Odds And Ends: Tuesday News Roundup

THQ seems to be working on a new Evil Dead game, if the film's star Bruce Campbell is to be believed. (And we wouldn't really want to mess with Bruce.) Speaking in a recent interview with Ain't It Cool News, the erstwhile Ash remarked that "We've got these Evil Dead games coming out left and right," as he tailed off a long response about the possibilities of an Ash resurrection on the silver screen. "The new one's coming out next year, next spring. I did the voice for it for Cranky Pants," he added. Cranky Pants being an internal THQ studio, and THQ having published the last couple of Evil Dead titles (including the sadly rather lamentable Fistful of Boomstick), it seems a safe bet to say we'll be on the receiving end of another barrel load of undying one-liners sometime in 2005...

Digital Jesters has released a Pro Rugby Manager 2004 playable demo, giving budding Clive Woodwards the chance to command four teams - England, France, Biarritz and Leicester - in single-player, over a LAN or on the Internet. The demo is available here and the full game is already available, featuring a darn sight more clubs (100, plus 50 national teams), stadiums (14) and management aspects besides what's in the demo.

Not content with releasing just the one demo, Digital Jesters (and indeed developer Cyanide, who also handled Pro Rugby Manager) has released a Chaos League playable demo, allowing gamers to sample the strategic delights of this futuristic bloodsport, about which we've already various words. You can download the full demo from Eurofiles here, and DJ informs us that the game will be available in the shops "soon-ish".

We're not quite sure why somebody doesn't just go out and buy the bleedin' licence, but with THQ having recently confirmed plans to bring Battle For Troy to Blighty, Slitherine has announced Gates of Troy, an expansion pack for recently released strategy title Spartan. (In fact, forget that - Slitherine claims this isn't an RTS, but an "Empire building turn based strategy game".) And once again we're forced to note that this has nothing officially to do with the movie. It's all just a big coincidence. If you ask us, the marketing guys ought to Troy a bit harder. [That was the Pitts -Ed]