Hello All,

Last week has been a fairly quiet week overall. Sega Enterprises did finally confirm the nature of its relationship with Microsoft Corporation. The two companies are working together on the operating system for Sega's next console. Rumors have been correct that WinCE will be the OS of choice. The companies cited that using such an OS would ease the porting of console<->PC titles, also the SH-4 processor on which the system is based, was designed with applications such as WinCE in mind.

On the site, I've updated the release dates for the year. By looking at the list one will see how few titles we have in store. All the games except for one are from Sega. The one title is Working Designs' long postponed Magic Knight Rayearth. The game was postponed yet again until April, it had been slated for a release early this month. Due to the lack of titles being published in the US, I'd like to start maintaining a release list of Japanese titles. However, I have no sources of such releases and the only lists I can find are mostly in Japanese. Lists which I cannot translate except for a few words. If anyone reading the Newsletter can point me to an English list or even provide translated lists, please contact me.

Lastly, the results from poll number 11 are now online. The question was: "If the 4Meg cart were released in the US with games such as X-men v. Street Fighter and Vampire Saviour, would you buy it? Probable cost would be around $60US with the cart." See the site for results.

Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG was released and its doing quite well. Strangely, I have yet to read any complete reviews of the game. If anyone has the title, I'd love to hear from you!

No new games shipped in the US or Europe...in Japan, four new titles came out: GunBlaze S from Active, an RPG called Chaos Seed by Neverland/ESP, a four player action/strategy game Noon from Micro Cabin, and finally another RPG...Farland Saga by TGL.

On a sad note, ESP the publishing group which once catered exclusively to Saturn owners in Japan is no bringing some titles to the PSX. Royal and ESP will be bringing the very popular title Slayers Royal to the PSX in April. Another notable title that ESP will be bringing to the PSX is Silhouette Mirage.

Stateside, after Working Designs announced Lunar: Silver Star would be coming to the PSX in the US, the company has also announced that Lunar: Eternal Blue is in the works for a May release on the Playstation.

While Saturn game releases are still frequent in Japan, the switching over of once exclusive titles is a sign that Saturn publishers and developers in Japan are beginning to seek the ever growing & larger PSX audience. Now the question is, if they are slowing Saturn work....are they starting on 'Katana/Dural' titles.

Debunking previous rumors, Toys 'R' Us representatives have stated that they have no current plans to drop Saturn support. Their only move was to drop console prices to $99 citing competitors actions and Sega's permission to do so. A final note in news...months ago 3Dfx filed a suit against Sega and NEC after Sega chose NEC over 3Dfx to work on a 3D chipset for Sega's next console. 3Dfx has now won a court injunction keeping Sega from using or disclosing so called 'trade secrets belonging to 3Dfx.' 3Dfx has believed that Sega has been sharing trade secrets with NEC after 3Dfx lost their contract. My take is that the whole lawsuit its more of an attempt to protect their (3Dfx's) corporate image.

A small note is that I made some minor HTML code changes, making sure that all <font face> tags included references to both 'arial' and 'helvetica' fonts. Previously only about 3/4 of the tags included references to both. That's all this week, cya!

-Greg