GameSpot has posted a new Empire Earth movie trailer, sporting nearly a minute of gameplay footage in the 3D real-time strategy game by Stainless Steel Studios. The trailer is available as a 12 MB MPEG clip or several streaming formats and highlights some of the aerial combat in the later epochs of the game (though none in the Prehistory and Middle Ages, surprisingly ).

• Steel Soldiers
  Eon Digital sent along a new batch of Steel Soldiers screenshots showing off the imminent 3D action RTS by The Bitmap Brothers in twenty new scenes.
• Emperor
  The likewise imminent 3D RTS Emperor: Battle for Dune by Westwood is illustrated in ten new screenshots on Worthplaying.
• Sierra's Triple Dose
  As usual, Sierra Studios offers new screenshots of the week for the upcoming games Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, Empire Earth, and Throne of Darkness.
• Conquest
  There are four new screenshots of Conquest: Frontier Wars on GameSpot, depicting new interstellar scenes in the space-based RTS by Fever Pitch Studios.
• Throne of Darkness
  More Throne of Darkness today, as RPG Vault has kicked off their Elements Of The Week with some new screenshots of the fire spells in Click Entertainment's isometric action RPG.
• Arcanum
  Three new Arcanum screenshots accompany a brief Q&A on this isometric RPG by Troika Games at Voodoo Extreme.
• Shadowbane
  The official Shadowbane site has been updated with four new screenshots of the fantasy MMORPG being crafted at Wolfpack Studios.
• Anarchy Online
  Fansite AO Extreme has posted ten new Anarchy Online screenshots from their adventures in the ongoing beta test of Funcom's MMORPG that went gold today (story).

The latest updates on the official World War II Online forums offer a tip for Internet Explorer users experiencing registration problems, as well as word on the improved condition of the game servers and an upcoming client patch. The patch is expected to be released via the auto-update system tomorrow and the update provides details on the fixes it will apply to Cornered Rat's massively multiplayer war simulation.

GameSpot has posted a preview of Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, the mercenary shooter sequel in development at Raven Software. Written by our own loonyboi, the article offers an overview on how the game aims to improve upon its predecessor, describes some of the heavy ordnance you'll have at your disposal, and sports quotes by lead programmer Dan Kramer as well as four new screenshots and a weapon image.

• TORN
  RPGPlanet got a hold of Black Isle lead designer David Maldonaldo at the show and only now posted their First Look on TORN featuring his comments on this upcoming 3D role-playing game.
• ShakyCam
  WarcraftIII.net has posted another ShakyCam video of Warcraft III (thanks VoodooExtreme) featuring two minutes of high-res but soundless footage in DivX AVI format. Also, SpelletjesGarnaal offers up yet another E3 video of Civilization III in streaming or downloadable Windows Media Player format, running for a bit over three minutes. Last but not least, Videogamegal's E3 Coverage Day 3 sports (a different kind of) Windows Media Player footage of the Star Wars games Jedi Outcast: Jedi Knight II, Obi-Wan, and Rogue Squadron II.

Gamasutra has conducted a in-depth interview on Black Isle Studios, talking to director Feargus Urquhart about this Interplay division that is best known for its role-playing games. Feargus discusses the trials and tribulations of game development, what he feels are the keys to Black Isle's success, the differences between in-house studios and independent developers, and his outlook on the future of Black Isle. Thanks narc for the tip.

There is a new release of DooM Legacy on the official site, updating this 3D accelerated port of the public Doom source code to version 1.32 beta 2. The new version addresses an "annoying bug with 3D-Floors in software mode" as well as some other minor bugs, and is only available for Win32 as a 1.1 MB download.

The official Rune site has been updated with the news that the co-op mod for the game has been released. The mod is available for both PC and Mac OS gamers, and requires the version 1.07 patch. Also available on the site are ordering instructions for those that would like the 138 MB mod delivered to them on CD.

The official Summoner site offers a new version 1.30 patch for the 3D role-playing game by Volition. The patch is available through the auto-update system and as a manual 1.2 MB download, and includes several multiplayer improvements and bug fixes, improved weapon animations, and several other fixes.

Macgamer.com has conducted an interview with Andrew Meggs, the programmer who at one point was responsible for the (canceled) MacOS port of Half-Life and has recently devoted his time to Mumbo Jumbo's upcoming title Myth III: The Wolf Age. Andrew provides a progress update on Myth III and he also talks a bit about Mac gaming in general, and why Sierra decided to cancel their Mac port of Half-Life. In addition to the interview, Macgamer has also posted 19 new screenshots from Myth III.

This one appears to have slipped through the cracks this weekend, but Ensemble Studios has released an unsupported beta patch for Age of Empires II: The Conquerors, their isometric RTS expansion pack (thanks VoodooExtreme for the reminder). The 2.4 MB patch includes numerous bug fixes and play balance changes, as well as all the Random Maps released so far, but does not allow multiplayer games at the Zone.

Computer and Video Games has conducted an interview on Venom, talking to GSC Game World producer Serguei Zabaryansky about their upcoming tactical first-person shooter. Serguei discusses what should make the title stand out in the FPS field, such as the two-man squad that the player controls and the enemy AI, as well as the development challenges and multiplayer features.

UK publisher SCi (Sales Curve Interactive) has removed all mention of the PC version of Titanium Angels from their site today, suggesting that this third-person action adventure being developed at Mobius Entertainment is now headed for a Playstation 2 release only. This comes about a month after their Thunderbirds game suffered the same fate (story). A couple of new screenshots is on display however, and SCi is known to still have one PC title in development, Conflict: Desert Storm by Pivotal Games.

Ian Currie Interview on Computer Games Online catches up with the current Director of Product Development at Sir-Tech Canada about his start in the gaming industry, his work at the company in general and more specifically on the Jagged Alliance and Wizardry series, and a variety of other topics.

Gone Gold reports that Anarchy Online has, indeed, gone gold, and Funcom's futuristic 3D MMORPG is expected on store shelves in the US and Scandinavia by June 27 as promised last month (story). Update: EuroGamer reports that the rest of Europe can expect the game "sometime later this fall."

BrokenPixel.com previews Kohan: Ahriman's Gift this morning, looking ahead to the recently announced expansion pack for TimeGate Studios' isometric RTS (story). The preview briefly introduces the pack's contents before serving up a number of answers from TimeGate's Steve Hemmesch on its features and improvements, which include a full campaign and two or three mini-campaigns, a new playable race, and new units and spells. Sixteen new screenshots round out the proceedings.

There is a new preview of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Dominion Wars on PC Zone UK, checking out the space-based strategy game by Gizmo Games that went gold last week (story). The article takes a pre-beta copy of the game for a galactic spin and offers their impressions of the gameplay along with eight new screenshots.

This update on the Strategy First Forums offers word on a new account verification tool they've implemented, while this post has news for those receiving invalid username or password messages (thanks World War II Online HQ). Finally, this most recent update has word on a another couple of servers that are online, a mention of the FAQ that might help those with framerate problems, and word on plans for a patch for this massively multiplayer combat game.

• New CPUCooL
  A new version of the CPUCooL utility is now available. Thanks File Flash.
• Computex Reports
  OC Workbench's Computex 2001 Coverage Day 2 is online, joining their Day 1 coverage brining all the action, straight from Taipei.
• ISDN Tweaks
  3DSpotlight's Win2K ISDN tweak guide is online.
• New MemTach
  A new alpha version 0.89 of the MemTach memory benchmark is now available.

Matt Williams' Radeon OpenGL demo page (thanks Kero-chan and the Rage3D Discussion Area) has what Matt (A.K.A. NitroGL) calls TruQuake, a version of Quake modified to take advantage of ATI's TruForm rendering technology. Checking this out will require an ATI Radeon-based video card.

A new Gamer's Preview release of Server Watch 3 is now available, updating this task bar utility that can automatically ping game servers and displays game information. The new release has been re-written to utilize server plug-ins, and no longer uses any third-party software to serve ads.

FREELANCER's Vicious Cycle Interview talks with Eric Peterson, president of Vicious Cycle Software, discussing their proprietary engine, and a bit about the upcoming RoboTech console games it will power.

GameSpy.com's TRIBES 2 Guide Part I is online, offering the first half of their guide to being a productive member of your tribe.

3DActionPlanet's Q3Fortress interview catches up with Paul "Locki" Wedgwood, one of the folks behind the class-based Q3F modification for Quake III Arena. Topics include the upcoming beta 2, the origins of the mod, and even a bit on mods that are shut down ("foxed") for copyright conflicts. Also, Turtled.com interviews Minh Le talking about Counter-Strike, discussing cheating, among other things.

The TRIBES 2 Coding Center is open for business, offering a resource for TRIBES 2 coding assembled by the primary author of the Unofficial TRIBES 2 Coding FAQ. The site also offers coding tutorials and reference documents, a search function, and a files section.

• Battle of Britain on The Wargamer and (for something different) The Wargamer.
• Echelon on GameSpy.com.
• Off-Road Redneck Racing on The Armchair Empire.

• Abit VP6 motherboard on The Tech Report.
• Absolute / 3DPOWER MORPHEUS GeForce3 video card on Got Apex?.
• Asus V7100 MX All-in-Deluxe video card on Hardware Avenue.
• EPoX 8K7A DDR motherboard on Jsi Hardware.
• Senfu LCD Probe on RipNet-UK.com.
• StarForce Pro video card on Teched-Out.
• Swiftech MC462 Cooler on The Tech Zone.
• ThermalPhobia Non-Conductive Shims on Extreme Overclocking.
• Tornado 3000 case on Cole3D.

• Counter-Map (The Official Counter-Strike Mapping Resource) has a new Counter-Strike map pack for download with new maps for the insanely popular tactical Half-Life mod. The pack is available as a pair of .zip files to be modem-friendly for Windows users, as well as a tar.gz for Linux servers...
• There is a new gameplay movie of IL-2 Sturmovik on SimHQ, showing off a Stuka bombing run in the WWII flight sim by 1C Maddox Games...

Meister of anniversaries David Chase sends along some of his trademark anniversary goodies, not for today specifically, but rather general month of June anniversaries: In June 1977 the first mainframe-based version of Zork was developed, in June 1982 the Commodore 64 computer is announced, and in June 1984 John Romero released his first published game: Scout Search for the Apple II.

Wow, the C64 announcement was 19 years ago? I have a C128 I inherited a while back that I keep planning on setting up to check out some old C64 games... anyone remember Galactic Adventures?

Link of the Day: Glengarry Glen Darth. Remember, "frogs are for closers." Thanks AfterFox.
Story of the Day: Specially padded bra saves woman from nail puncture (Mlive.com). Thanks Drew Cowan. You've got to like her idea of getting dressed to mow the lawn.
Weird Science: Backslash How to Take Back Our Analog Brains (NY Times - free registration required). Thanks Jonathan C. Forster.