Village Gamer

Montreal – EA Montreal has announced that it is collaborating with lifestyle brands tokidoki, Upper Playground and i am 8-bit to create exclusive in-game car designs and artwork for Need for Speed™ NITRO on the Wii™. Each brand has created custom skins for a wide variety of vehicles including the Lamborghini Gallardo, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger R/T, Volkswagen Type 2 and Subaru Impreza WRX. They have also provided over 140 stylistic brushes that players can use to paint and personalize their ride. The cars in Need for Speed NITRO have style, personality and edge unlike any racing game.

The tokidoki brand is one of today’s most popular lines of apparel, accessories, toys, skateboard decks and other merchandise. The brand is characterized by a colorful, high-energy artistic style, while the word tokidoki means “sometimes” in Japanese. The name represents the company’s world view around identity and destiny. tokidoki was founded by Simone Legno and his partners and started as a personal web site before it evolved into an internationally celebrated brand.

Upper Playground is a cutting-edge, San Francisco based brand that brings graffiti culture to all types of street wear such as t-shirts, hats and hoodies as well as housewares and wall art. The Upper Playground punk rock art style has defined it as one of today’s hottest brands among musical tastemakers and Hollywood trendsetters. Read the rest of this entry »

Today on Global TV BC’s morning news, travel consultant Claire Newell mentioned two sites that will be of interest to those in the industry who do a lot of traveling. These two sites enable you to be certain that you are getting the seat you want on a flight, because as we all know, not all airplanes have the same seat layout. If you want to be sure you’re sitting where you want to sit, visit Seat Guru and Seat Expert.

Some cool info from our friends in the Vancouver-based Unity 3D community – Unity 3D appears to be the most popular engine for iPhone game development.  There are currently 258 confirmed games in the App Store that have been made with Unity 3D. From games created by students to professional outfits Unity has been used to create a wide variety of visually stunning, innovative and engaging games – from the quirky to the more traditional – the flexibility and feature set of the engine allows developers to concentrate on content rather than technology.

Nicholas Francis, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Unity said, “There’s so many iPhone games made with Unity that its hard to keep track; we’ve got 258 confirmed releases, but the actual number could be much higher. This spans small titles to smash hits like Zombieville USA and Touch KO. Even if its ‘only’ 258, that still means that there has been a Unity iPhone game released every two days since we launched – a great success.”

Unity will release 1.1 for iPhone towards the end of August 2009. The Unity tools have been hailed as revolutionary for enabling high quality results in an easily accessible development environment. Unity is the fastest growing cross platform engine.

Congratulations as well to Pug Pharm, who has received additional project funding from the Canada New Media Fund (CNMF) administered through Telefilm Canada.

“With this financial contribution from Telefilm, along with our recently announced support from the IRAP-NRC program, Pug Pharm is building momentum and is well-positioned to execute on our current production plans towards a public beta launch,” stated Steve Bocska, CEO of Pug Pharm.

“With this investment, the Canada New Media Fund is supporting novel online games that combine the engagement of traditional video games with the technologies of social networking applications. We see opportunities to create innovative offerings that have global appeal,” continued Bocska.

Montreal – Start 2010 with a bang! EA Montreal has announced that Army of Two™: The 40th Day will ship on January 12, 2010 in North America and January 8, 2010 in Europe. The sequel to the 2008 multi-platinum co-op shooter sees the return of the ultimate two-man private military team, Salem and Rios. Trapped in the middle of Shanghai as it falls under attack, the two must work as a team to survive relentless enemy assaults and escape the city collapsing around them. Gamers who pre-order* Army of Two: The 40th Day now will have exclusive access to the game’s all-new explosive multi-player mode, ‘Extraction,’ at launch. This mode will be unlocked for all other players one month after the game ships.

Army of Two: The 40th Day features a more robust and redesigned multiplayer experience with four unique multiplayer modes including ‘Extraction’. ‘Extraction’ pits a team of four players against a series of unique enemy waves as they move from point to point in the ruined city. Players must strategize as a unified team to combat the different forces of the 40th Day Initiative while trying to get out alive.

In Army of Two: The 40th Day, private military contractors, Salem and Rios must fight their way through Shanghai to survive a carefully orchestrated series of catastrophes that are dragging the massive city to the brink of ruin. Jonah, the mastermind behind the 40th Day Initiative, has amassed an army of skilled soldiers to level the city in his attempt to rebuild an empire according to his vision and ideals. Now, the Army of Two must fight their way through ravaged city districts as they try to beat the odds.

Army of Two: The 40th Day will be available for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and the PSP® (PlayStation® Portable).

* Pre-order offer has restrictions. See www.eastore.com and participating retailer sites for details