Addressing consumer demand for increased audio realism in gaming environments, Analog Devices today announced a new version of its SoundMAX Audio Rendering Technology Toolkit (SMartTools) - which now offers significantly improved cross-platform output capability and a more intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to game audio developers.

Ubi Soft Entertainment, one of the world's largest video game publishers, today announced that Dark Planet: Battle for Natrolis, its futuristic Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game has shipped to U.S. retail stores with an MSRP of $39.99

As promised last night, the demo from Freedom Force, Irrational Game's now-gold superhero game, is now available for download from FilePlanet (registration required). The demo is available as a large version (87.4 MB) and a smaller version (56.1 MB), the difference between the two being that the larger version includes the music.

NVIDIA's Drivers Page now offers new version 28.32 "Detonator XP" drivers for Windows 95/98/Me, Windows XP/2000, and Windows NT (thanks Blues). As is always the case with these reference drivers, no technical support is offered, as they are to be used at your own risk.

Forget the sun block next summer - it looks like being a mud-spattered June for Gameboy Advance/PS2 gamers. Leading interactive games publisher, Infogrames, has announced that it's driving the hugely successful V-Rally brand out of the garage and onto Gameboy Advance/PS2 in June 2002; and with 4 million units already sold in the series, it's a welcome return for one of the most realistic rally games yet seen.

Mindscape is proud to announce an exclusive publishing agreement with Project 3 Interactive for the adventure game ’Schizm: Mysterious Journey’ on DVD-Rom and PC CD-Rom. The popular adventure game has already been launched as localised versions across Europe and the agreement with Mindscape secures distribution of the English version in the UK and Ireland.

A new Lara Croft for a new generation. We already told you some preliminary facts about yesterday and today Eidos Interactive and Core Design officially announce the return of the world’s most famous video game character in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. The game will be released on PlayStation 2 and PC towards the end of 2002. Of course we added some screens for all you Lara fans out there to drool over and a photo of the official Lara model, Dutch beauty Jill De Jong.... boy oh boy ;)

Update: We just added 15 extra new screens to the article.. Enjoy!

History Patch, patched all versions of the settlers IV to newest version 1090. This SETTLERS IV improves some gameplay and balance issues, costs of certain trojan resources and some "userfriendly" interface fixes. Grab the patch HERE!!

Are you one of the many people eagerly awaiting the BATTLE REALMS World Editor? You are an inspired map designer? Then the next BATTLE REALMS Contest comes as a gift from heaven! In two weeks the large Mapcontest for Ed Del Castillo's popular real time strategy game will kick off. More details on the conditions of participation are given on the official BATTLE REALMS page. Do not delay, grab the Battle Pack 2 and start experimenting with the high performance World Editor NOW.

Midway Sports Asylum, the sports brand of leading software industry publisher and developer Midway Games Inc., announced today that RedCardTM Soccer, an 11-on-11 (including goalies) adrenaline-style soccer game is in development for next-generation systems. RedCard Soccer is scheduled to ship in spring 2002. In case you did not see the massively spread screens before .. here's ohh an odd 100 or so to go showing off players, ninja's, monkey's and all kinds of weird stuff.