Things And Stuff: Thursday News Roundup

Electronic Arts has released another brief trailer for Need For Speed Underground 2, its forthcoming mole-based drug empire simulation [put a pound in the jar, Brambles -Ed] in development at Black Box. Developers, we might add, of the phenomenal and criminally ignored Sega Soccer Slam, which has no bearing on anything at all. [And another. -Ed] Anyway, this clip of NFSU2 runs about 30 seconds and shows off an area of the game called "The Tuner Playground". It's only 6MB, so have a look. It's on Eurofiles here.

Sega is planning to release its most popular post-relaunch title to date, Sonic Heroes, on the PC later this year, Sega of America announced this week. That doesn't necessarily mean it'll come out in Europe, but there's a good chance. Don't expect anything particularly different from it, PC fans, but you can see how it's shaping up visually by checking out a handful of high-res screenshots that Sega popped onto the Internet this week.

DreamCatcher Games has delayed the release of its forthcoming Painkiller expansion pack in the US by a month. Painkiller: Battle out of Hell is now due out on October 13th over there. DreamCatcher tells us that the game is not being held back due to any particular development setback at softco. People Can Fly, but rather that the extra time will be used to promote the game to the media. That People Can Fly will use the time to add additional gameplay features is apparently just a happy side benefit. Battle out of Hell should add new single and multiplayer areas to the game.

Nokia has announced the N-Gage's first Capcom game in the shape of Catan, its board-based strategy game. Assuming you don't know what it is: "Catan gamers will compete with each other to build roads, settlements and cities. Instead of enslaving natives, gamers will occupy new land to develop into communities with the aim of expanding their civilisation and squeezing out competitors." The N-Gage version will feature the usual four-player Bluetooth multiplayer options and should be out in early 2005.

Japanese mobile phone users seem to have it a lot better than us in a lot of regards, and today's announcement that the original Metal Gear game - first released on the MSX2 console over 15 years ago - will be available to them in the near future is just another in a long line of examples. According to reports, Hideo Kojima himself oversaw the port of the game to FOMA900i series phones, and players will be able to download or play it online at a monthly rate of 315 yen plus connection fees. Which is, what, just over €2? Can't be bad. Gits.

Microsoft has announced that the latest high profile figures to step up to the pad and take on gamers on Xbox Live will be the band Maroon 5. Apparently we've "seen 'em on MTV rocking their hit songs Harder To Breathe and This Love." Well, we've heard the music all right. And now we get to smack them around at Top Spin and Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow, which is due out on Friday in Europe. If you pick up a copy, or have Top Spin, you can hop onto Live on Sunday August 22nd between 6 and 9pm GMT and have a go. This - Live - is - taking control - of me.