Another wild and crazy week of news has passed. From games going gold ,to developers taking back their titles, to Star Wars staying at the top of sales - we had it. Here's a quick look at what happened in gaming news this week.

　　Heuristic Park's Swords & Sorcery will be getting a new release date and a new name when it arrives. The company opened its web site a short time ago and announced that it had exited from its publishing deal with Westwood. Right now the company and its founder, D.W. Bradley, say that gamers can expect the RPG to hit stores this summer - even though it has yet to find a publisher. After posting the story, we were contacted by one publisher who seemed impressed with the title. If anything happens, you'll hear it first.

　　For those who plan your life around the release date of games, Baldur's Gate has been released on DVD for all you DVD drive owners (or all of you that who hate having to load all six disks of the popular RPG). Coming up in the next two weeks, gamers can expect to see Cavedog's Total Annihilation: Kingdoms (June 25), and SSI's Fight Steel on shelves after going gold this week. We've also been told unofficially that Heavy Gear 2 has gone gold as well.

　　During this weeks Microsoft Meltdown '99, the company announced that it had purchased ShadowFactor Software for its voice communication software, which enable gamers to talk or taunt one another during gameplay. The move could make BattleCom the de facto standard for in-game voice software. In other news, extensions of Creative Labs' EAX environmental audio will be added to DirectX 8.0 to make it more accessible to game developers. Creative hopes that adding its technology to DirectX will help sell more products like the SoundBlaster Live. By adding it to DirectX, other hardware developers would have access to some of Creative's technology - although we're not sure if any of Creative's competition is enticed by this idea.

　　No doubt about it, Star Wars hype is still pretty high, and the first two games based on the movie are riding that wave all the way. For the second week in a row, Episode I: Racer and Episode I: The Phantom Menace, have remained at the top of the PC Data top-selling games list with no sign of slowing down. We highly recommend Racer, with its great sense of speed and realistic physics engine (although realistic takes on an new meaning when you attach a sled to two jet engines). Luckily, GameSpot and ZDNet got the exclusive demo of the fastest racer in the universe the week. Weighing in at only 16MB, the download is almost painless.

　　Maxis had lots to be happy about this week, as SimCity 3000 hit the one-million-copies-shipped mark. The company will also release the long-awaited Building Architect Tool on June 16, which will allow users the ability to build new buildings into their copy of SimCity 3000.