What was to have been only the third game to take advantage of the Gamecube online adapter, Homeland, was thought to have been canned by Japanese developers Chunsoft. But it now seems all is well and the company have relaunched the website with new screens and gameplay videos. This painfully cute MMORPG looks set to be released in Japan next year, but news of its resurrection hasn't made a western release any more likely

Homeland Website

The Game Stars television award events are to be converted into a 10-program series to be aired next summer. The programme, which will be searching for 'the UK's Greatest Gamer', will feature game news and features, as well as multiformat gaming events.

The series will culminate in an hour-long special and is expected to be presented by Iain Lee, alongside obligatory attractive female hostess, Holly Willoughby.

GameStars Website

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has attacked Sony's plans for the PSP, speaking to journalists in Japan on Tuesday. He argued that the PSP is not pitched to attract new gamers, such as young women, who are dissuaded from the format by the intimidating complexity of the games.

"PSP has been created with the assumption that the golden success formula is still working," Satoru Iwata told reporters at the Foreign Correspondants' Club, according to an Associated Press article. "We don't believe that. We're making every effort so that people will say we were right."

Sony are yet to officially respond, but is Iwata making a fair point? Read on.

Japanese cinema company PDA Cinema Contents will be selling downloadable MPEG-4 format films for the PSP on their website from the 24th of December. The films will be available for around £1.50 and can be bought on any credit card, providing you can navigate the Japanese language website. The films themselves are also in Japanese, obviously.

While it's exciting to see the PSP's multi-media possibilities begin to blossom, it is perhaps a little suprising that the driving force is coming from small external companies rather than from within the might of the Sony media empire. Those curious to see the future should check out the link below.

PDA Cinema Contents

It's hard to imagine a proposition which could be more off-putting and appealing all at the same time: Valve have just announced that they are making a demo of Half-Life 2, including an early segment of the game a nd part of Ravenholm, available for download. It's appealing because everyone with a PC should have the chance to see Half-Life 2's extraordinary accomplishments; off-putting because this is not a game designed to be experienced in chunks. See the official website for details.

It's long been known that gaming isn't exactly rocket science, but now there's evidence that it is exactly brain surgery. James Rosser Jr (director of the Advanced Medical Technologies Institute at Manhattan's Beth Israel Medical Center) has given talk on methods for improving surgical dexterity, and at the top of his list is playing games. Nor is his suggestion viewed as crackpot - his paper was delivered at the Video Game/Entertainment Industry Technology and Medicine Conference.

Read on for his details of his ground-breaking surgical training programme.

The Sony PSP isn't the only handheld system that will be able to play games across the web, at least if the tunnellers at Nitro Online have their way.

The open source program, if it's successfully completed, will allow gamers with an existing wireless-compatible connection to the internet to play games and Pictochat with other DS owners around the world. The team are currently looking for volunteer programmers. Check out this forum post for details.

Overanalyzed.com is living up to its name with a close look at the economy in World of Warcraft. The piece is written by a player who has experience cash-trading against virtual game objects, most successfully in space-epic MMOG Eve Online.

The New York Times reports that one of the QVC shopping channel's recent gadget successes is actually a home-modded joystick containing a Commodore 64.

The device was invented in a famhouse in rural Oregon by Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer. She managed to squeeze all the circuitry of Commodore's heyday machine onto a single chip which is now embedded in a joystick case along with the capacity to play 30 old C64 games. All the functionality is there too, so those so inclined could potentially fit a keyboard, monitor and disk drive to the tiny device. The invention costs $30 (£16) and has been selling up to 70,000 units a day on QVC. Retail shops and sites are expected to pick up Ellsworth's device after Christmas.

NYT Site (Registration required, annoyingly.)

A rumour on Engadget about PSP having the capacity to eject UMDs like plastic-cased shuriken has been confirmed on Gamespot.

From the mouths of horses:"According to reports--one of which even featured video evidence--if you twist the PSP a certain way, the UMD drive opens, causing the disc to come flying out like a throwing star. Luckily, GameSpot can address both these rumors head on. While in Japan last weekend, GameSpot editors did observe some PSPs with dead pixels, but did not see any evidence of the other defects. As to the flying-disc glitch, we were brave enough to use one of our precious PSP units to test the theory. Amazingly, with just the right touch, out it popped."

Check out Japanese super-BBS 2ch's ASCII homage to the truly multi-functional PSP.