Things And Stuff: Thursday News Roundup

Interplay's not-altogether-brilliant-but-quite-enjoyable-in-a-hackyslashy-sort-of-way Xbox title Hunter The Reckoning is set to relaunch on Xbox this May priced £19.99, giving those of you who ignored it the first time around a chance to pick up on it - that is, if you fancy the idea of hacking away at the undead with groups of friends. Also arriving on budget at the end of May is another Interplay title - survival-horror-in-space Run Like Hell, which boasts a bunch of new features (aside obviously from improved graphics) in its Xbox incarnation.

From GI.biz: Scandinavian developer Funcom has announced that it has received 4.5 million Euro of new investment, which will be used to finance the development of next generation online titles. The new funding comes from two existing and one new investor, and will also be used to bolster the company's international sales and marketing efforts for Anarchy Online. At one point Funcom developed a variety of console and PC titles, but with the launch of Anarchy Online in 2000, the company decided to focus exclusively on the massively multiplayer market - and has since launched two mission packs for the game, with a third due this year. "The financing... will enable us to further increase our investment in the development of the next generation of online games," explained Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas, "and to become even better at what we excel at."

Ignition Entertainment has announced that Pool Paradise will launch on GameCube this May 7th, following its release on the PS2 and PC last month. It had originally been due to launch at the same time (we actually thought it had in fact), but apparently the slippage is due to some last-minute fine-tuning. "We're grateful for the patience shown by those waiting for the GameCube version and can promise them they will not be disappointed," Ignition product manager Peter Rollinson said earlier this week. For £19.99, we surely won't - expect a review in the next week or so.

You may recall the other day we drew your attention to Yamasa.co.jp, which has some fancy Tekken-styled CG movies running on its front page, leading to speculation that this might be the face of the rumoured Tekken 5 at long last. As it turns out, unfortunately that's not the case - this is in fact some form of Tekken-based slot machine, which has nothing to do with any Tekken sequels currently in development. Bollocks. Or rather: "Tekken 5 flash lies exposed", which is the headline-du-jour elsewhere on the Internet.