Some of you may remember me as the guy who used to write features on this site. Well after a long absence I can safely say that I am back with a new fortnightly feature which I will call Gary's Garden. So now when you come to www.cube-europe.com you will have two regular feature writers. This is an excellent set up and takes pressure of us both. Also Conar will give us a feature everynow and again to. Enough of all that however and lets get started

Since I last wrote here a lot has changed, in fact everything has changed. The Gamecube finally has been released in Europe but at a super cheap price (well in terms of a new console anyway), Microsoft has done a lot more poorly in Europe than I thought it would, so bad was the sales that they had to slash the price of the console. It look increasingly likely that Rare will go multiplatform. The official Nintendo magazine is now actually readable and on Friday we should finally get a Nintendo magazine that is "aimed at adults" (G Force). Heck even the Cube-Europe web site has changed. Oh what else oh yeah the Cube is now outselling the Xbox in America and take it from me by the end of next week the Xbox will be comftalbly in 3rd lace in terms of worldwide sales. Sega are making a Nintendo game (What the F) and now Namco are possibly making a Nintendo game. We are getting a wonderful Zelda compilation and the best news of all is that even if games don't get a European release then with the aid of a disc we will be able to play import games on our Cubes.

Now if others want to give you balanced views then damn they can give it but you can consider me a morale officer for the Cube masses. I really feel that there has never been a better time to be a Nintendo fan. However there is one bad sentence in that last paragraph and that was to do with Rare. At first I just thought that this Rare thing was utter bull but the more and more I hear the worse it sounds. I mean why on earth don't they just deny outright. If comments are ever made it's usually a vague answer. Also where was Donkey Kong Racing in the leaked pamphlets for E3, Rumour has it that Nintendo has insisted that all Nintendo characters be taken out of all Rare made games except for the almost finished Starfox adventures. Frankly I feel a little let down by Rare because they were nothing but another small Software company before Nintendo came along. However the positive side to this is that Nintendo own 49% of the company and as such will get almost half the companies profits from any game released on any console. Frankly I feel Rare are taking quite a risk if they loose all Nintendo characters then they are really going to have to make all there games less cute looking and lets be honest what would you rather buy Banjo racing or Donkey Kong racing. I can understand why Rare would want to go multi format but I think that they will live to regret loosing the friendship of Nintendo. Of course I could be wrong and Rare might not go multi format at all.

Random thoughts

-I read the top 50 N64 games feature with interest but where oh where was Mario Golf. Mario Golf was an amazing single player game as well as an excellent multiplayer game (the mini golf was great fun when played with friends)

-While I will comment more fully on the magazines when the new look NGC is released I have to say that the standards have increased a lot since I last looked.

-Great news about Datel releasing this disc that will let you play US games on your PAL Cubes. I really can't stress how happy I am about this and PAL gamers everywhere should rejoice

-Is anyone as surprised as me that Sega are making F Zero for the arcades?

-I picked up a Dreamcast fairly recently and it is a superb console with some really great games. You can get them for �20 at Game.

-A belated Happy Birthday to Tim, hope the day went well.

-Lastly keep checking the site for news in the run up to E3 because there will be a lot of it!!

Take care,

Gary Samaden