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about the GameCube and in particular their acquisition of ArtX, the company that was working to create graphics components for Nintendo when its console was still known as the Dolphin. The interview is well worth reading, and while normally we frown on snippets here at EuroGamer, this one tickled my fancy enough to warrant a breach of protocol.

For those of you who thought you'd seen it all, here's a petition to get Apple's OS X released on Intel.

Valkyrie, best known until now for their anime-inspired role-playing game "Septerra Core", are currently working on the early stages of an Unreal-engined action game called "Seraphim", in which you take control of fallen angels and wreak destruction of truly biblical proportions. "In the movies and screenshots you may have seen buildings and bridges being destroyed", Valkyrie told 3D Action Planet in an interview with the site. "We want to take these innovations to the furthest extreme and put the player in a world that can be almost completely reduced to rubble. We want to see what it actually look like when you read ancient stories with passages like: "And they did fight for three days and three nights, and when they were done the entire village was lain waste...""

The latest world changing event in the massively multiplayer role-playing game "Asheron's Call" has seen the towns of Arwic and Tufa reduced to smouldering ashes, while Cragstone has also been damaged. The sky is lit up by flashes of lightning, the howls of wolves drift across the hills of Dereth, and all manner of new monsters have emerged to threaten the game's inhabitants. On the bright side, there is now a secure in-game trading system allowing players to exchange money and goods without fear of being ripped off or robbed while trading. In related news, one player is running a campaign to "buff the bunny". Apparently the designers of Asheron's Call included a tribute to the classic comedy film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in the game, in the form of a lethal white rabbit. Now the rabbit is finding its match as players reach ever higher levels and more powerful monsters are introduced into the game, and so one player has taken it upon himself to campaign for the rabbit to be returned to its rightful place as the most deadly, bad tempered rodent you ever laid eyes on. It's a funny old world... Related Feature - The Dereth Diary

Land Maker is the sort of puzzle game that should never have been released outside of Japan. It's a fair enough concept with nice visuals and execution, but the translation is dire at times, on and off the screen. It may sound silly, but the notion is that you are building houses from blocks, with the emphasis on being quicker than your opponent, or in single player Mode to build a city. The manual that accompanies the game is a minefield of involuntary patronization and confusion, in keeping with the direness of the translation. Here are a few choice excerpts - please bear in mind that these are direct quotes.. "What is a block? It is a coloured block which appears during the game." "How to change the colour of the blocks. If a block is placed near another one, this latter will change colour, assuming the one of the block shot against it. If the new colour is already present, buildings will increase in size." Of most amusement to the EuroGamer staff was the "What is a deadline?" section, during the course of which for some reason the incompetent translators mistakenly included the word "MISS" instead of "LOSE". There are plenty of options to the game, including Puzzle and Battle Modes, which are drawn in a 3D style, as well as a port of the original 2D Puzzle Bobble-style Arcade version. Rather like an upside down version of Tetris, you have to build houses by bashing blocks together.

According to Daily Radar UK, Japanese mech-based anime series Macross is coming to Dreamcast, currently under the working title of Macross M. While we shamefully know very little about the TV series here at EuroGamer, the word is that the game's story takes place between the Macross and Macross 7 time periods, and that gameplay will be of the 3-dimensional beat-em-up variety. More news as we get it. In other Dreamcast-related news, Sega's tendancy to favour the USA as an outlet for its new toys and offers continues as it gives owners the opportunity to win a Dodge Viper by simply filling in a SegaNet form. This is hardly shocking; American owners can already pick up interesting new toys like black DC cases (with which you receive loads of free stuff), and of course American Football thriller NFL 2K1 - a game we're never likely to see over here for some reason. Come on Sega, get your act together and share some of the loving!

Anyone who attended ECTS a fortnight ago will remember Ed Fries' heart-warming speech about Microsoft's current slew of Xbox developers, including the eponymous Lionhead Studios whose phenomenal Black & White is nearing completion at the moment. You may also have noticed that many if not all were Western development companies, and if sources within Microsoft are to be believed, the next group of developers from Japan will be announced this Wednesday. Possible contenders include Capcom, Konami, Namco, Tecmo, Koei and Grandia II authors Game Arts. The biggest possibility of course is Japanese RPG giant Squaresoft, who have long been rumoured to be in talks with Microsoft. If these developers were to bring their wares to the Xbox it could expect some of the best beat-em-ups, RPGs, puzzlers and platformers to comprise its ranks at launch late next year. Fans could expect a full complement of games from different genres - in other words plenty of variety, and when games make a games console, you have to consider that a major plus.

Never ones to miss out on Microsoft's off and on-record announcements, MSXbox.com are reporting on the possibility of Microsoft introducing an a handheld Xbox unit. With a direct quote from J. Allard on the Xbox team they report that "it would be foolish to say 'never' to something like a handheld opportunity, but right now the entire team is focused on delivering an amazing console launch in 2001 and fantastic games. In general, we'll take our cues from xbox gamers and developers when considering future opportunities like this.." It's a well known fact that Nintendo's GameBoy Color grossed more sales worldwide than all of the other consoles (N64, PlayStation and Dreamcast) put together. It's no surprise then that Microsoft are not ruling out the possibility of such a unit. Nintendo's GameBoy Advance will put up some incredibly stiff opposition to the move should Microsoft ever choose to make it. Especially bearing in mind the failure of the Neo Geo Pocket Color earlier this year. Microsoft are of course a much bigger adversary than the united colours of SNK, but Nintendo's brand name is so strong it may be hard to break down, and any such move from MS would have to come after the Xbox was released.

Apart from last week's news of Gameplay's pre-order deal, it seems that the fuel crisis in the UK has left retailers all across the country with plenty of pre-order forms still available. Areas like the Midlands, the North and Scotland still have plenty of forms, while retailers in the South-East are fresh out. The problem from the perspective of anyone attempting to pre-order Sony's next generation console is that it won't be available in large quantities until Spring of next year, and anyone desperate to get hold of one until then will have to reserve it in person by filling in a form. Meanwhile, the mainstream press in the Capital have been seizing upon the Dixons group's latest offers for PS2 consumers. The deals will include the console, two games and one movie on DVD for £399 and a similar deal with more games and DVDs for £499, the "PS2 Ultimate Pack". The press reports have chastised the group for these offers, but to be blunt, who cares? If Dixons can shift more PS2 units based on these deals then so be it and good for them. There's also a standalone £299 deal, but what's the point in that? At the end of the day, many retailers are preparing to make an awful lot of money out of the PlayStation 2 and its games, and if you want to be playing one come Christmas morn, make damned sure you get yourself a pre-order form.

We reported a few months ago that Fox Interactive was in the process of licensing out the Futurama and Simpsons brands (amongst others) for new PC and console titles, and today we have word of the result in one of those categories. Unique Development Studios are the guys who have picked up on this "unique" opportunity, and will be producing a game based on the wacky TV series for the PC and undisclosed console platforms. A similarly licensed Simpsons game is already in development due out next Spring. Futurama is of course the most recent big thing from Simpsons creator Matt Groening. The action centres around Fry, a 25-year-old pizza delivery man who is transported into the future by some bizarre electric ray and eventually becomes entangled with a comical robot named Bender, a one-eyed flight officer called Leela and his own nephew, Professor Farnsworth, who is not 125 years his senior. There is no news on which genre the game will fall into nor what the plot will be like, but we here are EuroGamer are rather hoping for a Stupid Invaders-esque point-and-clicker. Some hope though, we feel.

One such character is our hero Obi-Wan, played by the ignoble Ewan McGregor in The Phantom Menace, and Obi-Wan's Adventures (due out from THQ in November on GameBoy Color) is a title that will allow players to take on the guise of our aspiring Jedi Master and play through various sections seen in the film. Obi-Wan's Adventures marks the first title in a worldwide publishing agreement between THQ and Lucasarts which will give THQ the opportunity to publish GameBoy (and latterly GameBoy Advance) titles based on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties. If you've been living under a rock and haven't seen last summer's film, then here's a brief summary of the plot. The Trade Federation (an alien race) has blockaded the world of Naboo (seems timely does it not?) and you, Obi-Wan Kenobi are being sent by the Jedi Council along with Qui-Gon Jinn to help officiate the dispute and negotiate a settlement with the leaders of the Federation. Senator Palpatine and the Imperial Senate are depending upon you, but the Federation aren't interested in negotiations. Instead they have allied with the Sith, Dark Jedis.

The finals of the Quake 3 duel competition has just ended at the "NYC Challenge", with Dy Syng and Zero 4 battling it out on stage, just before the fireworks, smoke generators and .. bizarre dancers took over the show. The first match was on DM13, with Dy Syng taking the early lead, but Zero 4 soon closing him down and battling frag for frag throughout the middle of the game. The end was all Zero4's though, with him racking up a 15 : 7 lead after ten minutes, and maintaining his lead to the end, finishing 21 : 14 up. The second game was much the same, with Dy Syng getting the first frags on Tourney4, but Zero4 equalising after about five minutes and then pulling out a lead. The two players again matched each other frag for frag during the last stages of the game, but the damage had already been done. Zero4 took the game 29 : 19, winning the match and walking home with the $10,000 first prize.

The Quake 3 clan competition at the "NYC Challenge" in Time Square just finished, with a three map match with an exciting climax. Stickmen won the first game on DM6 by just 144 : 139, only for cK to come back and take the second game 114 : 106 on DM7. The decider was a real nail-biter from start to finish on DM14, with cK pulling out a strong lead at the start, only for the Stickmen to close right up and equalise with just three minutes to go! The game stayed neck and neck until the final minute, when Fatality got the quad for cK and Stickmen's Larsen leaped into the red mist. By the end cK had managed to amass a ten frag lead. A thrilling end to a close match - cK take home $8000!

The finals of the Unreal Tournament competition at the Battletop "NYC Challenge" event is now over, with a very close match between Pain and Destrukt from clan DD. The first game (on Grinder) started with the two players matching each other almost frag for frag, with Pain pulling out a slim lead in the final minutes. The second match was even more tense, with Pain taking a seemingly secure lead in the first half of the game, only for Destrukt to catch right up again and equalise just two minutes from the end. Pain was literally shaking with nerves by this point, but managed to hold it together and secure his victory by a single frag! Pain took the first prize of $8,000.

Hot on the heels of our AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" review today comes the news that AMD are finally closing in on SMP support for both its Thunderbird and Duron processors! SMP of course translates as "Symmetric multiprocessing" or dual CPU support. According to American news reporter JC's Pages, the 760MP chipset will be sampled in December and motherboards could be available as soon as the first quarter of 2001! If true, the report could well be another nail in the Pentium III's coffin, just as Intel release their cC0 stepping models. Sources report that the cC0 platform is incapable of SMP, and as such they will be unable to compete on the same level. This said, sources are already stating that the Intel-published developer report stating that the cC0 stepping model will be incapable of SMP is a typo. An expensive one, too, if AMD manage to seize upon it. Meanwhile, AMD's new Lightning Data Transfer bus (or LDT for short) has received a total of 40 further sign-ups, from companies including Transmeta.

UK hi-fi company Wharfedale has had to modify its DVD750 player to incorporate a new DVD chipset, according to a report in DVD Times. According to representatives of the company, the shortage in LSI Logic chips (previously used in the Wharfedale player) has occurred due to the overwhelming demand for them from none other than Sony. The Register think they have it sussed out - the implication is that Sony wants to chips for the DVD playing side of the PlayStation 2, since the chipset will allow hardware DVD playback rather than software as was to be the case previously (and as it is in Japan). Criticisms were levelled at Sony for the quality (or lack of quality) of DVD playback on its Japanese unit. According to research the Japanese really don't mind that much as they upgrade much more frequently, but the Americans and Europeans will not put up with such inferiority, especially after reports published recently slated VHS in for a meeting with its maker in the next year or so as DVDs take control. Considering the price differential between the US and UK units (£299 versus $299 does not compute), it's a good thing we're getting a decent player for our money..

The grand final of the Starcraft competition at the "NYC Challenge" has just ended, with [usa]jolly taking the first game, only for Pillar to come back and beat him in the second, leading to a tense tie breaker that was hard fought. Pillar dug in heavily, and fought off attacks by Jolly while launching his own counter-offensives to keep him off balance. In the end it paid off, and a juggernaut of Pillar's Protoss troops paraded into Jolly's base, with running battles all the way to the heart of his base before the game came to an end. Pillar goes home $3500 richer, and both players will get to represent the USA at the World Cyber Games Challenge in Korea next month.

Having survived Battletop's "World Cyber Game Challenge" London Preliminary at the Millenium Dome with lives and sanity more or less intact, EuroGamer ventured across the pond to visit the Big Apple itself for the New York Preliminary. EuroGamer's tech team were on hand with their new TOAST software to manage several of the competitions for Battletop, while I watched the action to bring you full reports on all the key matches from the two day tournament...

Marvel Comics were having a hard time of it about 5 years ago - the price of paper had risen to ridiculous levels, many of their top artists had defected to independent studios, and the stories involving some of the best known and much loved characters in Comiciverse seemed to be going nowhere. To top it all off, any movies made featuring their heroes were low budget rubbish with bad actors in rubber suits - Generation X anyone? The whole situation got so bad that I actually dropped all the X-Men titles from my regular comic collecting - about 10 series, plus any specials! I felt really bad about it, but they were just not worth the money anymore...

The definition of the "Speed Freak" is changing. Thanks to the AMD Athlon Thunderbird processors (or Athlons with "Performance-enhancing L2 cache memory" as AMD would have it) comes yet another doubling of the CPU speed threshold within a year. Why have AMD made this move to a new core though? The answer can be seen when broadly comparing the specs of its own line of Athlons from the past year. Throughout the series, spanning 500 to 1000MHz, the L2 cache divider was set so that the cache speed never rose above 350MHz, its peak, seen only in the 700MHz variant with its 1/2 divider. With the later Athlons, the performance deficit between them and Intel's equivalent Pentium III chips (whose cache ran at full speed) was quite sizeable, and something needed to be done. With the advent of the Thunderbird core, AMD have tipped the balance back in their favour, introducing a chip capable of keeping up with even the hardiest PIII. The secret to the Thunderbird's success lies in its full-speed on-die L2 cache. Having the L2 cache on the die allows it to operate at the same frequency as the rest of the die, meaning that it runs at a ratio of 1 : 1 with the processor, ergo full-speed. The latency is greatly reduced, as the CPU is physically closer to it. The performance differential between the older K7 core Athlons and these newer Thunderbirds under certain conditions is staggering. The Thunderbird is being released at 750, 800, 850, 900, 950, 1000 and (most recently) 1100MHz frequencies, with more to come. The availability of the chips is paramount and although there were rumours of a shortage earlier this week, there's been no talk of it since, whilst Intel are left scrimping and scraping to get their 1GHz Pentium III off the ground. Currently it's in very short supply and at inexplicably steep prices, while the Thunderbird 1GHz (reviewed here) is priced reasonably and available readily.

Popular Half-Life teamplay modification Counter-Strike is refined further this weekend with the release of the Beta 7.1 update patch. Weighing in at 3.93Mb for current users of the Beta 7.0, the package is also available as a full executable for users who haven't yet tried it, 68.9Mb in size. Main developer "Gooseman" points out that users connecting to servers over the weekend may find that they receive a "client.dll differs" error. This merely indicates that the server has not been upgraded to the latest version. If you know the server operator, drop them a line and inform them of the update. Changes in this version includes fixes to maps added in the latest previous version, improved programming for the vehicles which are making their way into the fray, a few fixes relating to timelimits and maximum rounds settings and some weapon display problems. There are some lag-related issues that have been fixed now also, although the netcode from the most recent official Half-Life update which has met with cold disdain from some sections of the community is untouched. Of most interest to players is the addition of an APC to the popular "cs_siege" map. You can download Counter-Strike and other related files from the official site.

Battletop's "New York Challenge" event is now underway, one of several qualifiers taking place around the world for the massive $300,000 World Cyber Games Challenge in Korea. FIFA 2000, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament and Age of Empires II competitions are taking place today, with Quake 3 clan, duel and free-for-all competitions running tomorrow. EuroGamer is on site with their TOAST tournament management system, which is recording all the results from the various competitions taking place and posting them to the web. The first results are already coming in from the Age of Empires II competition, and you can check the competition brackets and keep up to date with all the latest results live on the NYC Challenge TOAST page.

Publisher Cryo Interactive just sent us a big batch of new screenshots from their bizarre looking action-adventure game "Gift", which is all about a short fat red guy with an attitude problem, sent into a computer game to rescue the amply imbued Lolita Globo by finding seven sinful garden gnomes. No, really. Give your eyes a treat - check the new screenshots!

One of the surprise hits of 1998 was the old school isometric role-playing game "Baldur's Gate", based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and set in the ever-popular Forgotten Realms. Since the success of the original game, developers Bioware have been hard at work on a sequel - "Baldur's Gate II : Shadows Of Amn". Now that hard work is about to pay off, with news that the game has gone gold, meaning that it has been completed and a master disk has been sent off for duplication. According to the latest information we have from UK publisher Virgin Interactive, Baldur's Gate II should be on shelves in the UK on Friday September 29th.

Platform games have gone all funny. I'm not talking about your Lara Crofts and your Mario 64s, I'm instead referring to the proper two-dimensional side-scrolling platformers of yore, whose programmers were sadly only in possession of one-track minds. The most variation on the good old Super Mario franchise we ever saw back then was the idea of a world map in between levels, and pipes that actually transported you elsewhere on the same map. Sickeningly simplistic, yet appallingly addictive seemed to be the order of the day. Quite how we've managed to go from one extreme to the other in the space of a decade is up for debate. And so we come to Croc, for the GameBoy Color. Croc on the PlayStation and Saturn was one of the few early answers to the life-disrupting Mario 64. It was very entertaining and presented a character with charm and personality, far much more so than others games of the time like Spyro the Dragon or Crash Bandicoot, which simply attempted to mimic Mario, and failed unreservedly. Croc was a cuddly green crocodile, and there was no knocking him. Which is why it troubles me so that the most inexcusable desecration of his character has occurred! It's still Croc, but his charisma has gone AWOL! Not to mention the controls are.. shall we say less than eloquent, and for all its 30 environments, magic carpets and cable cars it's actually dreadfully dull! So what went wrong? Unfortunately Croc gets off on the wrong foot in his new side-scrolling world (new to him anyway) by having a disappointing control quirk; he jumps twice as fast as he moves forward. This is another example (to pull out my introduction again) of the platform genre shooting from one extreme to another - back in the NES and GameBoy monochrome days we used to have games where the character moved twice as fast as he jumped.

Unreal Tournament will be available for the PlayStation 2 from release both in the USA and Europe, despite claims to the contrary from publisher Infogrames towards the end of last month.

It's a rainy, moody Friday down here in the South-East of England, but it brings about the release of many interesting new gaming delights. Of particular interest are PC titles Age of Empires II : The Conquerors, Dino Crisis and the epicurean Star Trek Voyager : Elite Force, Raven's Star Trek licensed Quake III engined title which has been long in the coming. The consoles are rife with new titles, including the aforementioned GBC and N64 releases. The PSX gets a healthy smattering of titles with F1 Racing Champs from Ubi Soft, Spiderman from Activision and Wacky Races from Infogrames. The latter also hits the PC today, much to the delight no doubt of gamers looking for a bit of Mario Kart-style action on their PCs. It really appears to be Sega's week this time around however, with Virgin introducing Street Fighter 3 Double Impact and Street Fighter Alpha 3, Ubi Soft releasing Deep Fighter and Eidos releasing Powerstone 2, successor to the innovative and successful Powerstone. As if this were not enough, Take2 have chosen this week to bestow Hidden & Dangerous upon us, but Konami's International Track & Field for the Dreamcast has slipped a week. Disappointing, for it's a game that looks set to utterly destroy the lacklustre competition from Eidos and to a lesser extent Sega in time for the Olympics. However, the biggest release of the week is not a game, it's Microsoft's next generation of the Win9x kernel, Windows Millenium. The operating system is basically a friendly upgrade for Windows 98 users, which cuts down bootup times immeasurably, introduces Media Player 7 and Internet Explorer 5.5 at the heart of the system (much to the distaste of the DoJ in America I dare say), and vanquishes DOS away completely from view. It's still there somewhere, hidden under all the whirs and clicks, but it's no longer a core element of the system. Users who chose not to upgrade to Windows 2000 may find Windows Millenium much more friendly, and although it's still the same old Windows 98, it's closing in faster on the stability threshold and has been finely tuned in a lot of areas.

Nintendo's attempts to fight back the PlayStation 2 onslaught begins in earnest today with the release of Pokemon Snap and the Pokemon-themed N64. The latter includes a Pikachu moulded into the plastic that lights up, and will likely be retailed in bundles alongside Snap, which offers players the opportunity to photograph Pokemon in their natural habitat. Also arriving in the UK in the near future are Mario Party 2 and the highly anticipated Mario Tennis. The former is due out on October 23rd and will follow on from the original with its multiplayer orientation. Mario Tennis on the other hand is due out on November 3rd and will act as a strong aggressor against the PS2 and its early lineup, which will of course hit our shores on the 24th of the same month. As if this were not enough, the incredibly impressive Zelda : Majora's Mask will hit on the 17th, barely days before the PS2, and N64 feeling a bit depressed on the first morning of Sony's new console can pick up Rare's Mickey's Speedway to drown their sorrows. Nintendo representatives have called this the most impressive pre-Christmas N64 lineup yet. Meanwhile in related news, the GameBoy Color welcomes Heroes of Might and Magic, Activision's Spiderman and the timely Carl Lewis Athletics into its stable of games this week.

Fans of the Ultima series are today bandying together to try and get EA to develop Ultima 10, despite the fact that the bitter swansong to the series, Ultima Ascension flopped in a major way due to bugs and inconsistancies. The petition looks set to inflame yet more debates about Ultima IX, but the writers are eager to point out their issues with the game as well, far from acting like the "fanboys" some of us have come to associate with the series, pointing out that it "turned out to be a buggy, unfinished, barely playable game". Well spotted. "The purpose of this petition is for Origin to Realize what went wrong with Ultima 9 and to try their best to fix this. By this, I mean release Ultima 10. If Ultima 10 could be developed without EA's interference, and with Lord British in the mix, it could easily be the best game ever. If Ultima 1-7 is anything to go by, Ultima 10 could really be better than Diablo, Starcraft, or even Half-Life." Sadly we fear that not even Lord British can rescue this one.

Today marks the latest GLSetup release (Build 1.0.0.116) and new drivers for Matrox video cards. The latter comes in several versions for various incarnations of Windows, including the recent Windows Millenium, while GLSetup is unilaterally available in a single executable that suits each Win9x OS for various video cards. Matrox' graphics cards are of course most famed for their DualHead technology, which allows users to output graphics to two monitors simultaneously. We polled a few gamers on QuakeNet IRC about the new drivers; one commented that "the improvement is marginal but you might as well grab them" while another remarked "who cares, they haven't got any petrol". GLSetup first made its name when it was released alongside the Quake III Arena demo test. The premise is that it checks which graphics card you're in possession of then installs appropriate drivers to run OpenGL optimally. The latest release is still very much unfinished with lots of known issues, but for gamers who own one of the selected video cards it takes a lot of the confusion out of upgrading the drivers.