STEVEN HUNT checks out the latest games unveiled at the European Computer Trade Show in London.

ALL-SINGING. All-dancing. All the games the world will be playing for the next year and a half. That's what descended on London this weekend when the European Computer Trade Show landed on the capital.

The best game on offer was most definitely Black & White. Unveiled at the Electronic Arts private event on Saturday night, this wasn't just a feast for the eyes but magic for the brain, too.

Combining the elements of a god sim where you look after the needs of your people and try to do away with their rivals and a Tamagotchi, giving you a creature to look after if your people are to thrive, this game looks like no other on the market. Splendid graphics, sure, but it's the other things this game, from master programmer Peter Molyneux, does that make it so intriguing.

For example, if you receive an e-mail while you are playing the game, one of your people will madly try to attract your attention to let you know. And while you aren't playing, your creature will busy itself by creating its own web page which you can publish. If there's one surefire hit from the show, its Black & White.

Elsewhere, Shiny Entertainment caught the eye with Sacrifice. A real-time battle game in a third-person perspective, this is different in that it puts you in control of a single wizard, battling it out with his rivals. Pulsing with eye-candy, this game lets you blow merry hell not just out of your opposing wizards, but ripping the landscape apart in the process. Two years ago, Shiny also had one of the most promising titles on display in Messiah, which has only this year hit the market. I asked Dave Perry, the twisted mind behind both Messiah and Sacrifice, if the latest title would suffer similar delays.

"We shot ourselves in the foot with Messiah by showing it far too early," he admitted. "Sacrifice is nearly complete and people aren't going to be kept waiting around like with Messiah." We'll take your word on that, Dave.

The most impressive stand at the show was Konami's if you could get to it past the throng of people watching the video for Metal Gear Solid 2. But that wasn't Konami's only trick. The ISS series re-appeared, this time with the licence to use the real team and player names, and Shadow Of Memories was a most promising title for PlayStation 2, an action adventure that positively oozed atmosphere.

Sega offered up a dizzying display of new material, playing heavily on the range of online games which are on the way, including Quake 3, Phantasy Star Online and Starlancer. Single player was not neglected, either, with showings of the gorgeous adventure game Shenmue, finally edging nearer a release date, and Metropolis Street Racer.

Also well worth a mention is Anarchy Online, an ongoing sci-fi role-playing game of the Ultima or Asheron's Call variety. However, the game world will reward actual role-playing and not just mindless killing. Anarchy Online is designed to last four years, by the end of which one of the sides must win, an outcome which will be decided by the players. Good words must also go to the splendid Sheep by Empire Interactive, in which you get to control a sheepdog as it herds hapless woollybacks through dungeons, deathtraps and doomsday devices. The Blair Witch Project offers substantial suspense in a budget series and the mighty Speedball 2100 is imminent, produced by Bitmap Brothers in Harrogate.

The biggest disappointment of the show was Nintendo. The GameBoy Advance was unveiled, and yes, it looks like everything a GameBoy fan might hope for, with a high-quality screen and the ability to play all titles from the first machine. However, N64 has just six titles on the way in the coming months, although they include Mario and Zelda titles, and has next to no support from any third party publishers. The N64 is officially dead it's just the death throes will take a little longer. Its successor, the Gamecube, out next year, will be able to play old N64 titles, as it will use a DVD-style format, but will not be able to play movies.

The machine will be run by a 405Mhz processor, with 40MB of memory and an ATI graphics co-processor.

Impressive stuff, but faced with competition from Sony, Sega and Microsoft's X-Box, the games produced for it are really going to have to cut the mustard. Nintendo can't depend on the popularity of Pokmon forever.

PICTURE: The Nintendo stall at the European Computer Trade Show