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I got this mail and wondered where to put it in the site. We get mails like this all the time and normally don't even cover them. But it so happened that I have been spending all my games playing time over the last while replaying old games that I loved, from the original Command and Conquer to Sensible Soccer. I am stuck in Command and Conquer for ages, and cannot finish a level no matter what I do. Low and behold this iste lands in my mailbox, and I blew up that pesky church at about 2 am this morning!

A lot of people like me use Linux a lot during the day, and see that the more you know about it the more you can earn, just based on being a sandal wearing geek! A lot of those same people have thought about using Linux at home, as their gaming platform. I know UT runs sweet as pie on Linux, and iD have ported their stuff for ages. The problem is that apart from a few exceptions like the above you seem to be stuck with games like GL Minesweeper and second rate tetris clones. There is of course a few other issues, like the way Linux is a pain to look after, with its steep learning curve.

Technical stuff like overclocking normally resides in the tech news here in Eurogamer, but given the popularity of this subject I thought the masses would be interested. These days it appears that gamers judge processors on a number of factors, how good it is at crunching numbers and all the normal things of course. It seems though the most important thing is the how easy the processor will be to overclock. If you have a Intel P3 600, chances are that by various ways and means you can get that to run like a P3 700, or faster. It's proven to work across the world, proven by hundreds of thousands of people and gamers. The process is called Over Clocking.

As anticipated by MCV, Empire has announced its floatation on the Stock Exchange, achieving a capitalisation of £35.1m. The issue of some 8,333,333 ordinary shares at a price of 60p raised £5m, with trading in the firm¹s stock due to commence trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) on July 25th. Cash from the listing will enable the firm to increase its licence portfolio which already includes England cricket captain Nasser Hussain and cult 70s cop pairing Starsky and Hutch.

Hot off the presses today is a full report on our EuroLAN party, which took place in Brighton last weekend. The event featured about 30 hours of hardcore gaming action, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 competitions, a projector screen showing DVD action movies all weekend, half-price pizzas and free caffeine fixes, and prizes including AMD athlons, motherboards, and even a pair of 3D glasses! For the full scoop, including photographic evidence where necessary, read our EuroLAN report!

As one of the first big time British game developers the Bitmap Brothers have had their hits and misses. Games like Z, The Chaos Engine and the mighty Speedball to name a few are to the forefront of any conversation about classic games. For the last while we have not seen or herd a shocking amount about them though, that was until we herd that they had been working on sequels to both Speedball and Z.

I don't know about the rest of you but I like to change my computer as often as my outgoings allow me too. I change it as often as twice a year. For a long time I just bought Dell or Gateway, these days though I'm into buying the bits myself and doing a bit of over clocking. I always wonder what mega machine must the likes of John Carmack or Peter Molyneux use to make their masterpieces. Do they have the Quad Zeon action, or would they just have 4 of 5 computers of all different specs lying about the office.

It seems to me that almost every first person shooter player claims to have played Doom since the initial demo. Every single one of them played the Quake test. They are a strange breed indeed. The need to be the best, to hang around on IRC with the right crowd. For many people the games they obsess over are as strange as the people that play them. The best in modern day first person shooters either come from Epic Games, with its Unreal game or iD Software with the mighty Doom and these days Quake.

Today's visual treat from the EuroGamer eye candy store is the third and final batch of eight exclusive new screenshots of "KISS : Psycho Circus", taken from a review version of the game provided by publishers Take 2 Interactive. If you missed any of the earlier shots, check them out now!

The steady stream of roomers surrounding the Eidos acquisition continues. According to trade site CTW, Eidos has said it is not interested in selling out to any competitor. The people at CTW were told that the game publisher was forced to issue a statement to the London Exchange because of the extreme change in their share price. A spokesman for Eidos said, "Approaches to Eidos are common, and the latest does not indicate a sale is imminent". If an offer was made to Eidos, it would need to be presented to the shareholders for consent, CTW was told. The Financial Times has reported that Infogrames is pressing ahead with plans to acquire the UK-based computer games group and that discussions could be completed this month. Eidos announced on June 20 that it was in discussions that could lead to its sale following a series of profit warnings that indicate problems adapting to the next generation of gaming platforms.

ION Storm gets a lot of column inches across the net. For a long time they could do nothing right, every single step they took was the wrong one, Daikatana was late, then it was not and it was just a plain and simple not a good game at all. Then we all see the demo of Deus Ex and are stunned it was by the same company. The key factor is that the legendry John Romero, co-founder of ION was in charge of the first one, and not a single bit to do with the second one. Now credit where credit is due, mister Romero is credited as being the inventor of Deathmatch as we know it when he was back in his iD software days. But that was a long time ago, and these days his investors must wonder if their millions are wasted.

Just about everything I have been given pertaining to 4x4 Evolution highlights the fact that it is still in Alpha and is not finished. The packaging of the game is quite specific about this, the installer reiterates it, and the opening screen of the game explains in clear detail what the minimum specifications are, how they are not finalised, and how the heads-up-display, user interface, and entire game in general is not finished.

It is clear to everyone that Microsoft are serious about the XBox. It is also clear that they have aimed it squarely at the PC user, and indeed they want PC Game developers to develop for it, just buying them if necessary. John Carmack of iD Software has put a post up on Slashdot talking about how Microsoft are trying to get into his and his companies good books. It is also clear that Microsoft are trying to get Tim Sweeney and Epic onside, JC says, "At last years CGDC, Tim Sweeny and I had a meeting with Bill Gates about the X-Box. It was not handled well."

Its amazing how successful online role playing games (RPG's) are. The two market leaders EverQuest and Asherons Call ask you to buy full priced software and then pay a monthly fee to play the game. I know of people who have lost actual marriages due to the sheer amount of time playing. You take on the role of a character, and you basically live that character's life. There is now a rush to copy the 2 main games, and various developers are copying the idea in every way they can. The latest in the line of on-line RPG's is Siege of Avalon. Siege of Avalon is more of a serial RPG/novel than a traditional game.

Today's review here on EuroGamer takes a look at Metal Fatigue, a real time strategy game from Take 2 with the focus on customisable "combots", giant robots which you can build from spare parts and then stomp through your enemy's defences on land, underground, and in space. Can it live up to the promise of the concept? To find out, read our review.

Giant robots. Big, huge, humanoid mecha, stomping about the place, making the ground shake, blowing things up, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

For new people and those not in the know a lot of this talk in gaming these days must be a bit hard to follow. People like me speak of clock cycles and polygons and how great the NV15 is and the jargon continues. A lot of people playing games online are on the home computer, and would not be experts for all that is past, present and future in the world of games, computer and the bits that make up the computer. Daily Radar have spotted this, and done a very good guide to sound and video cards.

Today's treat from the eye candy store is the third and final batch of eight new shots of X-Tension, the massive add-on pack for last year's free-form space trading and combat game "X : Beyond The Frontier". As before, the shots come from a preview version of the game which we snagged from publisher THQ. If you missed the earlier shots, check here.

Its weird how the games industry throws up its stars. The people it offers up, those that are to become famous. In some companies the lead programmer is the chosen one, others a great modeller or level maker. The extreme case being in ION Storm case, its was the one with the biggest boobs! One of the people who is well known for just plain great games is Peter Molyneux. I can honestly say I have played all his games from Populous on my 386 in 1991 all the way through the great Syndicate and the awe inspiring Magic Carpet. The latter a game 6 years old that looks better than a large amount of games still being made today.

These days there seems to be almost constant chatter about games engines. It seems more and more people spend time talking about the stuff that makes the games work, maybe giving that as much, if not more, attention than the nice graphics or the amazing net code. While this is the case now, it was not always the case, and small players and their engines did not have the success they now seem to be enjoying. The perfect example of this is Monolith, makes of the Lithtech engine. The engine has almost made the company its fortune and also lost the company a fortune on more than one occasion.

The inevitable first patch of Daikatana has arrived. Its not for the faint hearted, not only is it 43.5 megs in size, ION Storm say it could take about 30 minutes on a normal PC to apply. Those of you actually playing the game are going to loose your save games. The list of things being patched is quite long, in fact, it may have been quicker to list the files that were not being patched!

If you thought that overdue games were a new phenomenon, think again! In an interview on RPGVault, designer DW Bradley, the man behind the later games in the Wizardry RPG series of the late 1980s, reveals that "I had started work on my first computer RPG about the time the original Wizardry appeared".

Friday is normally release day for new PC games here in the UK, but this week we've come up empty. Fox's two titles which were due out today - "Aliens vs Predator Gold" and "Die Hard Trilogy 2" - both failed to materialise, and the latest word is that they will now be out on July 28th. Thanks to Nemesis as usual for confirming the (lack of) new releases.

This week's interview here on EuroGamer is with Cristina Neamtu of AMC Creations, a Romanian developer which is currently working on an innovative real time strategy game called "No Name War". To find out more about the game, the company behind it, the emergence of a Romanian gaming industry, and the proverbial much much more, read our interview, which also includes a pair of exclusive new screenshots of the game in action.

The most popular first person shooter on the net today is not Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena, but Counter-Strike, a free user-made add-on for the two year old Half-Life. With these "mods" now attracting more attention than ever, it's hardly surprising that the more promising ones are being contributed to by professional designers.

Over the last few years eastern Europe has become something of a hotbed of computer software development. Recent games to come out of the former Soviet bloc include Hidden and Dangerous, Theocracy, and Odium.

sent word that Razer, makers of the Boomslang gaming mouse, will now be the main sponsor for the Frag 4 event in Dallas at the end of September. Previously HEAT.net had been lined up to sponsor the event, but since then HEAT.net owners Sega have announced that they are selling the company off, reportedly to rival American gaming service MPlayer.

Shiny's "MDK" was one of the most innovative third person action-adventure games of its day, introducing us to such joys as the zoomable sniper rifle. Despite getting great reviews though, sales of the game were lousy. Now Bioware, the developer behind "Baldur's Gate", has brought us a sequel to MDK, adding improved graphics and the ability to play as Kurt's sidekicks Max and Doc Hawkins to the classic gameplay of the original. Can it live up to the MDK name? Read our review of MDK2 to find out!

Today's eye candy treat for you all is a second batch of eight exclusive new screenshots from "KISS : Psycho Circus", the first person shooter from Third Law Interactive and the Gathering Of Developers based on the comic book series of the same name by Todd McFarlane Productions. As before, the shots are taken from a review copy of the game provided by publisher Take 2 Interactive. If you missed the first batch of shots, you can find them here...

The premise of MDK2, rather like MDK before it, is that an alien race from another dimension has come bounding through space on streams of light and intends to repopulate the Earth by first steam-rollering the indigenous inhabitants. This would be all well and good from their perspective, except that nobody on Earth is terribly pleased about it. In a way you can feel their pain.