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.

i am 8-bit is an artistic collective that brings together over 100 artists reinterpreting their favorite old-school video game characters in a variety of media, including paintings, plush, sculpture, and even interactive pieces. The art is showcased at an annual exhibition held in Los Angeles, California every year since 2005.

“tokidoki, Upper Playground and i am 8-bit create art with distinct and cutting edge personalities,” said Gil Rimmer, Art Director, EA Montreal. “With Need for Speed NITRO, we wanted to give players a variety of ways to customize their vehicles, introducing vivid and fresh urban art styles that have never been seen in racing games before.”

Developed specifically for the Wii and Nintendo DS™, Need for Speed NITRO delivers the fun and exhilaration of high-speed racing with blazing visuals and deep gameplay. Need for Speed NITRO features a deep and intuitive visual customization system that lets gamers trick out their car’s appearance as well as design a unique art style to attach to their ride. Ultimate bragging rights are at stake as the player’s personalized art style overtakes the world when they edge out their competitors for first place, vibrantly painting their story of racing dominance.

Shipping on November 17, 2009, Need for Speed NITRO recently received IGN’s “Best Racing Game” award for the Wii and Nintendo DS. Need for Speed NITRO is developed by EA Montreal and is not yet rated by the ESRB.