And half the fat! According to my ancestors (I'm german!) Dolphin will be 33% better than the PS2...performance wise. Excellent Friday news! Now where's this NOJ announcement! Jeeez! Anyhoo...read this. Are you going to doubt the fact that the Dolphin will be more powerful than the PS2? I'm not...

The 51st Nuremberg Toy Fair opened its portals earlier this week in Germany, giving game companies and their licensees the opportunity to show off the latest videogames and game-related products. Although most of the toys and games on display have already been released in American markets, Grossostheim-based Nintendo of Europe let out some interesting information at a press conference on Wednesday.

According to our friends at Nintendo Fun Vision Magazine, NOE follows Nintendo of America's lead and holds fast to a European Dolphin launch before the end of the year.

"We plan to stick to this date," promised Nintendo's Managing Director Sales & Marketing, Axel Herr, at the conference. In regards to system performance, Herr commented: "In terms of graphics, we came up with extremely fast chip architecture that, according to our technicians, will be 33% above the projected performance data of [Sony's] PlayStation 2. That's easily twice as fast as [Sega's] Dreamcast."

Herr went on to reiterate that the new console will use DVD media for data storage and debut at a mass market price. He also commented on the Dolphin's CPU, the IBM-developed Gekko Processor, and promised it would be "the fastest thing around".

Although no further system specs or software specifics were revealed, Nintendo of Europe said that it will show off full Dolphin gameplay demos at the upcoming ECTS conference in London this September. NOE also addressed Game Boy Advance (GBA), but did not disclose any new information on the handheld. According to Herr, NOE is keeping a close watch of the system's sales performance when it is released in Japan this Summer, and will set a release date for the unit once the German market is ready for the GBA's online capabilities.