This And That: Wednesday News Roundup

Kuju Entertainment has quashed rumours that it is developing a Castlevania title for the GameCube, telling the UK press there is "categorically not one iota of truth in this story". The rumour began life on a big American website (you know the one; it sounds a bit like "gaijin") after an individual claiming to be Kuju QA manager Asad Habib said something ambiguously enthusiastic like "Castlevania for GameCube!" on a forum thread. This seems to have been taken by some as confirmation that Kuju is working on such a product, and, rather unhelpfully, Kuju representatives in the UK were all fast asleep when the Americans started chasing the story. Still, Kuju is working on a first-party title for Nintendo GameCube, and has also announced a collaboration with Castlevania leash-holders Konami in the past year, so it's easy to see where all the confusion came from - although apparently not for everyone, as there's plenty of pot/kettle/black action doing the rounds elsewhere in the online press today...

Square-Enix has revealed a few details about the playable demo version of Front Mission 4 it plans to ship to fans ahead of the game's full release in the States this summer. According to reports, the sampler disc will include a tutorial, four playable levels, unlockable bonus areas, and a save game feature that will allow progress to be transferred to the full version at a later date, which is a nice little feature in our book. You can register for a copy of the sampler disc at Square-Enix's website, although we doubt the publisher plans to ship discs abroad. Still, you can expect to see them on eBay between now and summer by the sound of it. We'll let you know if ours turns up...

Later today at 6PM GMT - possibly even by the time you read this - the demo of multiplayer FPS Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising will have appeared at www.nzone.com as part of a joint operation, rather aptly, conducted by developer/publisher NovaLogic and graphics card giant NVIDIA. The demo of the game reportedly consists of the 'Twin Island' map with day and night settings populated with 19 vehicles, 27 weapons, five character classes, and up to 100 players at a time. The full version of the game is due to ship in Europe around May, and we'll be taking a look at it in the near future.

Brat Designs' first-person shooter Breed has been patched. There's no version number, unhelpfully, but it does address a number of issues that dogged the game, which was released on March 19th in Europe after a bunch of delays. Unfortunately the game hasn't fared so well, creeping in at the bottom end of the UK Charts Top 40, although whether that's a poor reflection of its quality or not is difficult to say - we've been too busy playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and Battlefield Vietnam to give it a go. Of course, we might have given it some time, but publisher CDV rather cleverly managed to schedule it up against those two giants - and Raven Shield expansion Athena Sword - leaving us with too many other things to worry about. Still, if you bought it, at least you no longer have to worry about issues like [glances at text] "problems with bridges". All thanks to this patch.