Sega's ailing Dreamcast system has so far proven to be rather difficult to emulate, until now. In the early Dreamcast days there were many emulators around, that either proved fake or couldn't emulate the system to the degree of playing commercial games on it. Chankast is the newest emulator to be released that actually works on commercial games.

Initial reports are promising, although improvements can be made to speed and image clarity. For pure gaming fun, grab a arcade style joystick and a copy of Street Fighter III: Third Strike and pray to god that online play is released in a later version. Check out the Chanka website here.

Recent comments from Nintendo's boss have caused Sydrik to once again put fingers to keys. Check out his new column.

Several sites have announced the official release date for Doom 3 as June 14. The date has apparently been confirmed by Activison UK, but Activison Germany have denied this release date.

The story seems to stem from an article in German magazine PC Action, and a post of Stern ShortNews is the source of most reports.

Along with this piece of news is word of the price: €50. If true, this would make Doom 3 one of the most expensive games to hit the shelves.

Amazon UK still have the game listed for a September 24 release (at £24.99 for the PC version and £29.99 for the Xbox version) and GAME UK have it listed at 'Q3-2004' for the PC and 'Q2-2004' for the Xbox (and at a higher price of £32.99, which is a saving of £7 from the recommended price!)

Amazon US oddly have it listed with a July 15 release date.

Digital Jesters have today announced that they are offering a free demo of the hotly anticipated online RTS Chaos League.

The game has been heralded as a whole new gaming experience by some sites and magazines and looks to be a real smash hit for the summer. The game uses RTS as a base genre and moulds it with a frantic and violent ball game. Add a little more violence and an online community, bake for about 40 minutes (the approx length of the download) and you have Chaos League.

Click on one of the following links to access the download:
Worth Playing
3d Gamers
Actiontrip

There are also other mirrors on the Chaos League website.

According to rumours posted over on Shacknews, there's trouble at the Austin, Texas-based Eidos-owned developer Ion Storm, responsible for Deus Ex and Thief: Deadliy Shadows, with reports that between 20 and 25 people have been laid off, and rumours that Warren Spector has also decided to leave.

A playable demo of Thief: Deadly Shadows for the PC has been released by Eidos. The demo is a hefty 450Mb in size, and mirrors are still thin on the ground. Head over to 3D Gamers for download links.

The forums over at Through the Looking Glass are also keeping a running track of current mirrors.

Deep Silver have announced Alexander the Great, a new 3D RTS/RPG game is currently in development at Meridian93 studios, and due for release in November.

"There is a huge amount of interest in classical history at the moment and this title is a beautiful 3D gaming experience, we think this will be a great success for us." Commented Craig McNichol, MD of KOCH Media.

TIGA have announced the The European Developers' Forum: The Interactive Entertainment Conference. This new European developer conference that will take place alongside the European Games Network between September 1 and September 3.

(article by Media Create)

And the followings are market summery for the reporting period:

Total sales for the TOP 100 this week amounts to approx. 770,000 units, which represents 172.82% of the total for the last week or increase of about 325,000 units over the last week. Though both new titles and old ones were not sold well last week, "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" and other new titles have released this week, so sales are getting better as to keep average. The second series of "Famicom Mini" have sold about 168,000 units including its 10 titles.

61.81% of the TOP 100 were new titles, which indicates their good showing.

According to a report on Tietoviikko (in Finnish), China has banned all online games - including mobile games - except those that have official permission from the Chinese Ministry of Culture.

We've not been able to confirm or deny this, and have not yet found any other source we can check except this one newspaper report.

Thanks to Strutsi for this rough translation:

China is banning networked games

China has banned its citizens from playing networked games played with a computer or a cell phone. Previously the state of China has taken care of the wellfare of its citizens by censoring Internet content.

So far, about 140 networked games have reached China. Now officials have reported they contain too much sex, violence and other elements hazardous to national security.

Online games are still allowed in principle, but each game requires a written consent from the Ministry of Culture before being allowed.

A short time ago, officials in China set up cameras in netcafes to enhance the monitoring of the users there. At the same time, use of netcafes was banned for people under the age of 16.

Those of you who visit us regularly may have noticed my tendancy to get a bit nostalgic at the mention of anything pre 1990: Well, I'm off again.

Twilight Games have today announced that they are creating a sequel to the original Space Taxi, cunningly entitled Space Taxi 2. The first Space Taxi was released on the C64 way back in 1984 and was a bit of a cult classic. This is the first sequel to it. Infact it made me so stupidly nostalgic I'm attempting to get a review copy, so watch this space (geddit?!)

In the meantime more information can be obtained by hopping over to the official website.