Top games from diverse selection ..PX: Mafia: A gangster game with the trappings of 1930s style. ..PX: Neverwinter Nights: Rich playing experience. ..PX: Superspy: Catch Cate Archer's latest adventure in No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way.

(From New Straits Times (Malaysia))

WHILE we bid farewell to the year 2002 and say hello to 2003, let's reflect back at the games that graced our eyes, ears and hearts. I noticed a lot more games were released during 2002 but only a few of them performed well above the rest. A lot of these better-performing games demanded extensive processing power, memory and pixel and vertex-based graphics cards to perform to their best.

For this year, we can expect the recommended system requirements to steadily increase to a minimum of 1.5 gigahertz (GHz) processing power, 512-megabyte (MB) random access memory (RAM) and either Windows 2000 or Windows XP to cope with the demanding power-hungry games.

I don't think Windows 9X will phase out so fast as there are gamers still using that platform. On the positive side, the steadily dropping prices for computer hardware helps a lot and gamers …