Bond, James Bond, has been represented in novels and films for over four decades and several computer games have been made from the films. Electronic Arts are creating a new Bond specifically for the console market, neither based on a film or a book, using the heritage built up over the last 40 years. Previous Bond games have been hit and miss, GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 is considered an all-time classic whereas Tomorrow Never Dies on the PlayStation was mediocre. EA also used the license to produce...

The thought of the seminal classic Wave Race being revamped and updated for the Gamecube is an enticing one. For many, Wave Race on the Nintendo 64 was one of the console's most glittering moments, combining sublime handling with expertly realised water physics and rendering which even to this day have not been beaten. The Gamecube update comes in the form of Wave Race Blue Storm, and whilst it once again raises the benchmark for its supreme water design, the same cannot be said for other aspects...

Treasure continue their laudable campaign to preserve original thinking in gaming with this Dreamcast conversion of the 1999 N64 game Bakuretsu Muteki Bangioh. Not the kind of title which you would normally peg for a release outside Japan, it's one of very few opportunities which novelty-starved Western gamers have to experience the kind of games which the Japanese have always enjoyed, but have never been ported to other territories due to hesitant publishers' fears of poor sales. This is one of...

Vanillaware is best known for action games, at least in the West: among their games from other genres only Grim Grimoire is available outside Japan; Kumatanchi and Grand Knights History never got an official English version, although Xseed teased the latter back in 2012. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is another non-action game from Vanillaware, mixing point-and-click adventure with real time strategy. It is also the culmination of Vanillaware's nonlinear storytelling, with the largest cast of pr...

2019 has been a good year for BattleTech fans: the board game got a wildly successful Kickstarter for a full re-imagining of the Clan Invasion (a pivotal point in the BT universe), MechWarrior 5 will release in mid-December on PCs, and BattleTech (the turn-based strategy videogame) got two expansions to complement the first, released in late 2018. These three expansions are the focus of this review. But before diving into them, it must be said said that BattleTech (from now on, unless o...

Super Monkey Ball first hit the arcades in mid-2001. Created by Amusement Vision, headed by the charismatic Toshihiro Nagoshi. The game was originally scheduled as a Dreamcast title, however with its demise it was shifted over to Nintendo's Gamecube, and emerged as the first jewel in the fledgling consoles crown. The main premise of Monkey Ball is simple. There is no tactical espionage, twisty political trickery, frantic shoot em' up action or complex lists of combos.
Guide a small monke...

F1 racing has always found a natural home on the PC, due to various factors, one of which is the availability of suitable, albeit expensive driving control devices. Reproducing the level of control and sensitivity required for a great F1 game on a console becomes more difficult when the default control device is a joypad, with little more than a few millimetres of travel on any of the sticks or buttons. Serious F1 games require a range of movement large enough to allow small, accurate changes in...

ESPN International winter sports 2002 is one of a range of games released by Konami. ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is a sports channel in the USA, so a useful license for Konami. Released in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics on the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, Winter Sports 2002 fits in the narrow niche genre of the "joystick waggling, button mashing game". As is usual for this type of game, it only comes into its element when playing against friends. The competitive streak turns...

Konami came from nowhere in 1994 to steal a march in a genre once dominated by unforgettable names such as Kick Off, Sensible Soccer, and more recently FIFA, as well as numerous other gaming interpretations of the beautiful game. International Superstar Soccer (ISS) first appeared on the Super Famicom. Its success made Konami one of the most influential companies in the industry, and the franchise itself became a pioneering force in one of the most lucrative and technically challenging genres. ...

Nintendo's first real venture into the world of mature videogames is here after a long and painful wait. Under the watchful eyes of the Kyoto giant, Silicon Knights have developed a game that attempts to introduce a new slant on the rapidly expanding Survival Horror genre. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, to credit the games full, if somewhat rather clumsy title, moves away from the shocks of Biohazard and shifts more towards the psychological scares of Silent Hill.
Having started life ...