P L A Y S T A T I O N   2  /   P S O N E

- Bandai announced Mobile Suit Gundam Giren's Ambition: Independent War for PlayStation 2, the latest sequel to the popular Gundam simulation RPG, the game is scheduled for a spring release.

- Square announced that they have shipped 4 million units of their PlayStation 2 RPG Final Fantasy X worldwide. The game has sold approximately 2.48 million units in Japan, 1.3 million has been shipped in North America. In addition, Square has shipped 260,000 units of Final Fantasy X: International in Japan, which will go on sales on January 31. FFX: International will contain a new side-story called The Forever Nagi Festival, which takes place 2 years after the ending of FFX. The total sales of the Final Fantasy series has reached 38 million units worldwide.

- Sony announced that they will begin to sell the PlayStation 2 Linux Kits worldwide in May, for $199 US. The PS2 Linux kit will include a 40GB hard drive, 100 Base T Ethernet adaptor, USB Mouse & keyboard, Linux operating system, computer monitor adaptor, XFree86 3.3.6 with PS2 GS support and Gcc 2.95.2 and glibc 2.2.2 with VU assemblers. Sony mentioned that over 28,000 people have expressed interest in the Linux kit, Sony is hoping the Linux community to creat original content for the console system.

- Nec Interchannel has rescheduled the PlayStation 2 port of the love adventure game Kanon for release in Japan on February 28.

- Konami will release Beatmania 6th Mix + Core ReMix for PlayStation in Japan on January 31, for 5800 yen. The game will feature a total of 62 songs.

A R C A D E   /   M U L T I

- The Japan game magazine has recently conducted a survey to the game developers on the issue of online games:

1. Which console do you want to develop online games for?

• PlayStation 2 - 36%
• XBox - 31%
• GameCube - 9%
• Others - 14%
• No plan - 1%

2. Are you currently developing online games?

• Examining the development - 43.2%
• Currently under development - 22.4%
• Not under development - 17.2%
• Scheduled to develop - 8.6%
• No plans - 8.6%

Comments by various developers:

Enix - may consider porting PC online game titles to console system. As for an online version of Dragon Quest, Enix representative has no comment on it.

Square - the release date and price of Final Fantasy XI is still undecided. They are currently developing at least one other online title.

Bandai - Currently has no plans to port the PC online game Gundam Battle Online to console system.

From Software - Armored Core 3 will have online support

Genki - Shutokou Battle Online (Tokyo Xtreme Battle Online) is under development.

Arika - currently developing an online game for PS2.

Sony - examining possiblitiy of Everybody's Golf Online (Hot Shot Golf Online)

- Namco announced their arcade game lineup for the upcoming AOU Amusement Expo on February 23 - 24:

• Soul Calibur II - Namco has confirmed the arcade game will run on the System 246 system
• Heatchu (Big Hit) Professional Baseball 2002 - to be released by the end of March
• Panikuru Panekuru - a new action puzzle game
• Mazan - a NAMOI arcade game which uses sword type input device
• Alien Sniper - a new comical gun shooter
• Taikou no Tetsujin 3 - the 3rd installment of the popular Japanese drum music game

- Ecole announced a new Namoi arcade puzzle game called Musapey's Choco Marker, the rule of the game is simple, you have to control a monkey named Musapey in a 3D space, and try to place 3 or more chocolates of the same color in the field to make them extinguish. The game is currently under location test in Japan arcade.

- Konami announced that they will invest 315 million yen into Genki, in exchange of a 32.4% holding to the company. Genki is the developer of various popular titles such as the Tamamayu (Jade Cocoon) and Shutokou Battle (Tokyo Xtreme Racing) series.

- Sega will release Virtual On 4 Ver. 7.6 in arcade in February, this update will feature a more balanced basic system and 3 new playable mechs: MBV-747-A, MBV-747-F, and MBV-747-H. There are also new stages available for the versus mode.

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H A N D H E L D S

- Namco announced a new WonderSwan Color simulation RPG called Namco Super-Wars, scheduled to release in Japan on April 26. The game features a collection of classic Namco characters, including main characters from Dragon Spirits, Tower of Druaga, Wonder Momo, Apollon, Artemis, Dragon Valor, Adventure of Evildoer Kulle, Yenpin Kiyoshi.

- Digital Dreams will release a WonderSwan Color action shooting game called Run=Dim: Return to Earth in Japan on February 7, for 4950 yen. The game is based on the full 3D CG animated cartoon Run=Dim, the story takes place in 2052, there are a total of 6 stages, you can choose to play as a Moriguchi pilot (boarding machine Run=Dim) or the Asou plan (boarding machine I=RA).

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- Here are some new screens of Bandai's WonderSwan Color fighting game Kinnikuman II: World Dream Tag Match, scheduled to release in Japan on March 2, for 4800 yen. The game is composed of 3 game modes: Story, Versus, Tag Match Mode. There are 14 playable characters in the game, each has various special attacks; when you KO the opponent with special attack, there will be special finishing screen.

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- Tsunekaze Ishihara, the producer of the Pokemon series for GameBoy, announced that a new sequel of Pokemon for GameBoy Advance is planned for release in Japan in the 4th quarter of this year, the game will feature over 350 Pokemons, including new Pokemons in the upcoming movie. In addition, Nintendo announced the 5th Pokemon animated movie in Japan, called Pocket Monsters: Guardian God of the Water City Ratiasu & Ratiosu, which will be showed in Japan this summer, a Pikachu sub-movie called "Starry Sky of Pika Camp" will be showing along with the movie.

G A M E C U B E

- WebTech announced a new graphic tool OptPix iMageStudio 4.2 for Nintendo GameCube, scheduled to release in the market in February for 343,000 yen. This graphic tool greatly simplfy the making of S3TC texture and alpha channelling for GameCube. OptPix iMageStudio will run on the Windows platform, supporting Winodws 98 / Me / XP / NT4.0 / 2000.