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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.

German publisher Topware Interactive's stunning 3D real-time strategy game "Earth 2150 : Escape From The Blue Planet" was only released in the UK earlier this summer, but already a follow-up to the critically acclaimed game is underway. "The Moon Project" is set during the same period as Earth 2150, but as the title suggests the action has been moved to the moon, where the Lunar Corporation is working on a secret research project. Getting wind of it, the United Civilized States decide to gatecrash the party and find out what's going on. Cue ferocious battles above and below the surface of the moon as the two factions fight it out with a range of new units, buildings and technologies. Now you can get a taste of the action by downloading the playable demo, weighing in at around 70Mb...

Recently there has been some controversy over the rules, game settings and tournament structure at pro-gaming events, and CPL-Europe has come up with an interesting solution - ask the gamers to vote on what rules they would like to see used. You can now take part in surveys to determine rules for both the Quake 3 and Counter-Strike competitions which will be held at the CPL-Europe Cologne event later this year. Choices include how the final rounds should be played out (single elimination over three maps, or double elimination on a single map), which maps should be used, how Counter-Strike matches are scored, and the proverbial much more.

StrikeForce v1.50 for Unreal Tournament is now available, with new skins, new sounds, and flash grenades for the popular counter-terrorism mod

It's not a demo, but it's the next best thing for fans of the long-running Mechwarrior series, which puts you in the pilot's seat of a 40 foot high armoured war machine. Microsoft have launched a "multiplayer stress test" for the forthcoming mecha combat game "Mechwarrior 4 : Vengeance", starting tonight and running through until November 7th. The test is open to the public, and you can grab the necessary files from the Mechwarrior 4 website. Included are four fully customisable mechs to pilot and a single multiplayer map to drive them around on, with several game modes to choose from - Attrition, Destruction, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, and Steal the Beacon, as well as the standard individual and team deathmatch options.

Until now details on the multiplayer features of the Dreamcast version of Half-Life have been rather vague. But now, according to a Havas Interactive representative addressing the topic of there being two releases of the game on Dreamcast, the single player version which we have been hearing so much about (including the new Blue Shift mission) will ship this year, while a seperate multiplayer SKU will also be released, although no concrete details on release date and such were available. At the time of writing though we are told that the disc will include Opposing Force, Team Fortress Classic, and a version of Counter-Strike!

It's a tale of confusion and exaggerated news stories. GameCube movie footage released to the public in Japan is said to have included footage of the Star Wars flight adventure "Rogue Squadron". But Lucas Arts today told the press that this was merely a technology demo, and that the company has not committed itself to the next-generation Nintendo console as yet. But of course this doesn't really wash with us. The company has already shown support for Nintendo with a recent publishing agreement allowing THQ to release certain Star Wars title on the GameBoy Color and Advance, including Obi-Wan's Adventures. This is hardly a statement of purpose, but it's an interesting and previously unheard of practice for Lucas Arts to let go of its tightly grasped Star Wars franchise even lightly. The possibility of GameCube titles being produced by another publisher under a similar contract is of course rather depressing - nobody seems to do it quite like Lucas Arts, and the general public's fastidious tastes when it comes to Star Wars titles are often insatiable. Although their touch has slipped a few times of late, they still produce games of substance and quality like the Monkey Island adventure titles, although Rogue Squadron wasn't as good as we had hoped. Why would Lucas Arts go back to it? So what's the synopsis here? Lucas Arts are planning a deal with a publishing company like THQ, allowing said publisher to release Star Wars titles on the GameCube? Either that or they are telling the truth. But if that's the case, something doesn't quite add up...

Codemasters just sent us their latest release schedule, with both of their flagship titles now due out on December 1st, just in time for the Christmas shopping spree. Rally sim "Colin McRae 2.0" was a big hit on Playstation, and looks set to make a splash on PC as well, while gory third person fantasy action game "Severance : Blade Of Darkness" (formerly known as "Blade") should give Human Head's Unreal-engined "Rune" a run for its money. Codemaster's other PC titles are "Insane" (now due on November 24th) and "World Championship Snooker" (November 3rd).

Our more .. um .. mature gamers will no doubt go misty-eyed at the mention of "Xenon 2" - a stunning arcade-style scrolling shooter which featured stunning organic graphics and music by dance outfit "Bomb The Bass" of all people, not to mention an array of over-the-top weapons and power-ups. Our personal favourite has to be the slightly ridiculous "Super Nashwan Power", which temporarily gave you a vast array of bolt-on weapons which made your ship stretch across half the screen...

The latest release schedule from French publisher Cryo Interactive just arrived, with a host of new UK release information on their titles. Their third person action-adventure game "Hellboy", in which you play the eponymous demonic looking hero, is currently set for release on November 3rd. Meanwhile the bizarre looking "Gift" is now due on November 10th, along with "Arthur's Knights", an adventure game inspired by the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which mixes lush painted backdrops with real-time 3D characters.

Long before Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena were more than a twinkle in the milk man's eye, Dynamix released the popular teamplay focused first person shooter "Starsiege Tribes". Although the game proved a hit with the hardcore online gaming community, the total lack of any single player game left it with a somewhat limited audience. Now the company is putting the finishing touches to a sequel, and along with vastly improved graphics and new weapons and vehicles, "Tribes 2" also adds single player to the mixture. But just how much of it is there?

One of the big new releases last Friday in the UK was "Heavy Metal : FAKK2", a Quake 3 engined third person action-adventure game from Ritual and the Gathering of Developers. But although it's a good enough game in its own right, there was something else about it which made it stand out from the crowd. We're talking of course about the way it was packaged...

With the underwater action-strategy game Deep Fighter due for release in the UK this week, publisher UbiSoft is offering you the chance to win a Canon IXUS1 water-proof camera, a selection of UbiSoft games, and a scuba diving course courtesy of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. This involves a CD-Rom "study pack" to learn the basics, followed by a series of personal training sessions at a local swimming pool, and ending with an open water trial to put your skills to the test. Runners-up will win copies of Deep Fighter for Dreamcast and PC.

What do you get when you combine the weird world of sci-fi comic book Heavy Metal and the warped imagination of Kevin Eastman, creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The answer is "Heavy Metal : FAKK2", a straight-to-video animated movie. The good news is that the game of the same name has little in common with the rather disappointing movie, apart from its bizarre imagery and the amply imbued heroine Julie. FAKK2 the game takes place thirty years after the movie, but luckily for us the planet Eden, on which Julie has settled with the other survivors of the film, is home to the fountain of eternal youth. After all, a third person action game in which your character is a saggy middle-aged woman would be something of a let down... Being a woman of action though, Julie finds all this sitting around drinking mineral water and staying forever youthful rather dull. Unluckily for her (but luckily for us) Eden's peaceful existence is about to be rudely interrupted by an evil demi-god by the name of Gith. The first part of the game consists of exploring Julie's settlement on Eden, and chatting with all the people you will see getting brutally slaughtered a few hours later. You will also find your way to the training area, where you will be guided through a fairly comprehensive tutorial which shows you how to select and use your various weapons and equipment, and how to control Julie. As in any good third person game your character has a plentiful supply of moves, with Julie climbing up, down and along ropes, dangling from monkey bars, edging her way along narrow ledges, and ducking and crawling her way under low obstructions, a move which seems to exist purely as an excuse for the developers to give you an extreme close-up of Julie's butt. The controls are very easy to get to grips with, and the moves are achieved using a simple combination of the various movement keys. Walking up to a low ledge and holding down the forwards key will make Julie clamber up on to it, while climbing along a horizontal rope or pipe is simply a case of jumping up to grab hold of it and then moving backwards or forwards, using the jump key a second time to lift your legs up over the rope, or the duck key to let go and drop to the ground. This is about as simple and responsive as third person gaming gets.

Unreal Tournament on the Dreamcast seems to go some way to comparing the Dreamcast to a poor man's PC, but when you think about just what's going to be included it's astonishing how close the action is to its roots (especially when considering the incredible system requirements on the PC). The game will include Deathmatch and Capture The Flag modes according to Peter, so that's no Assault and no Domination modes. What's slightly concerning is how he addresses the question of how long the game's been in development. "We started right after E3, so it's been about four months." The game is expected to ship for thanksgiving in the States, so it will have had approximately five months from start to finish.. But it's not all bad. The control system will be right on - playing on a DC controller is difficult but you can use the Dreamcast keyboard and mouse if you choose (making the experience almost identical to that on the PC). The question of interaction with the PC version (ala Q3A DC) is a hazy one, as Clark states that since there's no storage device provided capable of applying upgrade patches, the game will ship as is and stay that way, so any subsequent changes to the code by Tim Sweeney and co. at Epic could cripple anybody's intentions to play online. As UT is a multiplayer game first and foremost this may be of some considerable concern! Undoubtedly gamers who own the DC version will be able to play against one another over SegaNet. Sadly of course the Dreamcast's 56k modem means that pings are in the region of 200+. Oh but hang on, in Europe and the UK the modem is a 33.6kbps version. To be honest this doesn't bode well for gamers trying to avoid an epensive PC upgrade to play it. Clark does state in the interview however that UT DC will include lots of new maps and other extras, and full scene anti-aliasing, a big buzz-phrase in the industry at the moment. Meanwhile, Quake III Arena DC is set for an October 10th release in the States.

IGN have been on hand in Tokyo having a poke around the various wares on display. The event comes merely days after Microsoft's announcement of yet more development support for the Xbox, and Nintendo's GameCube and GameBoy Advance are still garnering press support, with even Sega grabbing some of the attention.. it seems like the only console not surrounded by furour leading up to the PlayStation 2 release is the PlayStation 2. But despite the Tokyo Game Show taking place thousands of miles away from potential Western customers, the press will be whetting the appetites of everyone, and with titles like Metal Gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 2 and others keeping attendees entertained. As it happens the most popular title of the show came from Konami but wasn't actually MGS2. Z.O.E. is a mech-based 3D action game with adventure elements rather akin to Sega's Virtual On. Reducing journalists into gibbering wrecks, the enormous interest encapsulating the title meant that gamers were allowed a pitiful 30 seconds before security removed them (bodily in some cases) from the units. Definitely one to watch. Other titles that we've been looking forward to include the PS2 version of Operation : Winback and Gran Turismo 2000, but of course the real reason for attendance (for these journos anyway, they are not kidding anyone) is the Booth Babes.

id Software are still putting the finishing touches to their Quake 3 add-on pack "Quake 3 : Team Arena", while lead programmer John Carmack prepares the first stages of their next project - "Doom 3". The decision to build a new Doom only came after a heated argument amongst the design team though, with the infamously abrasive modeller Paul Steed paying the price when he was fired by two of the company's co-owners for voting the "wrong" way. In an interview with Voodoo Extreme, John Carmack talks about some of the other (far more interesting) concepts that he came up with before the decision was made to go with a third Doom game, including an idea he's mentioned several times before recently - creating cyberspace, as envisioned by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson.

BritSoft developers Rebellion are probably best known for their hit first person shooter "Aliens vs Predator", but all that should change later this year with the release of Gunlok. Set in a desolate future world where mankind has been largely annihilated by intelligent robots, you play the eponymous hero, one of the few human survivors of the war, as he struggles to overthrow the AI corporations which rule the ruined Earth. The game is due for release at the end of November, but now you can get a taste of the action with the 90Mb playable demo, available from the following sites -

sent along word of another big name sponsor for their "Frag 4" event, taking place next week in Dallas and hosting their largest Quake 3 teamplay tournament to date as well as one of the first for-cash female only Quake 3 tournaments. Microsoft will be at the event, showcasing their SideWinder Game Voice and Sidewinder Strategic Commander products along with the new Age of Empires II add-on, "The Conquerors". The Game Voice is a voice command and communications system, while the Strategic Commander is a new controller designed specifically with real-time strategy games in mind. Meanwhile, in other Frag 4 news, the CPL have announced that they will be using Quake 3 v1.17 in their Quake 3 tournaments at the event, not the controversial new v1.25 patch, which changes the game's physics code and fixes a "bug" (which until recently was described by developers id Software as an intentional design feature) which allows players to cause damage with blast-effect weapons through some thin walls and floors. The changes in the new patch are drastic to say the least, and the CPL has decided it is best to stick with what the players know rather than use the latest version in this case. A decision on which version to use for December's Babbages-CPL event will be made soon.

Midtown Madness was one of the only games of recent years that actually kept me up well into the early hours on several occasions. Normally I exhibit enough restraint to avoid mammoth 24 hour gaming sessions, but through its unique mix of challenge, playability and finesse Midtown Madness kept me coming back time after time, and often kept me plugging away at the same level for many hours in order to progress.

- LogitechPrice - £32.99

While we normally attempt to supress outright joy or indignation and remain impartial, it's a little hard not to get excited about the prospect of a well-executed Daytona game, and it looks as though we may finally have one. These shots at SegaWeb are infinitesimally superior to the original Saturn version and may well present Sega with another killer app upon which to base their Dreamcast sales campaign with the PS2 in the offing. Milking Sega's arcade heritage for all its worth, Daytona USA : Network Racing should go far to injecting the dull NASCAR genre with some much needed speed and variation. As you can see from the graphics the original tracks are in, as are the tracks and cars from Daytona 2 and Daytona CCE. As hinted at in the title, online play will be the order of the day, although it's not known whether this will be reliant on Sega's high speed cable modems that are yet to be implemented or whether modem play will be an option.

The demo for the eagerly awaited "Hitman : Codename 47", which sees you taking on the role of the eponymous hitman and whacking people with a variety of weapons from a sniper rifle to the rather more personal length of piano wire, is now available, weighing in at around 45Mb. There has been some confusion surrounding the demo though, with the US office of publisher Eidos apparently disowning the demo despite a generally positive reaction from the many gamers who have already downloaded it.