Late Night Consoling

Raylight's new 3D engine features skeletal animation, texture mapping, skinned characters, full 3D camera movement, as well as support for fog, transparency and dynamic lighting. Sounds like a pretty rudimentary 3D engine...but the catch here, is that this engine is for the Game Boy Advance. Thousands of polygons really ain't much in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that a 3D engine has been created specifically to run on GBA is very promising. The first screenshots and movies show off a few tech demos, including a Wipeout-like racing game, a flight simulator, and a Resident Evil-style game. They're pretty impressive, and definitely worth checking out. It ain't Quake, but it's impressive nonetheless and a big step from what has previously been shown on the system.

• Speaking of the GBA, pre-orders will open on Friday at PortableMonopoly.com for The Afterburner, which is the formal name for the site's front-light add-on for the handheld.
• Microsoft has signed an agreement with Fonix to provide speech recognition software for the Xbox. Could Seaman 2 be on the horizon?
• GameSpot had it last night, so tonight PS2.IGN has posted their interview with AM2's Yu Suzuki. The questions mostly deal with the imminent PS2 port of Virtua Fighter 4, but he also comments on the possibility of a "greatest hits" collection of his older games.
• If you're interested in what AM2's next, unannounced title is, you need only wait until the end of the month, as Sega has confirmed that the game will be announced on March 30, at their Game Jam 2 show in Tokyo.
• Think the Xbox hype machine's in high gear in America? That's nothing - in Denmark, Microsoft's launched a whole Xbox commercial channel.
• Here's a surprising turn of events...Japan's Weekly Famitsu has graded Capcom's GameCube Resident Evil remake a head-turning 39/40.
• A few games of note have shipped...Eidos has shipped Mister Mosquito and Mad Maestro, the first two PS2 games from their Fresh Games label, while Universal has released Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure for Game Boy Advance.