This was one of the funniest things I saw at the IREX: a PacMan Robot with which you could play through a PacMan Remote Control and a ghost robot. this was not an amateur project either, as Bandai and Namco are behind this project. The game might never hit the market though, but I'm sure it would be a load of fun in a game hall.

Nintendo will announce its next-generation games console, Revolution, next May, the company has revealed.

The full disclosure will take place just ahead of the E3 games industry bash in Los Angeles, where Nintendo this year gave a glimpse of Revolution's design but provided few hard details.

In September, Nintendo unveiled the movement-tracking controller the console will ship with.

With the Xbox 360 now on sale in the US, and coming to Europe this coming Friday - the Japanese debut will take place later this month - attention is turning to rival products from Sony and Nintendo.

There is something SO wrong about Shadow with a gun though -- on the loading screen, Shadow cocks his gun, and the sound is just so not something I want to associate with collecting rings and bouncing on platforms. Magic, slingshots, rotten tomatoes ... why guns??

Shadow awakens with amnesia and is tormented by a dark past as he struggles to unveil his true identity. Was he created to save humankind or to do the evil bidding of the dark side? Only by collecting the seven Chaos Emeralds will Shadow unlock the truth. Caught in a complex battle between aliens, the G.U.N. army, and Dr. Eggman, Shadow becomes the very element that may tip the scales between good and evil forever. The epic is set…and the path that Shadow will ultimately take is completely up to you!

But those who actually got the system in hand are breathing easy and living it up, right?

Some of them are. But others are posting a plethoral of problems with their brand-new 360s, from game crashes to hard drives that simply don't work.

One reasonable gamer lays it out like this: "Between my friends and I, we bought six machines at the Zero Hour event. Of the six, my machine has a dead hard drive, another machine is working but is rather flaky (seen some strange behavior-the drive may also be scratching discs, as my friend's copy of Condemned is now unplayably scratched, but we don't know if the drive caused it-the machine has also had problems booting games and being turned off...), one seems to be good, and I haven't heard yet about the status of the other three."

A fraction of the Xbox 360's that are being sold have problems which could cause graphical errors, freezing or even corruption of the Xbox's drive. Some of the consoles are uncapable of playing any games, and just shut off or show graphical messes when they are used.

Microsoft's report said that these bugs are in a "very minor fraction" of the Xbox's sold. Microsoft expects to have sold up to 3 million Xbox 360's before the end of the year, while Sony doesn't intend on releasing their Playstation 3 for almost another year.

"We are making sure that the people that are having problems are getting their issues resolved quickly," said a spokesperson from Microsoft’s Xbox department.

But many gamers were furious that they didn't get their Xbox 360s this week, despite preordering months in advance or waiting in line outside stores all night. And a small but very vocal percentage of new owners are flooding gaming websites with reports of overheating hardware and crashing consoles.

Few things suck more than getting your new toy home and finding out it's already broken. But every recent console launch has been plagued with technical problems - disc read errors on the Xbox, overheating circuit boards on the PS2, random resets on the Dreamcast and original PlayStations that would only work properly while upside down.

Microsoft claims the Xbox 360 failure rate is on par with any other piece of complex consumer electronics, but since we don't have access to their figures, we have no way to tell.

Whatever the case, the company is offering free repairs or replacements to those whose issues can't be resolved with a call to customer support at 1-800-4MY-XBOX.

They gathered in the rain in Manhattan, where a Best Buy opened its doors at midnight. They stood in line all night at chain stores like Target.

Mr. La, a car salesman in San Francisco, had preordered one Xbox 360 from a local EB Games store, which he picked up at midnight. Then he waited in line to buy a second one at a nearby CompUSA store, after deciding not to wait at the Target.

He said he was hoping that stores would sell out of their initial supplies and he could make a profit selling his second machine.

"I think I can get at least $800 for it," Mr. La said of the system, which costs $399 in stores.

Turbine's game developers say D&D Online is designed to stay as true as possible to the paper-based version and offers a reasonable online alternative to the more than 4.6 million people still playing D&D just in the United States. The game -- in which players create imaginary characters and adventure through fantasy forests, castles and other environs -- has been around for more than three decades.

The company has built the online version specifically around the teams of fantasy adventurers that made the original D&D so popular. John Foster, Turbine's director of public relations, said D&D Online requires players to quickly find others with whom to join forces and set out to complete quests.

Electronic Arts Inc., the world's biggest video game publisher, has reduced prices on some titles by 20 percent to spur sales and thwart competition, an analyst said on Monday.

"NBA Live 06" and racing titles "Burnout Revenge" and "NASCAR 06" were among the console games subject to the price cut from $49.99 to $39.99, Banc of America Securities research analyst Gary Cooper said in a client note.

Video game sales have been soft in recent months as consumers await new console technology. Microsoft Corp. is releasing the Xbox 360, the first next-generation gaming machine from a major player, on November 22.

Evil Dead Regeneration follows Ash, the lone survivor of a camp discovering the Necronomicon -- the wholly evil book of the dead. Thought to have murdered his companions, Ash is arrested, convicted of the crime, and sentenced to Sunny Meadows, an institute for the criminally insane, but not for long. Ash's peaceful stay is about to end -- thanks to the perverted experiments of his very own psychiatrist. Hell-bent on using science to harness the Necronomicon's powers, the mad doctor unleashes the book's all-powerful Evil on the world -- releasing a new slew of Deadites, monsters and spirits, twisting reality into a hellish strudel and leaving mankind with that not-so-fresh, apocalyptic feeling.

Jon Jacobs, a director of independent films, plans to call the space resort, in the science-fiction themed game Project Entropia, "Club Neverdie." Like other land areas in the game that has been visited by 300,000 players, the resort grounds will spawn dinosaur-like monsters, which visitors can kill.

Jacobs will take a cut of the virtual resources that the carcasses yield, like hides.

Jacobs, 39, plans to hire famous disc jockeys to entertain visitors once a week or so at the resort but still reckons on netting $20,000 a month from the hunting tax and other income.

"I want to operate this thing at the level of a major nightclub in a major city," Jacobs said.

"I would like to create a playground for children," he said. "A normal playground is flat but I want an undulating one, with bumps."

At first glance, this seems a strange ambition for a game designer. But Mr Takahashi has a degree in sculpture and Katamari is all about a tactile world.

And he believes children should spend more time in the physical world and less time wrapped up in the virtual world of games.

The Mario Kart franchise has sold more than 11.1 million games in the United States alone. Mario Kart DS offers racers more than 30 courses, including classic tracks from Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart: Super Circuit and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Favorite Nintendo characters cruise in dozens of classic and custom karts as they use weapons like bananas, bombs, lightning and squid ink to gain a competitive advantage.

When racing using a wireless local area connection, up to eight players can play, even if only one of them has a Mario Kart DS game card. When using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, up to four players across the world can join a race. Friends share their DS Friend Code to find one another online using their friend roster.

Outside the home, when a user brings a Nintendo DS unit and a Wi-Fi-enabled game into a Wayport-enabled McDonald's restaurant locations, the user simply launches the game in Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection mode. No setup is required.

The final shipment of the US Consoles on the 22nd is 1,098,200.

Microsoft plans on selling 4 million 360's within the next 5 months worldwide.

There are currently 2,190,876 accesories being shipped on the 22nd to the US

There are currently 29 Games that will be available BEFORE the end of the 2005

There are current plans for sequels to NEW franchises that arent even out on the 360 yet.

Microsoft plan on expanding there Xbox Live user base to 14 million users by the end of the 360 lifespan.

What's really intriguing about this (other than we now have a numerical value for how many people are going to be riding the short bus home from Best Buy) is the number of accessories. How many accessories do YOU want for your 360? At minimum I'm buying an extra controller, a Charge and Play pack, and two rechargeable batteries. That's four.

What's two million divided by one million? Two. Is four more than two? Yes.

The rumors, apparently, are true. According to retailers in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Miami and Houston, there will be mass shortage of Xbox 360 units on the targeted launch date of November 22. IGN contacted dozens of stores around the country, including Gamestop, EB Games, Electronics Boutique, Target and Walmart. One short-tempered clerk at a Gamestop in New York estimated that Xbox 360 units will not be available for walk-in customers until April. That's right, April.

April is obviously the worst-case scenario, but every retailer we spoke with that accepted preorders estimated that walk-in customers will have to wait until January for their new system. And since none of those retailers are accepting any more preorders, there may be a lot of disappointed little gamers this Christmas.

Developed by Avalanche, 25 To Life is a third-person shooter set in modern urban streets. You'll choose to play either cops or criminals to either infiltrate a drug lord's inner sanctum, or bust out of jail and fight your way up the ranks of the underground.

Gangster shooter Roll Call has been renamed and re-dated this week, publisher Eidos Interactive has announced. Roll Call will from henceforth be known as Zero Tolerance -- City Under Fire, and will now be released in the second-quarter of 2006 (sometime between spring and early summer, broadly speaking). This new date serves Europe, and possibly other PAL regions, whilst the publisher has yet to announce plans for North America. The game is still being created for the Xbox and the PS2, with Rocksteady Studios of London developing this latest gang-land action title.

By the end of the year, the original soundtracks from games such as "Medal of Honor," "SSX" and "The Sims" will be available to purchase for cell phones and MP3 players through digital stores such as AOL Music, iTunes, MSN, Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music.

The eclectic lineup will include Just Blaze's beats from "NBA Live 2004," Paul Oakenfold's score for "GoldenEye" and old-school tracks from the "Command and Conquer" games. EA won't be selling music licensed for the company's hit games, instead offering only material commissioned specifically for the titles (so don't expect Green Day's "America Idiot" from last year's "Madden").

According to EA, the move is being made because the company realizes gamers strongly identify with the scores and jingles that reverberate from their gaming systems. "What was once two notes from 'Jaws' and seven notes from 'Star Wars' is now another's 'Sims' theme or 'Medal of Honor' theme," said Steve Schnur, Executive of Music and Music Marketing at EA.

The genre began in earnest in 1993 with the release of Nintendo's franchise game, "Super Mario Bros."

I wasted much of my youth in my parents' basement controlling this pudgy plumber as he ran around and jumped over evil turtles. And I waited in a near-frenzy for "Super Mario Bros. 2" (still quite possibly the best Christmas present I've ever received).

But when the movie was released, I couldn't understand how any studio exec could think that this video game would hold an audience's attention for 90 minutes. And to do it live action. And to cast Dennis Hooper as something called "King Koopa."

Back in 1993, Miramax Home Entertainment released the Super Mario Brothers movie, a $42 million dollar budget movie. However, game fans all around did not receive it well. The movie was absolutely nothing like the game, other than the fact it had the characters. By the end of it's time in theaters, it had only grossed $20 million dollars, about half of what it cost to make it. While many people liked it, many people regarded the movie as trash and a complete upset. The movie's failure was most likely due to it not being similar the game.

Capping off a November of expanded horizons that has him making his big-screen acting debut, 50 Cent will also star in his own video game. "50 Cent: Bulletproof" for PlayStation 2 and Xbox will let players blast bullets through the streets of New York, with G-Unit at their side. Written by Terry Winter, whose credits include "The Sopranos," "Bulletproof" depicts what the game's creators say is a scenario that could have played out if 50 hadn't gotten into music. The action is full of enough brutal kills that the game easily racked up an M rating.

But aside from letting players indulge 50 in his less gentle side, the game will serve as the closest thing 50 has released to a box set. Topped with three tracks recorded exclusively for the game, "Bulletproof" will also include 10 exclusive remixes to songs that have only appeared on 50's mixtapes. Also in the game are songs from 50's official albums and more than a dozen 50 and G-Unit videos.

The official track count is 53 songs from 50, 20 from G-Unit, 10 from Lloyd Banks, 10 from Young Buck and four from Tony Yayo, plus 47 tracks from DJ Sha Money XL and 15 videos from 50 and G-Unit. The entire collection is available to players at any point in the game; all gamers have to do is have 50 access his G-Pod.

Like its predecessor, RHEM 2 features non-linear gameplay, non-violent story, and mind-bending puzzles. The game is set as a direct sequel in story and gameplay to RHEM. Having discovered entry to a hidden underground city, you will venture ever deeper as you explore a maze of clandestine caves, secret rooms, and intricate walkways, tunnels and water systems. As you marvel at beautifully detailed environments and solve clever puzzles, you must search for an enigmatic artifact that must be found and photographed before you return to the surface.

The puzzles are some of the most challenging ones ever put into a computer game. You have to collect data from all over your environment before you can even hope to solve anything, then you have to figure out what information goes with what puzzle, and how that information is used. You will need to make copious notes in order to keep things straight ? by the time I got done, the five or so sheets of paper I used started to look like something out of 'A Beautiful Mind.'

Sean Kang, Director of Strategy, the man responsible for identifying social and cultural trends for NCsoft Europe says, "Online games have thriving social communities, and it's only natural that they, as gamers, should follow similar trends to followers of other forms of media. Films, videogames, comic books, all borrow from each other and it's often the same audience being entertained. And right now, villains are in."

Eurogamer editor Kristan Reed says, "There's an inherently dark side to even the godliest soul. Videogames give us the chance to indulge in the sinister glamour of playing the bad guy - and all without fear of being locked up for it. Games have definitely become darker over the years, and some of the most popular titles have been the ones that have recognized that we all love playing the villain."

Vivendi Universal Vice President Greg Goodrich had a humorous take on the issue: "I guess it all depends on the genre you are speaking of and your definition of a 'villain'. In Star Wars I like to play as 'The Empire'. In Warcraft I prefer 'The Horde', both villainous factions. Obviously, our societal limitations do not allow me to blow up a planet nor do they allow me to hunt Night Elves with extreme prejudice, so glorifying these activities in a video game should not make the socially conscious too upset. Games to me have always been about escaping into a world that I could not otherwise be an active participant. They are fun because my normal daily activities do not include running from the police, jumping from buildings, or casting fire bolts from the tips of my fingers. From the most basic level, this is why we have fun playing games. We are empowered with abilities we would not normally have. If we were limited to paintballs, speed limits and flag football, we would not have the desire to play them virtually. However, there is one case example that I know of in gaming that glorifies villainous activities which should neither be glorified nor condoned. You should absolutely not be allowed to play The Yankees in MVP Baseball."