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While promoting new Sonic game.
Sonic the Hedgehog maker SEGA wants to stop people squashing real hedgehogs with their cars – splat!
The videogame maker created a hedgehog road crossing in Twickenham, London, according to the Daily Mail – and employed a pretty lollipop lady to ensure the animals waddled safely from one side to the other.
SEGA’s Anna Downing said: “Hedgehogs are an intrinsic part of British wildlife and with Sonic the Hedgehog such an institution we thought he was the perfect figure to raise awareness of their plight.”
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Second week at number one for Namco Bandai’s PSP game.New entries from Fallout: New Vegas and DS RPG Radiant Historia couldn’t break God Eater Burst’s reign in the Japan software chart for the week ending November 7.
The top four positions shifted a similar number of units, with Super Mario Collection and Pokemon Black & White managing to edge past last week’s number two, Winning Eleven 2011.
1. God Eater Burst (Namco Bandai, PSP): 61,834
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Kick-start bundle here in December.
The noob-friendly shop-shelf edition of online spaceship game EVE Online is coming to Europe.
Namco Bandai is doing the honours and expects the game to be available in December. The US version arrived in mid-October.
Properly dubbed the Commissioned Officer Edition, this bundle aims to get new EVE recruits up to speed fast.
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Brand Sackboy expands.
A game called Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves looks to be in the works for PlayStation 3.
It was submitted to the Australian Classification Board for rating (spotted by Siliconera), which duly popped it onto its website for all to see.
Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves looks like a collaboration between LittleBigPlanet creator MediaMolecule and Supermassive, the developer behind Start the Party and Tumble.
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Lucasarts/Lucasfilm taking licensing role in Star Wars MMORPG, leaving marketing and distribution to megapublisher.
When Star Wars: The Old Republic launches next year, it will have only one publisher. At an event this evening, Electronic Arts announced it will be the sole distributor of the massively multiplayer role-playing game, due out in 2011 after sometime after the first quarter of the year. The game is being developed by EA’s role-playing game studio, BioWare, at its Austin, Texas facility.
The MMORPG had been set to be co-published by both EA and LucasArts, the game arm of Lucasfilm, which created the Star Wars franchise. Lucasfilm will remain involved in the project as a “a key partner, collaborating on design and marketing, and as a licensor of the property.” Speaking with GameSpot, BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka said LucasArts would also remain involved in development of the game, as it is “part of the same organization as Lucasfilm.”
The financial terms of today’s deal were not disclosed, but the rationale was. According to EA, the deal was done “so that all publishing, marketing and distribution responsibilities can be centralized for efficiency.”
Today’s deal comes just over three years after LucasArts and BioWare announced their alliance for an undisclosed game–the same month EA revealed it was buying BioWare. Less than a year later, EA CEO John Riccitiello let slip the game was set in the same proto-Star Wars universe as BioWare and LucasArts’ Knights of the Old Republic games, set several thousand years before the Star Wars films. Later in 2008, BioWare and LucasArts revealed the game in earnest on the latter’s campus in San Francisco.
For the latest on Star Wars: The Old Republic, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“EA publishing The Old Republic solo” was posted by Tor Thorsen on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:37:56 -0800 -
Activision’s game denounced as “doubly perverse” and “sociopathic” thanks to Castro-assassination mission.
Yesterday saw the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops, a new first-person shooter which portrays fictional covert missions of the Cold War. Now, one of the few communist governments left over after the collapse of the Soviet Union is denouncing the game as a tool of propaganda.
As expressed in the state-run Web site Cubadebate, the Cuban government has taken major umbrage with the game, particularly its first level.
(SPOILER ALERT) “U.S. launches video game whose objective is to assassinate Fidel” ran a headline on the Web site, referring to a mission that sees players attempt to assassinate a young Fidel Castro shortly after his forces overran Havana and deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Instead, players kill a body double and are captured. (END SPOILERS)
“The logic of this new game is doubly perverse,” declares the article. “First, it glorifies the attacks illegally planned by the United States government against the Cuban leader. On the other hand, it encourages sociopathic attitudes of American children and adolescents, the main consumers of these virtual games.”
The article goes on to decry other violent video games, including Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and The Warriors, saying that they encourage violence in the United States. Quoting the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano, the article ends, “Violence begets violence, but also generates revenue for the violence industry, which sells it as a show and makes it an object of consumption.”
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Call of Duty: Black Ops upsets Cuban government” was posted by Tor Thorsen on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:04:41 -0800 -
UbiWorkshop working on mysterious toon.
Ubisoft has shown off another new strand of its ever-expanding Assassin’s Creed franchise.
A brief animated trailer for something called Assassin’s Creed: Ascendance has appeared on UbiWorkshop’s website a subsidiary responsible for short films, comics and art books based on Ubisoft properties.
It’s only a few seconds long and shows a familiar cloaked figure running along some rooftops in the rain.
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UbiWorkshop’s secret project is Assassin’s Creed Ascendance (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood)
Nov 11, 2010Today is funny. We went to our local doughnut shop and said to our main doughnut guy, “You know what, the world could use more hype for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. It’s only coming out in a week, don’t ‘cha know.” That’s when doughnut guy clued us in to this fine looking teaser trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Ascendance. And yes, it’s the best doughnut shop on Earth. …
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News
Call of Duty: Black Ops sets new first-day sales record, beats Modern Warfare 2 (Call of Duty: Black Ops)
Nov 11, 2010$360 million, folks. That’s reportedly the final tally on Call of Duty: Black Ops’ first-day sales, making it the single highest-grossing launch in entertainment history… …
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A follow-up to a 2009 experiment which revealed therapeutic benefits of Tetris confirmed the study’s finding and revealed a few new facts of its own.
Last year, Emily Holmes, a researcher at Oxford University, demonstrated that playing Tetris helped prevent the formation of unwanted memories, such as those of a particularly acute trauma. Holmes subjected volunteers to graphic images and had some of them play Tetris afterward. Those that played the game had fewer disturbing memories of the images than the control group… …