The weekly roundup of everything Gamecube.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the digest. It's been a busy week in Nintendo-land, so we'd best get started, then...

Nintendo Dream, the normally-reliable Japanese Nintendo magazine, have reported some juicy titbits of information for us.

Nintendo are apparently planning to release more NES Gameboy Advance games after the big success of the Famicom Mini Series in Japan. Well, that's hardly a surprise, given the success of the originals. Next, they reported that Mario Tennis is progressing very well but Nintendo still won't announce a release date for the title. Given the extraordinary length of development time afforded to it, we've very high expectations for this one. Finally, the magazine went on to say that Animal Crossing 2 and the sequel to Wind Waker are well into development, and that official announcements are on the horizon for both titles.

The awards season is still in full swing, as we all know. What you mightn't know is that last week there was another ceremony, called the AIAS awards (no, I haven't heard of it either). Anyway, Prince of Persia swept the board in much the same way Lord of the Rings did in that other awards ceremony last week. Nintendo were left out in the cold to a surprising degree- Metroid and Mario Kart were comprehensively ignored, while the deeply average Need for Speed Underground took the best racing game crown. Fix! , we say.

Cube-Europe, in association with famed importer Lik-Sang are running a Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes competition at the moment. We've got a veritable mountain of MGS stuff to give away� According to Reuters, the GameCube has all but sold out in the United States. The situation is a complete reversal to last year, when Nintendo infamously stopped production of the GameCube due to slack sales. "Store shelves are just running very dry," Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan told Reuters. "I'd say about 50 percent of our stores are out." Perrin assured Reuters that Nintendo has boosted its manufacturing plant in Japan to full capacity to meet the demand in North America.

Kaplan also said that January hardware sales were up 60 percent year-over-year, while January software sales were up 101 percent.

In a separate interview, Kaplan talked about online gaming. No prizes for guessing what she said...

Kaplin stated, "I think from where we stand it looks to us that it's going to be fairly niche for a long time," he continued, "I think some of our interests instead lie in building community on the wireless play front as opposed to the online one."

Haven't I heard that one a million times before?

Nintendo's president, the affable Satoru Iwata, also spoke some more about the company's upcoming DS handheld. He confirmed that the console would have a short-range wireless networking capability. Here's what he had to say...

"The innovative machine has a short-range networking capability. It will introduce a refreshing new experience if it's played by one person alone, but we're hoping that it will be even more fun when it's played with multiple [people]" said Iwata about the Nintendo DS.

After re-stating that the Nintendo DS will be innovative but not a huge seller he went on to discuss his view on the games industry.

"Games have come to a dead end. Creating complicated games with advanced graphics used to be the golden principle that led to success, but it is no longer working", commented Iwata., for the umpteenth time "The biggest problem is that [developers] need to satisfy both the core gamers that want games with more volume and complexity, while they also need to satisfy average users that doesn't have as much knowledge about games. The situation right now is that even if the developers work a hundred times harder, they can forget about selling a hundred times more units since it's difficult for them to even reach the status quo. It's obvious that there's no future to gaming if we continue to run on this principle that wastes time and energy [in development]. Nintendo is called 'conservative' and 'quiet' nowadays, so we hope to show our existence as an innovator to new styles of entertainment.

"It is a 'unique' machine, so not everybody will understand it right away. There might only be 10 to 15 people applauding during its unveiling at the E3, but they'll understand it once they touch it. At the least, it should serve as a hint towards [our] next-generation console."

In other news, Japanese hit Donkey Konga will apparently be winging its way to America this July, for the rather reasonable price of 50 dollars, including the drums. No news yet on a European launch, but we're confident it's on the way. Pokemon Colosseum, meanwhile, has been confirmed for a May 14th European launch. In other release news, Hitman: Contracts, the hugely promising stealth-'em up, is definitely not coming to the GameCube.

Dissapointing, especially considering the excellence of the second game� Well, that's all we've time for this week. I'll be away next week, so I'll be leaving you in the capable hands of Conor for one week only. In the meantime, I'm preparing a massive in-depth review of the long-awaited Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Check back for the verdict on the eve of the game's European launch on Friday. Until then,

�dh m�r,

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