Digital Mayhem, a division of Interplay Entertainment Corp., and Planet Moon Studios announced that their long awaited Action/Adventure game, Giants: Citizen Kabuto has shipped to retail. Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a frenzied action game now available for Windows95/98/00/ME based computers in which players battle each other with one of three distinct races: The Meccs, the Sea Reapers, or the giant named Kabuto. These three species are highly incompatible with one another, and are all battling for supremacy over the islands on which they inhabit.

In single player mode, you begin as a merry band of space cowboys on their way for a little R&R on the planet Majorca. Everything is going great until the ship is damaged and you need to stop for some repairs on a remote planet. There, you are separated from the rest of your team and meet up with a strange little race of creatures called Smarties that are being suppressed by yet another race entitled Sea Reapers. The story begins to unfold as to why the Smarties live in fear for their lives while you carry out various missions to recover the rest of your team and equipment.

In addition to a compelling story-driven single-player campaign, Giants: Citizen Kabuto offers an intense multi-player gaming experience. Players can choose to fight against each other or in teams using their favorite species, and up to 10 players can battle over LAN or the Internet via TCP/IP. The multiplayer game lets you choose between playing the Meccs, Sea Reapers, or the big guy himself ... Kabuto. The Meccaryns use futuristic weapons and technology to do battle, while the Sea Reapers conjure up mystical spells and fight with devastating magical powers. Kabuto crushes his victims with intense wrestling maneuvers while ravaging the islands with his bare hands.

Giants: Citizen Kabuto will join the best selling PC titles currently shipping from Interplay Entertainment including Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Sacrifice, and Icewind Dale. This game has a Mature ESRB rating.
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In the harsh jungle that is the simulations market, have the Microsoft developers of Combat Flight Simulator 2: WWII Pacific Theater made the necessary moves to please the diehard enthusiasts, the casual gamers, and more importantly, the accountants? Check out the Sharky Games' Combat Flight Simulator 2: WWII Pacific Theater review!

The two campaigns contain roughly thirty missions each, and the game includes sets of training missions and single missions. The game includes more than 100 missions plus multiplayer support via LAN, Internet, direct connection, and free play hosted on the MSN Gaming Zone. The multiplayer is the same as that in the original Combat Flight Simulator, currently confined to deathmatch with up to eight players. Performance on the Zone continues to be very good, considering it's free and my modem connection is limited to 26.4kbps. Better still, Combat Flight Simulator 2 includes a complete mission builder that's fairly extensive. At the time of this writing, the game was barely a week old in the retail market, yet user-made missions and flight model tweaks were available, and there were numerous players on the Zone. Players certainly receive considerable play for their money. This is, however, hardly the product's only selling point.

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The CMP Game Media Group announced today the top game development projects that have advanced to the final round of the third annual Independent Games Festival. Finalists will compete for the Seumas McNally $10,000 Grand Prize and awards in the category of game design, technical excellence, visual art and audio. The top submissions will be on display at the Game Developers Conference, a trade-only event held March 20-24, 2001, in San Jose, California. Out of the many entries that were submitted from around the world, the ten games selected are:

• "Archmage: Stabat Mater," Mari Telecommunications Co., Ltd., San Jose, CA, and Seoul, Korea,
• "Chase Ace ," Space Time Foam, Copenhagen, Denmark,
• "Hardwood Spades," Silver Creek Entertainment, Grants Pass, OR,
• "Hostile Space,"Interadventure, Burlington, VT,
• "IronSquad,"Gigantic Games, Austin, TX,
• "SabreWing," Wild Tangent, Redmond, WA, http://www.wildtangent.com
• "Shattered Galaxy,"Nexon, Sunnyvale, CA and Seoul, Korea,
• "Strifeshadow,"Ethermoon Entertainment, Carversville, PA,
• "Takeda,"Magitech Corporation, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
• "Virtual U,"Enlight Software with Dr. William Massy, Hong Kong, China,

The best independent game of the year will take home the Seumas McNally grand prize of $10,000 cash. McNally succumbed to cancer after sweeping last year's Festival for his game Tread Marks, and the award was subsequently named in his honor. Microsoft Corporation is a primary sponsor of this year's festival. The awards ceremony is scheduled take place on Friday, March 23, during the GDC Expo.
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Arcade Planet, Inc., designer and marketer of skill-based games and technology to the Internet and to traditional entertainment markets, today announced that it will provide its online prize redemption games through the RadicaGames.com web site from Radica Games Limited. Radica Games Limited, a manufacturer and marketer of a diverse line of electronic products, will offer the prize redemption games on its Web site by the end of January 2001.
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