Village Gamer

Quebec City – Beenox Studios has been given the nod to develop Guitar Hero® Greatest Hits, which was announced by Activision’s President and CEO Mike Griffith on February 2.

Slated for release this coming June, Guitar Hero® Greatest Hits will be a compilation of 48 top hits from previous versions of the Guitar Hero® franchise, all updated for full band play on Guitar Hero® World Tour. The Greatest Hits release will be produced from Guitar Hero® master recordings and feature several play modes – career mode, rockstar creator, Guitar Hero® music studio and an eight player online battle of the bands.

Gamers will be able to rock out in such globally diverse locations as the Amazon rain forest, the Grand Canyon and the polar ice caps. There will also be some improvements to the User Interface, player navigation and a better quickplay system, and DLC from GHTunes will be compatible with this new title.

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Vancouver – THQ Inc. today announced that Warhammer® 40,000™: Dawn of War® II, developed by Vancouver’s Relic Entertainment, marked its first week debut as the best selling PC game across major video game markets worldwide, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Australia (according to the NPD Group, Inc., ELSPA/GfK Chart-Track and GfK.)

“We have built ‘Dawn of War’ into a premier PC gaming franchise based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe,” said Brian Farrell, THQ president and CEO. “We are pleased with consumers’ strong response to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II across many of our key markets and believe the game’s success clearly demonstrates our primary objective of delivering high quality games with strong global appeal. Warhammer 40,000 is a rich and growing universe and we look forward to expanding our offerings based on this brand in the future.”

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Vancouver – IUGO Mobile Entertainment is proud to announce its new pinball game Freeballin’ for the iPhone! Named by IUGO’s very active gamer community in a recent contest, Freeballin’ will be one of the newest products from IUGO on display at the upcoming GDC.

Here’s a taste of what’s to come in IUGO’s awesome upcoming title:

Endless hours of pinball entertainment spread across four unique, beautifully rendered playfields, including the Jungle and Cityscape themes. Over a half a dozen playfields in total, including boss battles!

Play in three distinct gameplay modes:
Score Attack is the classic pinball experience to get the highest score possible with your limited supply of orbs
Time Attack forces the player to get to a target score as quick as possible
Adventure Challenge has the player collecting artifacts from three different themes with the help of game-changing powerups.

Freeballin’: This is pinball like you’ve never seen before!

Fans Can Take Their Favorite School On The Road To The Final Four Using NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition

Burnaby – Electronic Arts Inc., has announced EA SPORTS™ will for the first time offer a downloadable official NCAA® Tournament edition of its college basketball videogame. Fans will be able to replicate the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship bracket and play with all the schools in NCAA March Madness®. Called NCAA® Basketball 09: March Madness® Edition and available exclusively for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system for 1200 Microsoft points ($15.00), it will be available to download just in time for the start of the NCAA tournament. The 2009 Tournament tips-off exclusively on CBS Sports on March 19th.

NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition will be easy-to-download exclusively for the Xbox 360 through Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 1200 Microsoft points beginning March 11, 2009. The game will initially feature teams from last year’s tournament, and then beginning on March 18, will feature the just-announced official Selection Sunday brackets and accurate teams with updated ratings.

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Ottawa – Corel Corporation has introduced Corel® Painter™ 11, the newest edition of the world’s leading painting and illustration software. With more than 40 new and enhanced features, Painter 11 provides the most inventive drawing and painting tools available, making it the ultimate art studio for those ready to expand their definition of creativity.

Since its inception, Corel Painter has set the standard for painting and illustration software. With Painter 11, artists can now expand their digital toolset with the most advanced painting and natural media tools available. New pressure-sensitive brushes allow hand and brush to fluidly work as one, producing brushstrokes that are unrivaled in texture and precision. Enhanced drawing tools and customizable media allow users to create distinct art every time.

“The cornerstone of Painter’s success has always been our loyal user community. During the development cycle for Painter 11, we listened closely and carefully to what these talented artists were saying about our product – the features they loved and the new features they needed as they worked with Painter on a day-to-day basis,” said Rob MacDonald, Product Manager for Corel Painter. “With Painter 11, we’ve successfully addressed many of the key areas our users highlighted while also delivering some exciting new features that will further expand artists’ creative options.”

Changing What’s Possible in Art
In developing the newest version of Corel Painter, the Corel team focused on four key areas:

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Toronto – The Adventure Company, a leading publisher of interactive entertainment software in North America, has announced it will publish the Adventure Game Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper for Windows® in North America. The game is developed by Frogwares, the creators of the award-winning adventure game Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened and is scheduled to release in April 2009.

“We are extremely pleased to continue publishing one of the best franchises out there in adventure gaming,” said Byron Gaum, Global Product Marketing Manager at The Adventure Company. “Frogwares and Focus Home Interactive have brought us some of the finest adventure titles in recent years. We think this pairing of the world’s greatest sleuth and the infamous killer will be another standout release in the adventure gaming genre.”

Sherlock Holmes, one of the world’s best known detectives is matched up with the most dangerous serial killer in England’s history, Jack the Ripper. The Year is 1888, London has been overtaken by a series of gruesome murders and police are left baffled, with no leads. The murders continue and Sherlock Holmes steps up to the case, setting out on a terrifying adventure to seek out the identity of Jack the Ripper.

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Wii Gamers Get Their Own Taste of Zombie-laden Insanity with Humor, Hordes of the Undead and a Variety of Weapons at the Player’s Disposal

Vancouver – Capcom®, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of video games, is pleased to announce that Dead Rising™: Chop Till You Drop ships today for the Wii™ home video game system. Developed by Vancouver’s Blue Castle Games, and taking advantage of the same proven technology that brought Resident Evil® 4 so successfully to Wii, Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop delivers a more intuitive and interactive experience as players use the Wii Remote™ to shoot, slash and bludgeon their way through a zombie infested shopping mall, fighting for survival. Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop is rated M for Mature by the ESRB.

Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop follows the harrowing tale of Frank West, an overly zealous freelance journalist on a hunt for the scoop of a lifetime. In pursuit of a juicy lead, he makes his way to the small suburban town of Willamette only to find that it has become overrun by zombies. Frank escapes to the local shopping mall, thinking it will be a bastion of safety but turns out to be anything but. A true struggle to survive the endless stream of enemies, players luckily have full reign of a realistic shopping centre and its varied stores offering an endless supply of real and makeshift weapons to fight off the flesh-hungry mob. If Frank is running low on health he can pay a visit to one of the many restaurants or cafes for a meal in order to restore his energy and continue the fight.

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Toronto – McCarthy Tétrault partners Barry Sookman and Steven Mason illustrate the challenges, concepts and approaches to copyright issues in their newly released casebook Copyright: Cases and Commentary on the Canadian and International Law. The authors draw on their experience in numerous high-profile intellectual property cases to show how copyright operates within various national legal systems and plays an important role in the creation and dissemination of valuable intellectual property assets.

Aimed at law students, law professors, librarians and practitioners, the casebook includes extracts from leading cases in both Canadian and international jurisprudence, and explains copyright matters to a broad audience through carefully selected court opinions and insightful commentary.

“Barry’s and Steven’s casebook reaffirms our team’s international expertise and ability to understand and resolve clients’ disputes regardless of jurisdiction,” said W. Iain Scott, the firm’s Chair and CEO. “It will be a valuable resource for anyone with an interest in copyright law.”

Published by Carswell, Copyright: Cases and Commentary on the Canadian and International Law can be purchased at Carswell’s online bookstore or by calling 1-877-750-9041.

Vancouver/North Myrtle Beach – Thinking Studios, a small independent Vancouver studio, and Slam Dunk Studios of North Myrtle Beach SC, are proud to announce the new PC game “Raycatcher”, which syncs its gameplay with your MP3s.  Create custom playlists of your favorite music and play for as long or as short as you’d like. The goal of the game is to spin a colorful cluster of shapes to catch multi-colored rays. This causes the cluster to grow, evolve, and unlock 30 new evolutionary stages.

Raycatcher, which is due for release in March 2009, represents the first game produced by the coordinated efforts of Thinking Studios and Slam Dunk Studios. “Raycatcher represents a new twist on the play to music gaming genre.” “We believe Raycatcher will appeal to a broad age group.”

Thinking Studios was started by John Warner, an artist currently employed in the game industry, who has worked on such titles as Company of Heroes and Dawn of War II.

Toronto – Red Wolf Online proudly announces its Beta launch of MeetingMade™, a web-based calendaring tool that automates and simplifies the scheduling of meetings and events by removing the tedious ‘back & forth’ over the phone or email.

With MeetingMade, you and your meeting participants share your availability without disclosing or compromising personal schedules in an easy-to-use interface. MeetingMade then calculates the best meeting time for everyone.

“I was inspired to create MeetingMade shortly after I moved to Toronto from Vancouver about 12 years ago, “ said David Tessler, President of Red Wolf Online. “Most of my childhood friends are busy professionals who now live here and we found it really difficult to get together. Our joke was that the amount of time it took to schedule a ‘get-together’ was more than the time we spent together.”
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