Village Gamer

Terminal Reality’s Infernal Engine is the Power Behind Upcoming Titles The Hunt and The Strike

Vancouver – Tired of fighting aliens? Maybe its time to take a trip to the great outdoors: or at least the virtual outdoors. Terminal Reality officially announced today that the award-winning Infernal Engine is the technology behind Piranha Games‘ bass fishing title The Strike, as well as their hunting simulation The Hunt.

“The world of videogames is a varied one. Everyone knows about Ghostbusters, but we at Terminal Reality believe in the extreme versatility of the Infernal Engine,” said Joe Kreiner, VP Sales and Marketing at Terminal Reality. “The inclusion of The Strike fishing pole and The Hunt rifle by Griffin International shows how well the Infernal Engine works with gaming peripherals.”
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Ottawa – Reversing a stealthily creeping trend, the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) has successfully led a charge against the government’s tendency to “bundle” all work into big contracts. Big contracts are simply too complex for small firms to bid on, said a CATA spokesperson.

“Our members tell us that they are giving up on bidding for government contracts,” said John Reid, President of CATAAlliance. “We are arguing that “bundling” the work in one big contract makes sense for the provision of large networks, but the bundling of all services would cut SMEs out. We have been lobbying MPs to “unbundle” or separate out the professional services. They have understood.”

Other advocacy groups have argued the government will pay more with such an unbundled approach. CATA has countered that cost-saving innovation is often found in the smaller and entrepreneurial companies.

CATA has further pointed out that the debate has been far too polarized, and instead adopted a balanced approach that creates a win for small companies, a win for large companies and a win for Canada as the Innovation Nation.
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Calgary – On April 28, 2009, Digital Alberta held their Annual General Meeting. The new Board is rolling up their sleeves already with a Board Strategic planning session scheduled for May 5, 2009.

Executive:

President – Larry Jacques – ITSportsNet (Calgary)
Executive Director – Rene Smid – Digital Alberta (Airdrie)
Vice-President, Northern Alberta – Greg Gazin – Parallel2000 (Edmonton)
Vice-President, Southern Alberta – Alex Gault – Small World Ventures (Calgary)
Past-President – Ron Thiele – Xpan Interactive Ltd (Calgary)
Treasurer – Gert-Jan de Vlugt – Calgary
Secretary – Richerd Chan – Tapium (Calgary)

Directors

Brian Traynor, Mount Royal College (Calgary)
Leanne Elias, University of Lethbridge (Lethbridge)
John Torvi, SATU Creatives (Calgary)
Michael Witwicki, (Calgary)
Jennifer Llewellyn-Pollack, Light Box Entertainment (Calgary)
Yulia Bocheck, dHz Media (Calgary)

Upcoming Digital Alberta Event:
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Waterloo – HP and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced they are establishing a strategic alliance to deliver a portfolio of solutions for business mobility on the BlackBerry® platform. The solutions, which include support for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server 5.0, are focused on increasing service levels, reducing operations costs and improving productivity for customers. HP and RIM plan to design and launch offerings to increase the productivity levels of the growing number of global mobile employees, enabling businesses to extend the return on their investments in mobility.

“As businesses look for new ways to increase service levels, reduce operational costs and improve productivity, they can meet these challenges by transforming how they manage the infrastructure that powers their mobile workforces,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “Emerging models of communications and collaboration have created an opportunity for RIM and HP to provide service-based mobile solutions that deliver value to customers.”
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Industry, government and academic leaders to explore digital media, trends – define leadership strategy for Canada

Stratford ON – Industry, government, education leaders and influencers will gather June 8 and 9 in Stratford, Ontario at the Canada 3.0 forum to map Canada’s digital future and create opportunities for new business and jobs. Hosted by the University of Waterloo Stratford Institute and the Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN), the forum is the must-attend event for anyone interested in Canada’s place in the world’s digital economy.

“The advent of social media, the explosion of the Web as a forum for a wide range of rich content, and the growth in high-tech handheld devices to access this content anytime, anywhere are creating new demands and pportunities,” said David Johnston, President of the University of Waterloo and a speaker at the conference. “Educators, those that set public policy pertaining to digital media, and content developers all have a vested interest in ensuring Canada takes its place as a leader in digital media.”

The forum addresses four themes – content and entertainment, technology and business, government, and research and education – and will provide participants with opportunities to actively engage industry leaders and speakers.

Some of the featured speakers are:
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Ottawa – Corel Corporation today announced that it is working with Microsoft Corp. on Windows 7. Corel is committed to delivering its core applications for the Windows 7 platform and is currently developing its next generation of creative consumer products that will offer an all-new, hands-on experience built on the power of Windows Touch technology.

Offering unprecedented stability and performance along with new features such as Windows Touch, JumpLists and Libraries, Windows 7 delivers exciting new possibilities for Corel’s software development teams while providing consumers with a more engaging and expressive computing environment.

“Corel has a long history of ‘firsts’ when developing software for the latest Windows platforms. With the upcoming introduction of Windows 7, Microsoft’s new operating system will redefine how people think about computing. Drawing on our customer research, we’re taking advantage of the solid performance and powerful touch capabilities Windows 7 offers to turn the typical user experience of mouse clicks and menus on its head, completely changing how users interact with creative software,” said Joe Roberts, Executive Vice President, Products for Corel.
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Burnaby – EA SPORTS™, a label of Electronic Arts Inc., today announced that both EA SPORTS Grand Slam® Tennis and the Florida-developed Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 10 will ship to stores June 8 in North America, one week earlier than originally announced. EA SPORTS recently announced that the Wii™ version of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 will be available packaged with the Wii MotionPlus™ accessory in both North America and Europe. In Europe only, EA SPORTS Grand Slam Tennis will be available with Wii MotionPlus at launch.

“This was important for us to bring in our ship dates for Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 and EA SPORTS Grand Slam Tennis to hit right at the launch of the new Wii MotionPlus accessory in North America,” said Todd Sitrin, Group Vice President Global Marketing, EA SPORTS. “Fans deserve great games that use the new accessory, and now they’ll have two that deliver authentic sports motion as soon as the Wii MotionPlus hits stores.”

Both Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 and EA SPORTS Grand Slam Tennis have been rated “E” by the ESRB. Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 has an MSRP of $59.99 when bundled with the Wii MotionPlus. Both products will be available for $49.99 without the accessory.

Title: Afro Samurai
Developer: Surge
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Release Date: January 27 2009
Platforms: Xbox 360 – PlayStation3
Genre: Action-Adventure
MSRP: $69.99
ESRB: Mature

Why do you want the headband? – Bad Guy
For revenge – Afro Samurai

Made by Surge for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, Afro Samurai is a third person action adventure game released in February this year, and is one of the best hacking and slashing titles this reviewer has played in the last couple of years. Based upon Afro Samurai the Japanese manga created by Takashi Okazaki and made into an animated movie voiced and co produced by the original BMF Samuel L Jackson is where Surge got their inspiration. The question lingers though how well do they translate that source material into a game?

The world of Afro Samurai is set in a futuristic feudal Japan, there exists 2 magical headbands held by only the strongest men/samurai in the world, legend has it that who wears the number 1 headband controls the world and granted the powers of a god. Since man is power hungry there exists the number 2 headband it is for those who wish to challenge the number 1 but can be challenged at anytime by anyone who chooses to take up the fight with the number 2.

This is where we start the story, as a child our hero Afro (named for his hair style) is forced to watch his father the current number 1 beheaded in a battle for the mysterious number 1 headband by the evil Justice the current number 2. So after seeing his fathers headband taken by Justice and having his fathers head tossed to his feet. Justice casts away the number two headband and tells Afro that if he wants his revenge, he better go train so he can get the number 2 headband and come back and avenge his father’s death. This is where the story of the video game kicks off.
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