Trevelyan writes "GamesIndustry.biz has a story which claims that Electronic Arts is going to return to the 1995 movie GoldenEye for its next James Bond 007 game - presumably hoping that some of the high regard for Rare's brilliant GoldenEye game on the N64 will rub off on the series. However, according to the story, EA won't be getting the original GoldenEye team (who left Rare and are now known as Free Radical Design, creators of the Timesplitters series) to work on the game, even though it has a publishing deal with them... The prospect of a new GoldenEye could be mouth-watering for action fans, but not giving the license back to the people who made the original game seems like a completely wasted opportunity..." Oddly enough, we referenced the original N64 GoldenEye title just yesterday.

Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing the potential lure of the episodic videogame. The writer ruminates: "Imagine your favorite first-person shooter, role-playing game, or action adventure game. Now imagine that game broken up into one- to two-hour sequences. Now imagine that the first part was free and subsequent parts were delivered to you automatically for five bucks a pop, each month. Would you take the bait?" He suggests this approach could work particularly well for "...a lot of people out there who want to be gamers but don't want to make the commitment of living the 'gamer lifestyle' of having their entire existence revolve around their hobby." Could you see yourself buying into episodic gaming?

Zenin writes "Microsoft has graciously released the source code to Allegiance for free on their site. Allegiance was released back in 2000, and rated the 'Best Game No One Played' by GameSpot - this little- known multiplayer space-combat/team-RTS was pretty innovative, yet never took off in the mainstream. Nevertheless it quickly developed a fanatical following - a dedicated community who reverse engineered the game to enable complete mods, expand server power, and much more. A million thanks to Joel 'solap' Dehlin and the rest of the Allegiance development team for making this happen!"

Datasage writes "Announced today on the UbiSoft community boards. Uru Live, the online part of Cyan's PC title Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, will be closing down. They were not able to get enough subscribers (even within the free Beta) to sustain the world. Instead Cyan has refocused its efforts, and will be putting out expansion packs for Uru, the first of which, due out a couple months, will be freely downloadable." Andrew Plotkin has written an informative FAQ regarding Uru Live, explaining the now defunct collaborative online part of this single-player PC game from the Myst creators.

Thanks to The Olympian for its feature on a new U.S. Army combat unit's exercises, as recorded for free PC game America's Army. The newly-launched Stryker Brigade Combat Team was the focus of the research, and the article explains: "The game focused on infantry in the beginning. For the game to remain fresh and realistic, game designers expanded the 'America's Army' universe to include other specialties, such as combat medic and paratrooper." Although the title has been linked with Army recruiting success in the past, a spokesperson for the game plays this down, saying that "it's a 'happy byproduct' if the game draws more young people to the recruiting office", and arguing: "That's not what we're about... We're about creating awareness and strategic communication about what the Army is about."

DeadBugs writes "According to Blue's News: 'The public source code for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is now available from id Software, Activision, and Splash Damage (the developer working on Doom 3's multiplayer content), offering modification authors the resources to create mods for the free multiplayer shooter.' First they release a free game, and now free source code for it - there are download links at Splash Damage's files section."

migstradamus writes "Anyone out there remember the BBC microcomputer? If so you probably remember the puzzle game Repton, too. ChessBase.com has a charming story about how a 3-year-old was clearly better at any computer game than the newly crowned World Chess Champion, including Repton, back in 1985. This defeat led Garry Kasparov to import Atari computers to Russia! The kid who beat him is now a 21-year-old programmer and has recreated the legendary game for free download. There's been plenty of feedback for the officially-sanctioned mini-remake, and on Jan. 21 they will release a super-hard level as part of a contest." It's worth noting that Repton has also been commercially re-released for Pocket PC and Java-enabled phones, as well as a full PC version from the original makers, Superior Software.

brent_linux writes "Red VS Blue, winner of several awards, has started up their second season. If you missed their first season you can pick up the DVD from their online store. To view the high quality videos you have to donate money to the cause, but like before you can view the lower quality ones for free."

Thanks to Invisible City for its newly posted, freely distributable and printable 'Zombie Rancher' boardgame, allowing prospective players to print out the game board and rules to this "post-zombie apocalypse game of entrepreneurism for two or four players." The object of this multiplayer game is "..to capture the finest, tastiest, and best-aged zombies and render them into juicy steaks and fillets", and the creator explains how a visit to a steakhouse helped him come up with the concept: "The ad copy of Texas Land and Cattle's menu brags about how their steaks are aged for two weeks to make them tenderer. This is because the bacteria in the meat pre-digests it a bit before you eat it... putting two and two together, a zombie steak could, ostensibly, be both tender (from being in a dead body) and hearty (from all that exercise.)"

PDHoss writes "NYTimes.com has a story on freedom of expression as it applies to virtual communities, specifically 'The Sims Online.' How should issues of free speech, community standards, and censorship be addressed in the virtual world (given that we can barely agree on those issues in meatspace)?" There's also a story in the Independent, and we've mentioned this guy before.

Thanks to Wired News for their story revealing that fans of the Burning Man Festival have made a 3D version of the festival in Microsoft's Flight Simulator. According to the official Virtual Playa site, which houses this free add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 and 2004, the project "is intended to be an open-ended project that invites participation at various levels... It can be downloaded for home use... or even be used as a design tool for... an artist wishing to show a preview of an installation before it ever gets to Black Rock City." The Wired article also notes that the creator "has built in several Burning Man-esque flying experiences [to Virtual Playa], among them a yellow submarine, a motorized couch and a rainbow-colored ultralight."

wraggster writes "The helpful people over at EAGB have done a great review of a new third-party GBA SP Movie Player Adapter. According to the review: 'This adapter... uses Compact Flash Cards (CF)... [and] comes with its own encoder software which gives the user free reign to encode any movie or music he wants.' They note the 'steep learning curve', and a 'rudimentary' feature set, but conclude: 'nothing beats that wow! factor when you see your first movie playing on the GBA/SP'." This is an interesting alternative to the recently announced U.S. and already-released Japanese GBA movie players, both of which restrict the movie content you can put on your Game Boy in some way.

wraggster writes "Sega's Dreamcast might have succumbed to a premature death as a mainstream commercial console, but due to the efforts of the amateur and hobbyist fans of the Dreamcast, the Dreamcast Homebrew site, now freshly redesigned, has over 200 free and legal games, demos and multimedia software for use with the Dreamcast. From DC Movie Player through Robotfindskitten, there's still a multitude of good free DC software out there."

Thanks to several readers for pointing to the download section on the official Rockstar Games site, where they've just released full PC title Wild Metal (also sometimes known as Wild Metal Country) for free download. The page explains: "Another vintage title from Rockstar North, then known as DMA Design, Wild Metal (1999) is a 3D strategic vehicular combat game." The game originally debuted on the Sega Dreamcast, with the PC version getting a limited release, and a C+VG review mentions "this is a good [LAN-specific?] multiplayer game... lots of tanks, lots of ammo, lots of big explosions." The original, top-down view Grand Theft Auto is also available for download on the site.

incognitius writes "As sometimes happens, a mainstream publication (the New York Times Magazine, free reg. required) has a feature article on videogames written by a non-gamer. The piece, called 'Playing Mogul', discusses how and why video games conquered music, TV and the movies to become America's pop culture of choice. The article offers some interesting insights into the future of the industry, though it's pretty incompetent in places. It also gives one a good idea for what Atari is doing these days. Worth a read, especially to see what millions of non-gamers will read next Sunday morning." Particularly notable is Atari boss Bruno Bonnell's turning down of a game featuring "a major hip-hop artist" which it's claimed "would net Atari many millions of dollars" because it "lacks an ethical dimension."

Thanks to 1UP for their article revealing the popular GameBoy Advance titles Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire have a time-unlocked glitch that's just been activated in Japan, since the game has features based on how long it's been played, and Nintendo have discovered there's "...an issue with its internal clock that can disable certain gameplay systems after a year's worth of playtime." Specifically, you can plant trees in-game which "eventually bear fruit, which you then feed to your pet monsters to cause them to evolve in useful and interesting ways." Unfortunately, after a year from the game's start date, "those trees are unable to grow." Nintendo has "...invited Japanese players to bring or send their game cartridges to one of many service centers around the country. The service centers will apply a patch that corrects the issue and return the fixed copy of the game free of charge." Finally, Nintendo of America have commented "The earliest the issue could appear [in the U.S.] is March 2004, which is the one year anniversary of the first sale in North America."

Cobol Junky writes "Ultimate Baseball Online, a game claiming to be the first MMOSG (massively multiplayer online sports game) has recently transitioned into free Beta status. Each player's character takes a position on the baseball field, and can improve their skills and stats by gaining experience, just like a regular MMORPG. UBO is being created by NetAmin, the creators of an scrapped MMORPG called Fallen Age." This title has been in development for a while, and a GameSpot preview reveals more, but what other genres will get tarred by the massively multiplayer brush before long?

Thanks to GameSpot for pointing out that Xbox action title MechAssault has debuted new downloadable Xbox Live content, in the form of "two new multiplayer game types and three new multiplayer maps", but "the new game content and maps will set you back $4.99... the first time that Microsoft has charged... for new, downloadable [MechAssault] content." Elsewhere, EuroGamer has debuted an editorial on this move, suggesting that "if you think about it, premium content could pose a serious threat", seeing many good facets to this kind of add-on, but also worrying that "greedy corporations" might "lock up certain elements of a game and open them up 'for free!' at a later date in an act of faux-generosity", and arguing Microsoft could make it "...an absolute that downloadable content should only ever be content developed post-release."

Time Doctor writes "Linux and Mac gamers will be happy to hear that America's Army 2.0 is out of private beta, and available via mirrors at 3DGamers and HappyPuppy, among others. See this news post on the AA site for the gameplay changes." We covered the release of the Windows version of AA 2.0 a couple of weeks back, as this free FPS recruiting tool continues toward its goal of "providing civilians with an inside perspective and a virtual role in today's premiere land force, the U.S. Army."

Thanks to Bungie.net for their feature commemorating the second anniversary of Halo's Xbox debut. The piece starts: "What started life as a pseudo real-time-strategy game for the Apple Mac has turned into the number-one-selling Xbox game of all time and a driving force behind much of the console's overall success", and goes on to elicit Ed Fries of Microsoft's remembrances of the scary moments ("Our first E3 press event went REALLY bad. The Xbox didn't even power up. Halo was the grand finale and we had some serious framerate issues and hiccups"), and the Bungie developers, fans and media's favorite anecdotes ("Halo rage is a beautiful thing. My plaster walls are free from damage now, but the amount of controllers I go through is atrocious.")