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.

Spong.com have news that the next Xbox will be powered by ATI and not Nvidia. You can get the full scoop here.

Next up is news that there will be a Doom 3 playable demo for the public, to test out for the first time at this year's QuakeCon, and the ever-productive id rumour mill mentions interestingly, id will host the full unveiling of the firm's latest multiplayer offering, Quake 4 at QuakeCon as well.

Of all the things developed for UT2003, the stats page was by far the largest disappointment for many people. Introduced as an answer to the realtime ngStats feature (which was bought to Microsoft and then discontinued), the Epic UT2003 stats debuted with a new site and a new look and hopes were high right out of the gate. However, the stats started falling behind almost immediately, ranging from a couple of days to a couple of months late, were reset at one point, and then taken down altogether when it was clear that they weren't working.

GameSpyDaily has a report up quoting Valve's Doug Lombardi as he confirms Half-Life 2 production for the Xbox gaming console:

Lombardi today told GameSpy Half-Life 2 is certainly in development for the Xbox. "Half-Life 2 is planned for the PC and Xbox. We've announced the shipping date for the PC version [September 30, 2003 - ed.], and we'll announce a shipping date for the Xbox version later in the year.

Quicksilver and Atari have released the first official beta patch for Master of Orion III.

This patch is incompatible with the previous data patch (see the enclosed read me for full installation instructions). The installation validator will be updated, possbily by next week, in order to accomodate the patch.

3DGamers.com reports that an updated playable demo for Will Rock is now available that was released right before E3 but slipped through the cracks so far (understandably, with all the media mayhem at that time :) to offer another chance at trying out this imminent fast-paced FPS by Saber Interactive. The demo contains a single-player level called The Tholos Temple and now also a multiplayer map called The Rotunda. The original file needlessly included a DirectX 9.0 distribution, so our copy is a 32 MB smaller download by removing that.