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EA goes into the wild with SimAnimals Africa
Africa is fast becoming a hotbed of activity in games, and EA is the latest to take us there with its new game, SimAnimals Africa. In an attempt to improve the public image of the deadly animals there, EA will put a pleasant face on these creatures in this sequel to the original SimAnimals game on both the Wii and DS. Each are aimed at the casual crowd (of course) and will focus on providing players with "challenges and mini-games that players solve to unlock new items, animals and levels to explore."SimAnimals Africa migrates to retail October 23, 2009.
DS releases for the week of January 19th
For those of us in the United States, this week may be notable for more than video games, despite the debut of the fascinating Big Bang Mini ... and that may not even be limited to us! Well, Big Bang Mini is, but the news goes everywhere.Of course, if you think about it, so do DS games, if you want to pay international shipping. If you want an Obama DS Lite, well, you've gotta do that yourself. Big Bang Mini Jumble Madness SimAnimals Gallery: Big Bang Mini
Nintendo unleashes full Q1 schedule
Nintendo's carrier pigeon just landed on our windowsill with a complete list of Wii releases for Q1 2009. We do actually know most of these dates already (so yeah, maybe the mushroom cloud is a bit excessive), but there's still the occasional scrap of new news buried within.Those Tenchu and Little King's Story dates are fresh to us, and there's also confirmation of the first Play on Wii "New Play Control" games, Pikmin and Mario Power Tennis. For the record, "New Play Control" is a bit of a rubbish name for the series. In our humble opinion, obviously.Make the jump for the full line-up, and remember you can click on a game's name to bring up screens (where available)!%Gallery-22964%
Sim Bothering Animals
EA has released a new trailer and screens for their Sim spinoff SimAnimals. Like the initial assets released during E3, this trailer, while putting on a happy-go-lucky face, illustrates a game almost exclusively about being a total jerk to animals. "Oh, look, a happy little bear cub with his family," the interior monologue of the imaginary player seems to say, "Let's kidnap him! I wonder if bears eat squirrels? I wonder if this bear cub can swim!" The floating, gloved hand continues to disrupt the lives of once-peaceful forest residents like that while the narrator cheerily describes how much fun it is to interact with animals. This is horrifying.%Gallery-27608%[Via press release]
E308: SimAnimals simulates animals
EA has just announced a new Sim satellite game called SimAnimals, in which, much like you mess with virtual families' lives in The Sims and ruin people's houses in MySims, you control a floating hand that interacts with various wild animals. You can "reach out and touch, pick up and move everything in the game from foxes and bears to trees and flowers." See those bears? You can throw 'em. If you can refrain from being a jerk, you'll be able to gain the trust and friendship of the various animals that populate the SimAnimals forest. SimAnimals is planned for Wii and DS this January.%Gallery-27608%
E308: EA announces SimAnimals
EA's big E3 press conference is happening right now, and they've announced a new expansion to the Sim-whatever universe for the DS and Wii. According to the press release sent out concurrent with the announcement, SimAnimals is a game in which "you are challenged to engage, touch, move and try to control more than 60 animals as you journey deeper and deeper into the forest." Basically, you try to cajole a bunch of wild animals into becoming friends with a big disembodied hand.It's sort of like Nintendogs, but with lots of other animals. And vaguely creepier-sounding. SimAnimals is planned for a January release.%Gallery-27607%
EA reveals SimAnimals for DS, Wii
While everyone was distracted by EA's ongoing press conference, EA went and uploaded a bunch or screenshots and some basic information about a bunch of games, including a new one called SimAnimals for the DS. According to EA's Web page, the game lets players "control more than 60 animals" with an "on-screen animated hand that allows you to reach out and touch, pick up and move everything in the game from foxes and bears to trees and flowers." Animals will grow to like or dislike this disembodied, manual overlord based on how it treats them. Remind you of any other popular simulation game? Look for SimAnimals in January of 2009, and more about the project as we hear it.Update: An official press release includes a few more details and some enthusiastic quotes from EA execs. Fun!%Gallery-27603%%Gallery-27604%
Get your ecosystem on with Sim Animals
EA has worked animals into its Sims franchise before, but Sim Animals already sounds way more interesting than The Sims 2: Apartment Pets (and its corrupting boxart). Described by NGamer magazine as a "woodland ecosystem god game where Disney-style characterisation meets the teeth and claws of the Discovery Channel," this god game puts you in charge of a big ol' chunk of nature, which you have to ensure remains clean and full of happy, well-petted animals and plants.Do this successfully, and you'll get to see more of the 25 animals and 50 plant specimens in the game, which sounds a bit lot like Viva Piñata. The food chain plays a role (so to increase numbers of a certain species, bump up the number of animals they prey upon), and the ecosystem itself has its own happiness level. Four players can take part at once (animals remember how each player treats them), and it should be hitting both DS and Wii next year.With any luck, we'll see more of this soon. If only there were some huge industry event in the near future!
EA announces lots of Sim-branded casual titles
EA's Casual Entertainment division is ready to dilute expand the Sim franchise with a plethora of new titles over the next three years. The company also stated it plans to develop the "next generation" version of The Sims within three years. The MySims franchise -- after selling 3 million units for $100 million in revenue -- will receive two more titles in MySims Kingdom (Q4 '08) and MySims Party (Q1 '09).More Sims-branded games include SimAnimals and SimCity Creator. SimAnimals is expected by March '09 and SimCity Creator is part of EA's fiscal year 2011, meaning between March 2010 and February 2011. We doubt this is even the end of Sim announcements for this year -- gotta save something for E3.
