After years of development and testing, SOE and game developer LucasArts on Thursday released "Star Wars Galaxies," a multiplayer online game based on the movie. Highly anticipated by "Star Wars" buffs, the game is seen by industry analysts as one of the most significant opportunities yet for subscription-based online games to reach a broader audience. But getting started hasn't been easy for would-be Jedis. Many subscribers, who pay $50 for the software and a monthly fee of $12 to $15 for access to the online content, were unable to register the morning of the release due to problems with the game's registration servers. Some would-be players reported trying four or five hours to complete the sign-up process necessary to play the game, wading through a series of error screens and "try again" pages.

There are a couple of magazine scans available on the internet. Check 'em out if you're interested. Click on the picture to view. Activision has released Windows and Linux server update for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory updating the game to version 1.01.

The upgrade adds more server stability and incorporates the Even Balance anti-cheating software. People running the clients do NOT need this.

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows Of Undrentide includes a new 40-hour single player campaign as well as game features new to Neverwinter Nights, such as additional D&D skills, feats, classes, monsters, weapons and spells. In addition, the pack comes with two new tile sets and other assets for use in the Aurora toolset that will enable amateur module designers to create completely different worlds. Neverwinter Nights: Shadows Of Undrentide requires the original Neverwinter Nights game to play.

Version 0.38 of the popular Desert Combat mod for EA's Battlefield 1942 offers new vehicles, new weapons, new levels, and it has improved sounds along with plenty of other changes. It adds support for the recently released 1.4 patch for BF1942, too. Due to the amount of changes, no patch for the previous release is available. Grab it

Codemasters has released the first movie for Colin McRae Rally 04.

You will be driving on the very edge of control as the series' sublime car handling combines with new championships, new single and multiplayer gaming modes, and unique car part testing challenges to win advanced technology for your car.

Here's a few game patches that were released yesterday.

Raven Shield 1.3 Patch Postal 2 1337 Patch Will Rock 1.1 Patch

Nintendo Insider reports that an online piracy group called "StarCube" has made ISO's of games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker available for download on the net. They are not publicly available to everyone, but are said to be hosted on private warez FTP sites.

As of yet (6/14/2003) there is no way to actually play the games after burning to a mini-disc, but reliable sources say that there will be a hack for the GameCube released soon, so that these illegal copies can be played. Also rumors do have it that the copied games can be played on the Panasonic GameCube, but that is unconfirmed.

Here's a couple of mods I found over at Gamers Hell for Quake 3 and Battlefield 1942!

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This release covers the majority of bugs found with the BattleGroup42 Mod Alpha 0.2 but not all. 0.21 is the final release to support Battlefield 1942 1.31, all future releases will be for version 1.4.

Empire Interactive has released a playable demo of Ghost Master, allowing you to try out this recent 3D strategy sim by Sick Puppies in which you must build up a team of ghosts to scare away humans out of a variety of locations. The demo includes the first mission ('Haunting 101'), which also acts as a tutorial Download demo here: Gamershell.com Full story: here Gamershell's Ghostmaster review: Gamershell.com

Big Huge Games has released a new patch for Rise of Nations, bringing their RTS to v1.02. This release fixes Multiplayer Lag issues, adds additional anti-cheat protection, allows you to check for updates without going into GameSpy, and more. Dowload it @ Gamershell.com.

Bioware have released a new Neverwinter Nights version 1.30 beta patch. Among other things this beta release adds stability improvements, improvements to network performance and cheat/hack prevention. You can grab it here.

3DGamers.com reports that a new patch for Devastation is now available, upgrading the European editions of the first-person shooter by Digitalo Studios to version 381 (curiously a notch over the earlier US patch). As before, this release includes sound improvements, multiplayer stability fixes, tweaks to the Territories gametype, a new server browser interface, and numerous other changes and fixes.

Muscle Car 3 is the upcoming street racing game being created at Silverfish Studios and Global Star Software.

Halo 2 E3 Video Unleashed (bungie.net) On August 8, 2002 Bungie broke the vow of silence and officially announced to the world that we were indeed working on a sequel to Halo.

Then in September of last year, the Halo 2 announce trailer (if you haven't seen it yet, stop what you're doing and get up to speed!) was released giving the first glimpse of Master Chief as he embarked on his most critical mission yet - protect Earth from the Covenant threat! Thanks to TweakHound :)

3DGamers.com reports that Codemasters has released the playable demo for IndyCar Series, allowing you to experience the high-speed racing simulation that is nearing completion at Brain In A Jar. This demo contains the Texas Motor Speedway track that you can drive in test and race modes. The original file needlessly included a DirectX 8.1 distribution, so our copy is a 32 MB smaller download by removing that.

Electronic Arts has released the E3 trailer for Need for Speed Underground, offering nearly a minute and a half of CGI footage for this arcade racing game in the works at EA Black Box.

Electronic Arts has released the eagerly-anticipated patch for Battlefield 1942, bringing Digital Illusions' WWII shooter to v1.4. This release adds two new weapons, makes several gameplay fixes, graphical improvements, adds some new client & server features, fixes a few bugs, and more (read full story for details). A new dedicated server is also available for download.