SicariusMan sent us a CNN story that talks about australia upholding the ban on GTA3. It's been mentioned here before, but its interesting that its gonna stick. GTA3 really is perhaps the best PS2 game out in recent memory. I'm having a PS2 resurgance of late, beating Klonoa2, MGS2, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and getting hooked on Jak and Daxter and Frequency. And GTA3 is easily among the best of PS2 games. Sorry .au! At least they probably won't ban FFX!

Mortin writes "Icrontic.com has ripped apart a Nintendo GameCube. They document the entire procedure with a myriad of pictures. It's neat to see how clearly the Xbox and GameCube differ in respect to physical hardware." Luigi's mansion looks cool. The Star Wars game wasn't very fun. But the cube is so tiny, it's cute!

david.given writes: "The results of the annual text adventure game competition have been posted (remember when the competition started? You've played them, you've voted for them, now see who won. Much kudos go to Jon Ingold, whose game "All Roads" placed first. As someone who didn't come first (33rd, actually) but had a lot of fun anyway, let me extend my warmest thanks and gratitude to everyone who took part. Without you, none of this would be possible."

A few weeks ago, you asked Kent M. Pitman about Lisp, Scheme, standards, and other things -- He's answered your questions below, at length. At such length, in fact, that only the first eleven of his answers are shown below -- expect more shortly! Thanks, Kent.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

Here we go, answer to Your Questions from Wil Wheaton. Share and Enjoy! A big thanks to Wil for taking the time to answer so many of our questions.

psxndc writes: "Nintendo has set up "Cube Clubs" at various US cities that allow you to go in and play (mainly first party) Game Cube games. Cube Clubs exist in Boston, San Francisco and Minneapolis, with plans to run in a total of 12 cities. I went to the Boston one today. Most games were disappointing, but Rogue Leader and suprisingly Luigi's Mansion were a lot of fun. More info on Cube.ign.com. A recap of the SF one is also there." Anyone else with first-hand reactions from this?

Screenshots of the recently released OpenOffice, another appeal for old Usenet archives, a possibly true account of the One True Conspiracy, and Yes, a way for you to send messages of (sympathy? rage? hope?) to sojourners at MIT while they study for exams. All below in tonight's episode of Slashback.

Long-suffering Slashdot reader WrinkledShirt contributes this review of John Hall's Programming Linux Games, and lays out the good and the bad in a book that's one of the few of its kind. More games are always good -- hopefully books like this one will spark some inspiration.

Joe writes: "Someone introduced me to a new game called Robocode and now I'm hooked as well as my 17 year old son. We are both learning Java while playing the game or I should say while building our Java robots. The game is setup to teach you how to handle events, how to create inner classes, and other Java techniques to build more sophisticated Java bots. I have a c++ background so I've been helping my son with his bots, but he's catching on very fast. It's turning out to be a cool and easy way to get the kid clued into programming and best of all its free." I'll bet if the little Logo turtles shot at each other, I would have had more fun programming as a kid.

Last week you asked Sam Lantinga , developer of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) about SDL and other issues related to gaming. He's responded with answers about the SL port to Sony Playstation, game audio, DirectX, his new job at Blizzard, and more. He even drops some hints about some interesting gaming developments to watch out for.

Craig Maloney writes the review below of Linux Game Programming. From the sound of it, there may be a considerable market need for more books on programming the fun stuff for GNU/Linux. This one may even suit your needs, but earns some harsh words from Craig.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is really a technological fairy tale, the story of some software that wanted to be real actors in a real movie. Not so fast. It would take a platoon of Blue Fairies to take code this far. I've never played the game, but it has to be way more fun than this movie. How sad that the first studio film ever with human leads played by non-actors is so lifeless and plastic. The voices are out-of-sync like those Japanese sci-fi movies. At least the film could have had the decency -- give Tomb Raider some credit here -- to hire a real actor and have a little fun with itself. Dr. Lara Croft understood what she was created for -- to kick a lot of butt. Dr. Aki Ross, played here by some code with too much lip balm, is more like Enya, a new age scientist whose weapons are dreams and wiggly spirits rather than guns and bombs. Bring noseplugs to this stinker. And don't worry about the ending being given away here. I couldn't tell you what it was if I wanted to.

Give director Simon West credit for navigating some tricky ground. Some movies have been greatly influenced by video games -- The Mummy's Return -- and still others were literal, and stinky spin-offs (Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Brothers for instance) but Tomb Raider is one of the most expensive, ambitious and closely watched of this new hybrid-cinematic format -- the game that not only inspires a movie but becomes one. Games have come a long way. The movie is perhaps too faithful to the game that inspired it, raising the question of whether games and films can really mix. And Angelina Jolie is stellar bungee-jumping in those silk pj's.

A lot of people ask me what I do in my free time, and the answer is simple: video games. Recently I was able to get my hands on the beta version of Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, and here's my first impressions of it. There's some spoilers in here, but not many. I really can't spoil that much anyway, since you can't beat the expansion without defeating Baal, which is kinda assumed since he's the only prime evil left after defeating Diablo. Who didn't see that one coming?

From the earliest screens I've seen from Shrek, I've been anticipating this film. Besides the unique computer animation that brings this film to life, it features Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow, and Cameron Diaz (See A Life Less Ordinary for a cool Diaz flick). But can it live up to the month long advertising blitz that has been oozing from every flat surface for the last month? Or will it just be a big pile of crap. Well I was there opening night, and you can read my review, complete with minimal spoilers and bad jokes.

Note: Troubled dot-commer Kurt Gray wrote this eloquent and tragic story -- a story all too typical in today's troubled tech market, when even the best ideas can be swept aside by a market that just isn't ready for them. Probably more than a handful of you can sympathize with the havoc that an economic downturn can wreak on what just a few months ago might have been wild success stories.

The war on drugs is expensive, and, like most wars, deadly. But it looks like it isn't going to go away any time soon. With that as a given, why not let those who want to wage war on drugs do it in an online gaming environment? The cost of setting up the servers for "Drug Czar" would be lots less than the cost of all those street arrests, border interdictions, and air intercept missions in Peru and Colombia. And, best of all, no one would get hurt.

Jonathan J. writes "Back in 1987 an all-time classic RPG game came out called Dungeon Master. It defined gui for that type of rpg to this day. It's still fun to play. Chaos Strikes back (1989) was the first sequel, and D.M. 2 came out in 1995 (dm2 was the least exciting, for me). There are a lot of very loyal fans of the first two, like myself. Please announce that Dungeon Master Java is out, it's free! The graphics are greatly improved and it's a whole new game with new content! There is also a level editor included. For more information about the game check the Dungeon Master Encyclopedia website " I can distinctly remember many hour spent playing this game in the basement of my friend's house - in between Alamaze and Monster Island - 'course I'm still playing the latter two, so it might be time to play the former again as well.

Slashback is back this evening with more on censorship down under, games that you'll brag to your grandchildren you were glad to be beaten with a hot iron while playing, and more. Enjoy with care.