Crystal and Deanna have a pretty sweet deal. The two smiley, mom-ish ladies left Nintendo’s corporate headquarters in Seattle three weeks ago on a wayward journey across the country to spread the good news about the GameCube. Their little Chinook van (an unmarked, white, bread truck-looking thing) has a plush den in the back, complete with two big-screen TVs, some comfy chairs and a ton of video games. They’ve played them all many, many times.

As the two recount the few pitfalls they've endured on their bizarre public relations journey (bad traffic, blown out tires, a burgled hotel room, noticeable farmer's tans on their window-side forearms), they kick each other's asses all over the ring at Wrestlemania 18.

Part of their mission is to gather audition videotapes from prospective Nintendo reps. Somebody at HQ will look over the tapes and choose a few people in various markets (not Philly, for whatever reason) to play their games in public places all summer and get paid for it. So far they've mostly encountered bored-looking geeks who brag about beating this game or that.

Like the well-trained reps they were hired to be, Crystal and Deanna ooze gentle enthusiasm. The game they're highest on is Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, the Cube's first game to get an "M" (mature rating). It's a very dark, violent adventure game -- a surprise coming from the company that likes to put a certain little lovable Italian on everything (no, not Giovanni Ribisi).

Crystal maneuvers a sword-carrying warrior into a stone cave while pointing out that the costumes and settings are "authentic" and were "carefully researched." Then she aims her controller at an armored skeleton bad guy and, whack, chops off its head. The decapitated creature remains standing, blindly swiping at thin air. "So now he can't see me," says Crystal. "He'll still try to fight me. But that's OK, I can" -- whack -- "cut off his arm." Now spurting blood from two places, the skeleton continues swiping with its remaining arm. In a world where bones can bleed, anything can happen.

Eternal Darkness is quite a philosophical distance from Super Mario jumping on a turtle, but Nintendo seems prepared to get a little ugly as competition heats up. Last month, GameCube's shelf price was lowered from $199 to $149, after the competing systems, Microsoft's Xbox and the Sony PlayStation 2, each lowered their prices from $299 to $199. All this competition is good news not just for the general public but for your friendly neighborhood game reviewer, too.

When the Xbox came out last Christmas, it was selling like mad despite stories about defective hard drives, faulty audio chips and crappy customer service all over the Web. Now that things are tightening up, Microsoft has finally seen fit to send City Paper a free system. We've had a PlayStation 2 (the industry's sales leader) since it came out, but it took almost a year of pestering for us to get our hands on an Xbox -- and it's a loaner, due back 10 days after it arrived. (We were afraid getting into video game coverage, however infrequently, would turn us into big dorks. But look, we turned into whiners instead.)

It's not immediately clear what the inescapable megalith was so ashamed of; this system is pretty cool. Sure, the actual console is the size of your first VCR, but the Xbox can double as a DVD player, like the PS2 but unlike the diminutive GameCube, which plays 3-inch mini-discs and fits in a bread bag. Still, the games created for either don't seem all that different capability-wise. With the field pretty much even in technology and price, the systems are being sold based on the merits of their games. Before setting out to create the Xbox, Microsoft's first real endeavor into hardware, the company sealed deals with several game-producing software companies to make Xbox-exclusive titles.

One game Bill Gates and co. have proudly advertised the living hell out of is Halo: Combat Evolved. This is a "first-person shooter" (meaning there's always a warm gun onscreen) with a little bit of Tomb Raider's adventure thrown in. The plot is something like this: A spaceship departed from an overpopulated Earth in 2552 and crash-landed on some crazy, Earth-like other planet. You're the only survivor, and it's up to you to, you know, kill lots of robots. It's a satisfying thing, throwing a grenade, watching it bounce and roll toward your enemy. Then there's this noise and their colorful robot bodies are flung great distances, and you can't tell: Did they die from the explosion or the impact when they finally hit the ground?

The movements are fluid and the graphics are beautiful, though things often move slowly and your objectives aren't always clear. You will definitely need to save your progress to the internal Hard Drive -- there's no way you'll beat this game in one sitting, though you will be tempted. Overall, the Xbox has made a fine, if belated, first impression. The whiners approve.