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Last year's most popular, most controversial, and best selling PlayStation 2 game is finally coming to the PC. Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2 was--and still is--a highly innovative game that blended nonstop action with a compelling plot and believable characters. For nearly six months, PlayStation 2 owners have had the game all to themselves, but that'll change this May.

GS: The original Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2 both had multiplayer modes. Why isn't there any multiplayer support in Grand Theft Auto III?

DH: We felt we made massive advances in the design of 3D single-player action in Grand Theft Auto III. Attitude, characterization, immersiveness, and the seamless combination of driving, gunplay, and running about in a fully developed world while following a nonlinear story. We always felt the multiplayer versions failed to do justice to the single-player games in previous iterations of Grand Theft Auto, and now that the game is in 3D, we thought this would only be exacerbated by the completeness of the single-player game. With a multiplayer version of the game, we want to do something more than just a deathmatch mode in order to stay true to what the game concept is all about. It is going to take a long time to get this perfected.

Interview: GameSpot

I WOULD BE RUNNING SCARED'

Chandler has already identified one key to his decision -- why Deutsche Bank Asset Management switched sides and supported Fiorina after a call on the morning of the vote.

"I would be running scared if I were HP," said Samuel Thompson, a professor and the director at the Center for Study of Mergers and Acquisitions at the University of Miami School of Law. Thompson has studied Chandler's initial ruling, in which he agreed to try the case, over HP's objections.

Chandler wrote that Walter Hewlett will have a "significant burden" in proving Deutsche Bank was coerced by HP into voting 17 million shares for the merger. The three-day trial is expected by analysts to feature testimony by Fiorina and Deutsche Bank representatives.

Fiorina also told HP Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman a few days before the March 19 shareholder vote that management might have to do something "extraordinary" to win Deutsche's support.

The voicemail of that conversation was leaked to the San Jose Mercury News and later confirmed by HP.

"Protection of unsuspecting shareholders who are at risk of being defrauded or disenfranchised should be the focus of the court, not whether the allegedly bad actors were contractually obligated to each other," Chandler wrote.

The stakes for witnesses rose last week, when federal prosecutors opened a criminal probe of the HP vote.

"The moment a U.S. attorney is introduced in the matter, people who otherwise are happy to testify get nervous," said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia University's Law School, who has worked for HP.

Coffee suggested that Walter Hewlett also might choose to concentrate at trial on his second allegation -- that HP covered up reports that merger planning was not going well.

The preliminary tally by independent vote counters this week showed the merger passed by 45 million votes, or 2.8 percent of those cast, enough to win even if the Deutsche ballots were thrown out.

The planned merger has survived a number of setbacks, however, and any judgement against HP could be appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court.

Even so, the judge has a wide range of choices, said Charles Elson, director of the Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

Since the shareholder rights movements blossomed in the 1990s, the chancery court is no longer considered management's best friend, he added.

"Traditionally it was argued it was a pro-management court. Today I think it's anybody's guess."