Your resident weekly digester (that's me) is back after Conor's temporary stand-in job. Which he did sublimely, as ever.

Better get stuck into this weeks news, then. And what a week it was. We've had new competitions, more merger talk, a slew of new games announced, yet more online rumours, website closures, Capcom director's stepping down- but best of all- real, proper images of Mario Kart for GameCube! No doubt you've pored over the few screenshots we've received with a critical eye. Might as well through in my own tuppence worth on the issue. Firstly, the graphics. Its eminently clear that Nintendo aren't aiming for new heights of graphical excellence here, lets be clear about that. One might say that the graphics have hardly evolved from the excellent N64 version. However, despite not boasting hyper-detail, the courses and characters are clear and crisp.

Moreover, the whole package, even from these screenshots (which are quite possibly months old) screams fun at 150 decibels. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Is the official title. Its also the first Mario Kart game to feature two characters in each kart- one controls the weapons, and one drives. The possibilities for extreme craziness are almost too great to comprehend- the news that each character will have specific abilities is also very welcome. Its something I have always personally wished the Mario Kart series would adopt. Character-wise, there are a couple of interesting additions. Along with the usual suspects of Mario, Peach and Luigi et al, both Donkey and Diddy Kong return to the fray- sporting, significantly, the same character design as ever. Why is this important? It was Rare who fashioned Diddy and Donkey to look as they do now. Clearly, Rare's relations with Ninty were sufficiently warm to allow them to use the likenesses they developed. Which is good.

Obviously, much more of this will be shown at E3- after all, Nintendo has already admitted the game has been localized to English, so development is either finished or approaching completion. Expect playable, maybe even finished code at E3. C-E will, naturally, be among the first to know. Some disheartening news, next. The company CUBE Magazine has trumpeted as being possibly the world's most important developer as recently as this month, Capcom, has suffered another crippling blow.

Shinji Mikami, head of Production Studio 4 (that's the GC-exclusive one, people) has stepped down from his position as director. He will continue on as producer though- in a more limited capacity to before, presumably. Equally worrying is the closure of Production Studio 4's website. Dissapointing sales of Mikami's latest project, P.N.03 could well be a factor. Last week, Capcom announced that 18 games would be canned. Most of these were for the Game Boy Advance. As Conor said last week, pray that Viewtiful Joe won't be affected by all of this. Its exactly the sort of game the industry needs.

Better news is that Nintendo Europe will publish three Final Fantasy games in Europe this year: The GC epic Crystal Chronicles which launches shortly in Japan; FF Tactics Advance which has already gone down a storm in the land of the rising sun; and Sword of Mana, a Game Boy Advance RPG. Not much is known of the latter, but if its anything like the stupendously good Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo (in my opinion one of the finest games ever made) then it'll be a must-have. Other interesting news this month includes Free Radical's confirmation that they are developing a new GC game. It'll be a third person adventure with 'a bit of stealth'. FRD are promising it'll be a 'radical' (oh, my sides) departure from their successful Timesplitters series. Definitely one to watch.

EA have confirmed that the third part of Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King will make a GC appearance. It will be a third person adventure- and this time Frodo will be a playable character. In fact, EA's press release indicates a massive departure from The Two Tower's combat style. A more cerebral experience is promised. Doesn't sound bad at all. We'll be keeping a beady eye on this one.

Make sure you visit the Zelda Fan Hunt competition- copies of Nintendo's latest magnum opus are up for grabs. Aaand finally, now for something a little different. In a spot of DIY inspiration today, I made a Cube-Europe T-Shirt, sporting everybody's favourite bounty hunter, Samus Aran. Check it out:

It's that time of the week again, readers. Time to go our separate ways, that is. Well, until next Friday.

Mark Cullinane
[email protected]