Today Global Star Software has announced plans to release Emergency Services Sim for the PC Platform. This Real-time city builder simulation will allow players to control every aspect of a large city’s fire, police and health care services. By performing these duties well, players will enable their cities to grow and prosper. The game is currently under development at Interactive Vision and will release during the fall of 2003 at a M.S.R.P of $29.99.

A series of grisly murders brings Lara into conflict with a sinister alchemist from the past, and a secret alliance of powerful individuals shrouded in mystery. At the centre of this conflict are five 14th century paintings - the Obscura Paintings, which the alchemist is desperate to repossess. Barely out in stores, Eidos has already released the first patch for Tomb Raider: the Angel of Darkness. This upgrade brings your retail game to v42 and adresses several game crashes and freezes, adds a shotgun, fixes the FMV player and EAX logos etc. Read more for details & download links ...

Colonize America in 3 campaigns set between 1600 and 1900. You will experience the historical developments of these epochs from the view-points of 6 different nations: the English, the settlers, American patriots, the Spanish and forest and prairie Indians. Each nation has its individual strengths and upgrades. The demo sports 2 missions, one from the Spanish campaign where you battle Francis Drake, and another from the American campaign in which you have to defend a fortress against the English army. Read more for download links ...

Pirates is broadband only, with high-end hardware specifications for graphics -- a GeForce 3 or better is required in at least a 1GHz machine, and the game is optimized for the latest DirectX 9.0-class cards. Pirates is being published on-line directly to gamers using Valve's new Steam technology, the same delivery system used by Half-Life 2 and Counterstrike 2. Check out the new seaworthy screens ...

Due to the magnitude of the upcoming Diablo II 1.10 patch, we are for the first time ever conducting a special patch beta test! Unlike the previous beta tests, you do not have to sign up to participate. This is for PC users only and Battle.net does not work with this patch. Diablo II BETA Patch 1.10 is playable ONLY in single-player mode and ONLY via TCP/IP for multiplayer. You cannot play this version on Battle.net. If you install this patch, you will not be able to connect to Battle.net to play Diablo II or Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Full patch is expected soon. Read more for further details and download links ...

For the first time ever, Harry Potter fans will be able to experience the magic of Harry's first year at Hogwarts with next-generation graphics and updated gameplay in the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone game from Electronic Arts. EA's UK Studio, the team behind the worldwide success of the original Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets games, which together have sold over 20 million copies worldwide, joins Warthog Games in developing the title for the PS2, the Xbox, and GameCube. The game is scheduled for release in the fall of 2003 under the EA GAMES brand.

Apparently ignoring the launch debacle the first 2 days, LucasArts' Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, the first Star Wars massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, experienced unprecedented success in its first week of availability, garnering more than 125,000 users and receiving accolades from gaming press and players alike.

The game is developed on original high-tech engine The Firestarter Engine, which uses the possibilities of the latest accelerator generation GeForce3/4. Among the engine possibilities are work with outdoor and indoor areas, coloured dynamic lighting, dynamic shadows, vertex and pixel shaders, T&L, procedure textures, various classes of particle system-based effects, interactive and destructible level objects, realistic physics, high-polygonal character and monster models (up to 5000 of polygons), skeleton animation. The official site has once again been updated with 4 new screens, read more to check them out...

Patch 1.31 will only include the arm patches fix that that caused server connection problems. Testing on it will begin next week and public release is expected in 3 weeks. Tony Ray, from Even Balance, is working closely with the development team in integrating Punkbuster and everything is going smoothly. The SA servers (windows - linux) will hit testing in a few days. Exact release on this is uncertain right now. What can you expect in the future? Patch 1.4 is being worked on and is scheduled for release at the end of August. This is shaping up to be the largest patch thus far in terms of bug fixes and improvements. Plans for an official MOD and release of an SDK are underway (expect both to come later).