Diablo to Quake and Duke Nukem have given rise to action figures of varying quality, and now German publisher Blue Byte are getting in on the act with a fearsome foursome of "collectible figures" representing characters from their Settlers series. Apparently the series has shifted some 2.7 million units worldwide over the years, and from January 19th lucky Europeans will have the chance to get their mits on Roman, Asian, Egyptian and Amazon characters from the games, with the full collection of four figures setting you back £15 in the UK. Meanwhile American and Canadian gamers can pre-order the figures for $20 from the Blue Byte DIRECT online store. The fourth installment in the Settlers series, imaginatively titled "The Settlers IV", is due for release in February.

Importing Dreamcast titles can have its benefits, aptly proven here by the Sonic Adventure 2 Demo, which secreted its way into the packaging of a recent title we brought back from the land of the rising sun. It's shaping up very nicely by all accounts, and looks delicious. We have posted six exclusive screenshots to keep you happy; check them out!