Bits And Bobs: Monday News Roundup

Although we're struggling to get our heads round what it actually is, it's nice to hear that the first game from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment studio was playable on the show floor at TGS this weekend. PSP title Lumines, which will be published by Bandai, is reportedly some sort of puzzle effort, where you attempt to line up groups of four orange and grey blocks so they get blasted away when a spaceship passes. Unsurprisingly for a puzzler, you can form chains out of your blocks if you're careful, and typically of a Mizuguchi title it sounds like there's much more to it. The English reports we've read point out that the music appears to react to your performance, but we fancy it's yet to be sussed out completely. We'll let you know once it is. In the meantime, here's a screenshot.

Newly announced PS2 title SEGA Rally 2005 was one of the many games that took a bow for the first time at the Tokyo Game Show, but the game received an oddly muted reception from many of the people who saw it. The demo version (featuring Subaru Impreza and Citroen Xsara) took the player over Japanese mountains, through European forests and villages and then through a desert stage from the original game as he or she attempted to get past a field of 14 rival cars (including the Toyota Celica and Lancia Stratos), but the game behaved oddly. Cars apparently handled pretty consistently whatever the road surface, and the car cornered "like it was on rails" according to one report. Hopefully that'll change, and by the time we get our hands on it it will handle well enough to live up to its reportedly impressive visuals.

Xbox owners waiting expectantly for an Xbox version of Tecmo's Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly will be rewarded for their patience in typical Tecmo style - with trinkets and baubles and, well, boobies. According to reports wafting eerily out of the Tokyo Game Show, many of the extras that make up the Xbox "Director's Cut" will be of the "costumes and accessories" variety. There's a sun visor, a frumpy witch's hat and Jack Skellington-style headwear according to IGN, and even costumes borrowed from the developer's Dead or Alive series - including Kasumi and Ayane's for a start. We don't know whether this is the full extent of the Xbox cut's additions, but we hope there's more. We also don't know when European gamers are likely to get hold of it, but we'll let you know as soon as we do.

SNK Playmore is planning to release a raft of online-enabled titles for PlayStation 2 using MultiMatching Broadband Service, which was developed through a partnership between broadband provider KDDI and Capcom and launched in late 2003. SNK had previously announced that its future game line-up would be online, but it seems someone got their wires crossed, because the games announced for PS2 Online at TGS are all plucked from SNK's NeoGeo back catalogue. Those titles are King of Fighters '94 Re-Bout, King of Fighters '95-'97 3-in-1, King of Fighters '98-'00 3-in-1, Garou Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade and Twinkle Star Sprites. The first of them will be released in Japan this December, with five others following in 2005.