Gamebam Advance

bam! seems to be carving out something of a niche for itself on the GameBoy Advance, with the surreal puzzle game Hot Potato and beat 'em up with a difference Fire Pro Wrestling already behind them, and a whole spate of new games on their way from the company. Just last week they announced that they had picked up publishing duties for the GBA version of classic PC adventure game Broken Sword, and today we received a disc full of goodies relating to four more forthcoming titles - Ecks vs Sever, Driven, Dexter's Laboratory and .. Powerpuff Girls. Needless to say the last of these didn't grab our attention, but the rest of the line-up looks rather more interesting. First up is Ecks vs Sever, a first person shooter developed by Crawfish and based on the movie of the same name. In a novel turn of events, the game will be released next month while the movie won't hit the big screen until next summer, and indeed we've not heard anything about the film yet apart from the fact that this game is based on it. Still, with a range of real-world guns to blaze away with and a variety of deathmatch modes, plus the ability to play as either FBI agent Jonathan Ecks or NSA hitman Sever and twelve single player missions for each of them, this may just fill a spot until the much-anticipated GameBoy Advance port of Doom arrives. Also due in November is Driven, based on the Sylvester Stallone movie of the same name. The setting is American CART racing (that's CART, not kart), and while it may not have the appeal of Formula 1 here in Europe, it's still fast and furious wheel-to-wheel action. Eight tracks are included, with a mixture of street circuits and those weird oval tracks the Americans love so much, and settings ranging from California and New York to the countryside of England, in which you must stop at the end of every lap to have your wheels disinfected to guard against spreading foot & mouth disease. Probably. There are championship, arcade, test and story modes to enjoy, as well as four player multiplayer support, with new tracks and cars to unlock along the way. All in all it looks like being an entertaining arcade-style racer for the hand-held, and could prove a welcome antidote to Mario Kart and its cartoonish clones. Last and not least we come to Dexter's Laboratory, also lining up for a November release, and based on the cartoon of the same name. I see a pattern emerging here. Anyway, the boy genius Dexter is up to his usual tricks, devising a "clone-a-matic", only for his sister Dee Dee to multiply herself in it, infesting Dexter's eponymous secret lab with hordes of mini Dee Dees. Now it's up to you to catch them all, recover from the devestation the annoying one(s) has caused, and return her to a singular existence in time for dinner. Along the way you will face rogue robots, aliens, carnivorous plants and mutants, using everything from ray guns to weed killer to take them on. All together now - "Deeeeee Deeeeee!" Related Features -

Dexter's Laboratory screenshots

Driven screenshots

Ecks vs Sever