Harvest Moon DS sprouts in AprilHarvest Moon DS sprouts in April

Originally we expected the first DS version of cute farming sim Harvest Moon to provide a tasty winter crop, but its release slipped away like a mad cow surfing down a muddy hill. So European agriculturists will be pleased to hear that their time to plant has finally been dated on the 13th April - check out our review of the US version for more details of what you should expect as you attempt to turn around a failing farm in Forget-Me-Not valley.

There's also good news for those green-fingered folk who couldn't resist the temptation and have imported the game. The second DS Harvest Moon is already in development.

Entitled Harvest Moon: The Island I Grew Up On, this time your farming scenario will be set on an island. You won't be stranded alone though as your mum, dad, brother and sister will also be there. Other details remains scarce at present but it seems that the island setting will affect the type of crops you can grow with rice rumoured to be an option. The graphics are expected to receive a major overhaul too - the GBA-quality graphics of Harvest Moon DS being one of our main criticisms of an otherwise enjoyable game.

Harvest Moon DS will be sprouting from the ground on 13th April. As yet there's no release date for Harvest Moon: The Island I Grew Up On.

Ronaldinho hits mobile for some street soccer skills

I didn't manage to visit Spanish developer LemonQuest at 3GSM this week, but I wish I had. The company was showing off a stack of new games, including some based on Brazilian footy ace Ronaldinho.

Ronaldinho Street Soccer features seven-a-side matches on the streets, with 32 national teams and big-headed cartoon players, including an entire squad seemingly consisting of Ronaldinhos. Imagine the tricks!

LemonQuest has four other Ronaldinho games on its slate, too. Ronaldinho Gaucho Kicks has you booting footballs in what looks very much like a soccer-themed Zuma, while Ronaldinho Gaucho Goal! is a dribbling sim, complete with opponents who get in your way if you don't stun them with the football. Ronaldinho Gaucho Tricks is Tetris, except with more toothy Brazilian maestros in, and Ronaldinho Gaucho Bubbles is Bust-a-Move with colourful footballs.

While we'd prefer to see a few more footie-playing zombies in the mix, we like the concept of branding existing puzzle games with footballers. Do you think someone'll do it here in the UK with Wayne Bridge? Perhaps not.

3GSM 2007: Armored Forces invading the UK

While at 3GSM, I hooked up with German firm Lbxgames, which showed me its latest games.

Pick of the bunch was Armored Forces, which originally came out late last year in partnership with Siemens in Germany, but is now about to be released in the UK.

It's a strategy game set in the year 2456, with you taking on an evil federation of megacorporations (in other words, the likes of Starbucks have got too big for their boots).

You play as the Armored Forces rebel group, which is pluckily defending its home planet of Perseus. The game is turn-based, with you controlling dozens of units and weapons on a 2D map. There are 13 different missions in the solo mode.

Do the screenshots remind you of anything? Yep, it's reminiscent of Nintendo's Advance WarsAncient Empires

There's also a multiplayer pass-the-handset mode, which sound like it'll add a new challenge, and Lbxgames also says it supports 'booster packs', which are downloads of new campaigns, missions and weapons. series on GBA and DS, which on mobile makes its nearest competition Glu's series.

Embrace the dark side in SW: The Force Unleashed

DS and PSP versions in the works
It's a frightening thought but 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars film. Perhaps even more amazing however is that those creative types at Lucasarts have managed to come up with yet another scenario to design a game around. At this rate, there's little doubt we'll still be pretending to be Jedi in 2037.

In the case of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, your allegiance is of a distinctly murky kind though – who would have guessed Darth Vader had a secret apprentice?

That's you, that is.

Plot-wise, sandwiched between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, in The Force Unleashed you'll have your work cut out as you run around the universe hunting down fugitive Jedi and Force-sensitive Felucians, amongst other rebel scum.

Locations will include Wookiee homeworld Kashyyyk, the floral Felucia, junk planet Raxus Prime, plus an Imperial TIE fighter construction facility.

As the title suggests, the Force plays a major role in the game. You'll have four main powers to toy with – push, grip, repulse and lightning – which can be combined together for moves of pure evil destructiveness.

Or as Lucasarts puts it: "The Secret Apprentice won't just Force grip foes to throw them aside. He'll Force grip them in midair, zap them with lightning, then drop them to the ground to explode like a bomb."

What a bad boy.

What we're less certain about is how the DS and PSP versions of the game will differ from their big console brothers. For example, Lucasarts is making a big song-and-dance about arcane technologies such as 'Digital Molecular Matter' and 'Euphoria Behavioural Simulation', which are too processor intensive to run on handheld devices.

Hopefully this implies there are different game developers looking after the DS and PSP versions, who will make the most of those handhelds' available power and features, although nothing has yet be confirmed.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is due for release in November, but hit the 'Track It!' button to get breaking news as soon as it's out.

Handy Games offer first glimpse of Townsmen 4

HandyGames' Townsmen strategy series has accounted for many a happy hour in the Pocket Gamer offices, with the most recent title deservedly scooping one of our silver awards for its troubles. We were therefore heartened to discover this week that its German publisher is planning a fourth extension in the series. Indeed, as these first shots illustrate, construction on Townsmen 4 is well and truly underway. Though set in 'dark medieval times', this latest outing has a religious overtone, as you swap the lordly robes of previous games for the monastic cloth and take control of a monastery. Subtitled The Brotherhood, the game will apparently offer a host of new features such as 'proselytising, or the mixing of brew-mixtures in your monastery's own brewery'.

3GSM 2007: We interview Kiloo about taking C64 and LEGO mobile

For anyone who grew up with a Commodore 64, the recent news that Kiloo had signed a deal to bring a bunch of classic C64 titles to mobile phones was unfeasibly exciting. The games you grew up with, now in the palm of your hand – without the lengthy tape-loading delay before you play.

There are some questions though, particularly over which games Kiloo will release, and whether they'll be based on the most famous C64 titles (those that haven't already been brought to mobile, of course, like Turrican).

I sat down with Karl Woods from Kiloo at 3GSM to find out.

"The games we've got are the original Commodore-published games," Woods says. "We've not gone for third-party brands though. For example, we could have gone for Ghosts And Goblins, but that would have meant going to Capcom to get the rights, and I assume they wouldn't want to give them to us! But there's enough: there's about a thousand titles to pick from, so we've taken 22 of the ones that we think will work on mobile."

As we reported previously, Jupiter Lander will be the first game to be released. Woods says that because some of the 22 chosen games are so simple, Kiloo will be selling multi-packs, where you get three C64 games in one package. Dancing Monster is one game likely to get this treatment, apparently.

The other big question about this deal is whether modern-day mobile users are really interested in playing old C64 games? After all, even average handsets are capable of graphics a console or computer generation or two beyond the C64, while the better phones are pushing PlayStation 1 quality. Do people want old 8-bit games on their phones?

"All I know is that people's gaming habits haven't changed over all the years, and this just goes back to the roots of gaming," says Woods. "We might polish games up to the standards of new handsets as they come out, but the games are the games. The operators love this too, because a lot of the games managers grew up with the Commodore 64, so they love the brand. It makes them feel like they're a kid again."

Even as a committed C64-lover, I do still have some reservations – not least because most of my favourite games on the computer WEREN'T published by Commodore, so won't be covered by the deal. Still, Kiloo is talking about doing some interesting competitions when the games launch, such as giving away a full C64 setup including a tape drive and proper joystick. It'll certainly be worth watching.

Kiloo is also working with another iconic brand, LEGO, developing games based on the classic toy set, but also on its higher-tech Bionicle spin-off. Woods says the latter is perfect for mobile, not least because many of the keenest Bionicle fans are also already playing mobile games regularly.

If you read our review of LEGO Racer, you'll be aware that the classic LEGO games have so far not featured the level of customisation you would have hoped for. You can't build stuff, in other words. But hold your horses: that's changing.

"Our first game was LEGO Soccer, which came out for the World Cup and was quirky, but it wasn't core to the LEGO brand," admits Woods. "They don't play football! LEGO Racer is getting closer, as bits on your car can fall off. The next game in the series is even closer to the core values of LEGO, and the fourth will be even more so."

"We'll be getting close to the core value of personalisation: not destruction, but construction," he concludes.

3GSM 2007: Hands on with Rayman Kart

This week is 3GSM, the mobile industry's annual shindig in Barcelona. Mobile games publishers keep a fairly low profile at the event: most are here, but buzzing around having meetings rather than splashing out on big stands.

One company that does have a stand is Gameloft, and they're showing off some new games on it. Yesterday I got hands on with Rayman Kart, which is basically Mario Kart with less plumbers, and more limbless French slightly-doglike heroes.

It seems fun, with you able to race as Rayman, Globox, a rabbid or other characters from the series. You steam around colourful tracks bouncing off rivals and picking up power-ups to flatten them with � examples being some boxing gloves, a nuke and something called a 'mega fist', which I won't speculate about.

There's three categories of race to enter, grouped by cc to indicate the power of the karts.

Mobile is still waiting for a truly great Mario Kart clone, but Rayman Kart is shaping up as a decent stab at the genre.

More from the Gameloft stand � and other publishers � over the next couple of days, so stay tuned!

Crimson Fields ported to Pocket PC

As announced on FreewarePPC (set pop-up blockers to stun) is Crimson Fields Mobile, a Windows Mobile port of the free open source turn-based strategy war game inspired by Battle Isle.

According to Wikipedia, "The maps in Crimson Fields are made up of hexagonal tiles. Each tile can be made of a different terrain. Different units have different amounts of mobility in different terrain. For example, tanks can move quickly on roads, slowly in forests, and cannot move at all in water.

"There are also buildings in the game. All buildings can store units. Some buildings can also build units and repair units. These two operations cost crystals, the game's form of resources. While buildings cannot be built, they can be captured, along with all of the units stored within them, using infantry."

Crimson Fields Mobile is compatible with all VGA and QVGA Pocket PCs and Smartphones, and is available to download here.