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The term 'budget' is generally treated as being more synonymous with rehashed mediocrity than top quality gaming. Very often a game from yesteryear will be re-released on budget, with manuals printed in miniscule print on a CD booklet, and no indication as to whether there are additional patches or configuration changes that need to be made for it to even function on a modern Windows PC.

AMD are having the run of things at the moment. With the latest price drop across the board, a Thunderbird Athlon 900Mhz can be had for £150 plus VAT, compared to £279 plus VAT for the Pentium III 866Mhz. Similarly in the budget market, at the current rates, you can pick up a Duron 750Mhz for £67 whereas the Celeron 700Mhz is £112. If you're upgrading your PC or building a new one there really is little to think about in economic terms. And with AMD's announcement of an Athlon 1.2Ghz and Duron 800Mhz due for release later this month, they have a significant advantage in the numbers game too. As we mentioned in our Athlon 1Ghz review, in terms of gaming there's is very little out there demanding enough to require such a CPU, let alone a graphics card available that could keep up with it, but with the GeForce 2 Ultra just around the corner it's poised to do Intel some serious damage, especially considering the hammering it's been taking over its disfunctional 1.13Ghz parts. Although the chips haven't been released yet, several specialist dealers have already announced prices. Scan are planning to sell the Duron 800Mhz at £96 plus VAT, but don't have a price for the 1.2Ghz Athlon yet, whereas Dabs are offering the Duron for a staggeringly low £81 + VAT and the 1.2Ghz Athlon for £381 + VAT. If you think that's steep though, compare it to the 933Mhz Intel part (currently the highest spec'ed Intel chip Dabs will stock), at a wallet-sickening $401 + VAT. As for the fabled 1Ghz Intel chip; aside from the fact nobody in the UK admits to having the stock when quizzed, the only place we could find them retailing was asking for £749 + VAT. Enough said. And according to The Register, Intel's stock has been walloped, dropping 11.6% yesterday.

Sega have announced that their Dreamcast console has now sold over a million units across Europe, with 2.5 million software sales and 400,000 users signed up for their online service DreamArena. Apparently this exceeded their first year sales targets, and with games like "Half-Life", "Quake III Arena" and "Black & White" due over the next few months, the console could see something of a renaissance. Having patted themselves on the back, Sega proceeded to lay into rivals Sony, who are about to launch their own next generation console, the imaginatively named Playstation 2.

The real-time strategy genre has grown to gargantuan proportions since Westwood released their classic "Dune 2", way back in the days when a 486 with 8Mb of RAM and a 100Mb hard drive was considered state of the art. But although games like Starcraft, Red Alert and Total Annihilation have proved massively popular on the internet, until now there haven't really been any real-time strategy games focused entirely on online gaming. Enter Ethermoon and their new multiplayer-only game "Strifeshadow", which should stand out from the crowd for a number of reasons...

When Tony Hawk finally reaches the end of his prime, and decides it's time to hang up his knee-pads and decks in exchange for a comfy sofa and some of those really warm-looking tartan slippers, he'll get the chance to sit and reflect on exactly how much of a legend he truly is. Mr. Hawk is truly the god of baggy-trousered self-inflicted injury at the expense of skurfing around on wooden planks, and is surely The One, looked up to by thousands of slacker 15 year-olds the world over (well… at least looked up to by those little gits with Limp Bizkit t-shirts whizzing round my shins whilst I go about my business down the town). Not only has Tony managed to influence wannabe skaters everywhere, but he also managed to (with the help of Neversoft, natch) infiltrate the videogames industry in a supremely stylish and surprising manner, starring and advising in one of the most outstandingly playable and addictive games of the last decade. Obviously not content with appearing in a digital form with his mates in one millennium, he's popped back in this one to show off his elite skateboarding skills once more. On first impressions, THPS2 proves to be pretty much standard fare. I was really very concerned as to exactly how Neversoft were going to revive the formula that made the original so damned fun without treading the exact same path. Playing for a while on the free skate mode (with only one level open to me at the start of the game to practise on, which is a bit stingy really, isn't it?) I got the idea that although marginally improved graphically and audibly - blood is spilled, boards fly, skaters fall over far more impressively, and the general spot sound effects are wonderfully realistic - not a lot had changed in the basic gameplay stakes. This wasn't a good start, to be honest.

AMD's Thunderbird Athlons and Durons have just dropped in price again. While this may be good news for Christmas shoppers, it's even better news for overclockers, because unlike Intel's Pentium III CPUs which have already reached the very upper echelons of their capabilities, AMD's chips still have plenty of headroom, and it's not all that difficult to add anything from 50 to 200 Mhz on top of what you've paid for!

Over the last year or two "episodic gaming" has become one of the industry's biggest buzz words, with industry giant Infogrames committing themselves to the idea, the Gathering of Developers releasing a trilogy of "Blair Witch" games, and 3DO about to unleash a whole series of short new "Heroes of Might & Magic" games. The idea behind episodic gaming is to make games more manageable - faster to produce, cheaper to buy, and quicker to complete. Instead of selling somebody a big expensive game and then maybe a budget priced mission pack for it, you produce several shorter stand-alone chapters and sell them each at a lower price.

While motor racing fans will be glad to hear that the aptly-named off-road racer "Insane" and the PC version of "Colin McRae Rally 2.0" are both still on track for November 24th and December 1st respectively, British publisher Codemasters has bad news for us when it comes to the rest of their impressive line-up. Worst offender is "Severance : Blade of Darkness", the gory third person fantasy action game from Spanish developers Rebel Act. Already in development for over three years, the game's release has now been pushed back from December 1st to some time in February 2001.

As anyone who attended this year's ECTS and witnessed the "Erotica Island" stand will attest, games which are based wholly on voyeurism and uncovered flesh are damnedly popular. Vivid Interactive have picked up on this and are currently prepping a couple of titles, "Mind Teazzer" and "Body Parts" for release on PlayStation 2, and the Xbox. Basic puzzle games at heart, these two titles will presumably reveal their bountiful wares in a timely fashion to impatient gamers, whilst providing enough challenge not to bore them out of their minds. Insert juvenile punchline here.

IGN is reporting that The Tetris Company and developer Blue Planet Software have forged an agreement with THQ which will allow the publishing giant to develop titles based on the classic formula for consoles up until the year 2004. At the moment things look promising for Nintendo Gamecube fans amongst others. What are THQ planning to do with the license? No details were given in the accompanying interview with IGN, but we would think that a cutesy three-dimensional puzzler would be on the cards.

Although the Star Trek television and movie franchise seems to be at its lowest ebb in many years - Deep Space Nine has finished, Voyager is on its last legs, and there's no new movie due to hit our multiplexes any time soon - it's nigh-on impossible to move these days without tripping over a computer game based on the Trek universe. From first person shooter to real-time strategy, space combat sim to turn-based strategy, Magic-style card trading to graphic adventure, every gaming genre has been infiltrated by the Trek franchise at some point.

For the last three years UbiStudios UK, the developer formerly known as Grolier Interactive, have been working on a role-playing game based on the best-selling fantasy novels of Anne McCaffrey. Now known as "Dragonriders : Chronicles Of Pern", the game benefits from the rich background developed by Anne over the last thirty years, but that's not the only advantage of working with the author. "The majority of us have been to see her and discussed ideas and concepts with her", lead designer Oliver Sykes told RPGVault in a recent interview, before admitting the real reasons for their frequent visits. "She puts on a great spread of food!"

We get some decidely odd press releases sent to us, but one of the most bizarre of recent weeks is the announcement from quality assurance experts Babel Media that they are forming a "hit squad" to "take the pressure off software developers and publishers with tight delivery deadlines". Developers will no doubt be sorry to hear that the hit squad is actually a mobile QA unit made up of experienced beta testers, and not a group of shadowy assassins dedicated to knocking off annoying producers and "persuading" publishers that your games really don't need to be released before Christmas.

Although the game boasts the best graphics of the last generation of massively multiplayer role-playing games, a vast feudal system to become involved in, and thousands of regular players to adventure alongside, perhaps the biggest draw for Microsoft's "Asheron's Call" are the monthly updates. These not only add new content and features, but also create an on-going storyline for the game, which can quite literally change the entire world overnight. Recently players have seen the towns of Arwic and Tufa reduced to rubble, while strange "shadow spires" still hover in the air near many other towns.

The CPL have, until now, been best known for their Quake 3 tournaments, with events such as FRAG 4 and the Razer-CPL attracting some of the top players from around the world to battle it out in Dallas for a share of the tens of thousands of dollars of prize money. So it was something of a radical departure for the CPL when they recently announced that they would be holding a massive Midtown Madness 2 tournament, which will be taking place over two weekends in November at over 300 "Gateway Country" stores across America.

The Bible might not be the most obvious of choices to form the basis of an action game, but from angelic first person shooter "Requiem" to third person cherub 'em up "Messiah", religion has played an active role in several recent games. Valkyrie Studio's "Seraphim" is one of the first games we've come across to be directly inspired by legends from the Bible though, with the player taking on the role of a fallen angel as three rival factions battle it out in a stunning landscape, courtesy of the Unreal engine. And given the kind of apocalyptic firepower that God tends to throw around in the Old Testament, from reducing people to pillars of salt to letting rip with a bit of the old fire and brimstone, it should come as no surprise that combat amongst the fallen angels in Seraphim is going to be a spectacular affair...

As another dreary English weekend comes around, hordes of gamers head for the sanctuary of their computers, and once again there has been a bumper crop of new game demos released during the week to keep you off the streets. Real-time strategy fans will want to check out "Close Combat : Invasion Normandy" (58Mb), the latest installment in the long running World War II squad combat series. For the bandwidth limited, there is also a demo for "Space Empires IV : Gold" (18Mb), showing off some of the gold edition's new features.

The Star Trek Voyager series has become a firm favourite with the Trek fans I know, who have mostly been bred exclusively on the BBC's Next Generation episodes up until now. Who knows quite what the attraction is; perhaps it's the abandonment of the Federation star system security blanket for a more perilous and unpredictable storyline, or perhaps it's the desirability of a larynjectomised Starship captain. Or maybe it's just Borg outcast 7 of 9 and her tight spandex outfit. Actually, I fear it's the latter. But whatever your inclination toward Voyager, you cannot fail to enjoy Elite Force. It's sublime, one of the best single player first person shooters I've played since Half Life. It's a mite short, but what you get is so entertaining it's ultimately forgivable. According to the prologue, you are Ensign Munro, be it Alexander of Alexandria (depending purely upon your gender-bending preference), second in commend of Voyager's elite Hazard Team, which has been formed at the behest of Tuvok to help deal with the most dangerous of missions. Your job is to deal with hazardous away missions and attempts to board the ship. The game is very much like an episode of Voyager. You start out in the thick of the action aboard a Borg cube fighting to save your fellow Hazard Team members, and at a suitable turning point in the action the introductory sequence kicks in, just as though you were in an episode of the series. Of course, the swab of credits smattered around the opening are changed subtly to reflect the game's creators..

New British publisher EON Digital has an impressive starting line-up, and today we got an update on when to expect their initial selection of PC games to appear on shelves. First up will be "Crime Cities" on October 27th, a bizarre mixture of Fifth Element flying cars and Grand Theft Auto style criminal activities. The novel looking flight sim "Airfix Dogfighter", due for release on November 3rd, should prove popular with the kids, both the youngsters and those who just haven't grown up yet. Finally (for this year at least) there is real-time strategy game "Mission Humanity", now due November 24th.

Fox Interactive (whose games are currently distributed by Electronic Arts in the UK) sent us an update on their schedule for the rest of the year. Monolith's 3D action role-playing game "Sanity : Aiken's Artifact" is now due on November 3rd, while Monolith's other game, the kitsch 007 parody "No One Lives Forever" staring special agent Cate Archer, is expected on December 8th, just in time for Christmas. Fox's other big game is "Buffy The Vampire Slayer", a third person action-adventure game based on the cult TV series about a high school girl who seems to spend most of her spare time slaughtering blood sucking creatures of the night... For all the latest information on over a hundred titles due for release over the next year, check EuroGamer's comprehensive UK release date list.

In the world of football management games, there is one title that stands out - "Championship Manager". For years now this series has been dominating the genre on the PC, and few others games have managed to come close to it. The arrival of the new "Championship Manager : Season 00/01" is sure to be greeted by the sound of cash registers chinging across the nation, and with a selection of new features as well as the latest season information it should be well worth a look.

One of the more innovative action games of the year 2000 was "Evolva", from British developers Computer Artworks. Set in the far future, Evolva put you in control of a squad of four "genohunters", genetically engineered creatures capable of absorbing the DNA of their victims and using it to enhance their own abilities. By the end of the game your genohunters could breathe fire, electrocute enemies, run faster than a speeding bullet, and leap over tall buildings in a single bound. Probably.

The original "Baldur's Gate", which introduced us all to the now infamous Infinity engine, was in a class of its own as far as PC role-playing games went. Die hard fans of the "Eye Of The Beholder" series had waited years for another game to hold their attention, and when the original blasted onto the scene like a fireball amongst a group of goblins, it was like a breath of fresh air in the midst of a cloudkill spell. With an epic story, great characters, cool graphics and an excellent and inventive combat system, it was just what the genre needed to swat away the tedious 'hack and slash' affairs which had become the norm. Although it did have its problems - moving from village to village became a monotonous affair, subquests mostly amounted to little more than "get this and take it here", and the pathfinding AI could be rather frustrating - these were generally overlooked, and the game was enjoyed by all. At the end of the original Baldur's Gate the main protagonist discovers that he or she is in fact a child of Bhaal, God of Murder (now deceased), who sired any number of children during the Time of Troubles when the Gods were forced to walk the earth in mortal form. I won't bore you with the extensive history of Faerun, but needless to say this would cause a bit of sibling rivalry, and the final enemy turned out to be your own brother, also now deceased .. assuming you actually finished the first game. The new adventure starts with your character - either new, pregenerated, or imported from the original - the prisoner of some mad mage whose stronghold is attacked, and the fun soon begins, unfolding into a story that far outdoes the original and just seems to grow and grow, twisting and turning into epic proportions, pushing you to go just that little bit further. To give you some indication of how big this game is, after 25 hours play I had still only managed about half of the quests in the second of seven chapters, and more quests were popping up all the time!

UbiSoft have announced that they will be releasing the PlayStation 2 platform game "Rayman Revolution" in the UK this November to tie in with the new console's European launch. Rayman has been gracing various console systems over the last five years, debuting on the original PlayStation back in 1995 before going on to sell a healthy six million copies, later appearing on the GameBoy Colour and Dreamcast amongst other systems.

For those of you living in parts of the UK which haven't been submerged by the recent floods, today sees several new PC games hitting the shelves, although only a handful of them are likely to cause any real excitement... Pick of the week is undoubtedly "Crimson Skies", an arcade-style flight sim from Microsoft which sees you taking on those nasty imperialistic British types (ahem) and airborne pirates in an imaginary 1930s America full of hot-rod planes and wild adventures. Sadly Microsoft's other big hit-in-waiting, "Metal Gear Solid", has failed to appear for the second week running. Maybe next week?

What with the release of Acclaim's "Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX" today (and I swear that's the last time I'll mention it), and the recent release of the epicurean "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2", it's been quite a busy couple of weeks for fans of extreme sports. And to top it all off, today we have some screenshots and information on a couple of new MTV Sports titles, "MTV Sports : Skateboarding", featuring Andy MacDonald, and "MTV Sports : Pure Ride", featuring lots of snow. Check out our screenshot galleries for these two immediately or forever be disowned by your friends and relations!

Sega's trump card deal for this Christmas is its "DVDreamcast" offer, and what an offer it's turning out to be. One of the biggest plus points of the PlayStation 2 has to be its DVD playback, but the fact that it's software based (and therefore infinitely less reliable than hardware solutions where the strain falls on dedicated hardware) has put many audiophiles off. Considering the fact that many regard the Dreamcast as superior to the PlayStation 2 already, one of the most crucial announcements this Christmas is that Sega will be providing a DVD player (the Encore Direct 450) and a Dreamcast for the same price as the PS2 console, £299. With the Dreamcast available separately for a wallet-friendly £149, this could be big news. The Encore DVD player itself seems to be a middle of the pack unit - nothing too special, and quite unassuming. DVD Times rated it at 3/5, but they were a little miffed by some of its problems. Apparently the DVD tray is rather flimsy, with a tacky LCD panel to boot, marking the build quality down significantly. There were also apparent issues with lip-syncing of characters on screen, which is obviously a big no no. If you're tempted by this offer, make sure you read the review first. All in all it's a rather mixed bag for Sega now. The player / console package will probably do them justice in this year's Christmas sales, but unfortunately the quality of the unit may let it down. If we were to be so bold, we might suggest potential buyers bought a Dreamcast for £149 and invested instead in the excellent Scan SC-2000, available again for around £149 with added VAT.

With Eidos seemingly out of the picture, French publisher Infogrames' eyes have fallen upon American wrestling and "Max Sports" giant Acclaim, who of course have development and publishing rights to WWF and other new-age titles, like the recently released Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. The front page of this week's MCV headlines with "Now Bonnell eyes Acclaim", apparently because although the Eidos deal went South, the publisher is still seeking to increase its annual turnover to the $1 billion milestone. The company's last year has been very successful with losses down and profits up. The company's CEO Bruno Bonnell has made no comment regarding the alleged Acclaim talks, but it seems likely that more will turn up in the next week or two.

Unfortunately for those of us looking for a bit of retail therapy this Friday lunchtime, there aren't enough quality new titles out there to cover a small cracker. Even if you put some butter and a touch of cheese on top. In fact, the only titles worth seeking out (as they vociferously attempt to clamber onto the aforementioned cracker) are the Red Storm brothers Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear on the PlayStation. The long-awaited conversions look set to reignite the stealth-gaming fire on the PlayStation after a spat of indifference since the original Metal Gear Solid was released. With MGS2 still some way off for a lot of gamers, these two titles may provide a decent stop-gap. Aside from that though there's little to get excited about. Sega are allegedly releasing TimeStalkers, although this remains unconfirmed (we haven't got a copy, and usually Sega are very good about providing them in advance of release). Elsewhere there's our recently reviewed Ray Crisis from JVC, as well the potentially endearing Mille Miglia, which SCi were showing off to enthusiastic journos at this year's ECTS. Pocket gamers' parents may well be pleased to discover that Ubi Soft's range of cuddly GBC titles including Disney's Dinosaur, Donald Duck and Hello Kitty (and flanked by the PSX version of Elmo's Number Journey) have finally arrived, and will provide excellent stocking fodder where needed this Christmas. However of special note this morning is Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, from Acclaim's Max Sports group. The title is getting a huge push from the company (in other words they sent us a T-shirt and bribed Gameplay.com to stick it up on the front page of their online store), but despite this is does look as though it could be quite exciting. Watch this space.

THQ's release schedule has been updated, and most of their PC titles have shifted since we last heard from them. Settlers style strategy game "Cultures" has been pushed back a week to October 27th, but we're expecting final review code any day now. Meanwhile "Mercedes Benz Truck Racing" has been forced to make an unscheduled pit-stop, falling back a couple of weeks to November 10th. Finally "Evil Dead : Hail To The King" has fallen off their release schedule entirely, suggesting that it might not make it out before the end of the year. For the full low-down, check EuroGamer's comprehensive UK release date list.