Village Gamer

UK Rock Sensation Mendella was given a taste of home yesterday, while playing a free concert for anyone choosing to seek shelter under the big blue tarp at the Aldergrove Band Shell, next to the Heritage Telephone Museum. Even the pouring rain and threats of lightning could not keep these rockers off the stage and away from the people listening in, and only those who dared to venture out beyond the reaches of the makeshift shelter felt the fury of the weather falling upon them.

What started off as a wet morning turned rather suddenly into an outright downpour. But, thanks to some quick thinking and creativity of the sound and tech crew (Curtis and Ryan from Sonic Voodoo Productions), promoter and owner of VillageGamer Tami, and “space occupier and video camera person” Scott, a very large tarp was strung out over the field, giving the feeling of watching a concert inside a circus tent. Thus it was born, “Under The Tarp Productions: Always A Unique Show”. While the wind battered at our defenses of black poly from the sides and rear of the stage, the rain tried to bring down our shelter. Still the band played on, and in moments of true creativity, even added it into the act. Lead singer Tom “Butters” occasionally changing around lyrics of their songs to reference “the rain keeps coming down” (and down and down), while “set design and emergency water management” Scott (that’s me, people) scrambled to pop various small holes in the tarp to drain the growing lake forming overhead in the low points of the shelter. Drummer Toby Parker was even supplied some “backup beats” from the thunder in the distance, which simply added to the effect of “Rain or shine, we come to rock your (soaking wet) socks off!”.
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Indie Game Developer XGen Studios Challenges Players to Defend Your Castle

Edmonton, Canada – Repel attacks from swarms of invaders, earn powerful spells, and gain upgraded arsenals with the release of XGen Studios‘ hit WiiWare™ title, Defend your Castle™. Developed by a small team with big ideas, the game invites up to 4 players to become commanders of their kingdom and fight off relentless hordes of invading enemies through a mixture of cooperative and competitive play. Immense masses of invaders employ many types of soldiers in their quest to seize the domain. Will players and their courts rise to the challenge, or stand aside as they raze the castle to the ground?

XGen Studios Inc., acclaimed casual game developer, is pleased to announce the release of Defend your Castle on Nintendo’s downloadable game service WiiWare in Europe & Australia today.

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A Battle of the Hard Rock Bands will be taking place this weekend, Saturday August 9th at the bandshell in the Heritage Museum Park which is located at the corner of 272 Street and 32 Avenue in Aldergrove. There is room for 4 bands to compete, with the competition slated to begin at 3pm. Bands will be judged on performance quality (vocals and instrumentation), stage presence and audience participation (this means bring your fans to cheer you on). Participating bands will need to be in attendance at the competition from 2pm until approximately 8:30pm, with competitive play beginning at 3pm. Each band is to perform for 30 to 45 minutes, then after the last band there will be a chance for the audience to show their appreciation for the four bands. Audience appreciation counts for points, so rock their socks off.

Following the competition segment of the event, the UK rock group Mendella will be giving a free performance while the judges make their final decisions and the winner will be announced following Mendella’s set. Prizes and judges will be announced, but thus far Mendella’s management, Orpheus Sounds, is offering $100.00 cash and Village Gamer (a division of KillaNet Technology Ltd.) is offering a free outdoor promo photography shoot to the winning band, along with a DVD and photos of the entire show. Endoplasmic Entertainment Recording Studio in Langley has also offered studio rehearsal time – more details on that are forthcoming. Any company wishing to contribute to the prize offerings is more than welcome, and will be given full recognition at the competition and in follow-up press coverage.

To qualify for this competition, bands must not yet have recorded a commercial album or have a record deal, but be working towards them. Band members must be under the age of 25, and an mp3 song sample must be provided by 5pm on Friday, August 8th. This can be in the form of a demo on MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube or personal site, and bands must sign up at http://www.villagegamer.net/battle-of-the-bands/. Winners of the four performance slots will be notified on Friday evening between 8 and 9pm.

The competition’s host band Mendella is currently on a two week tour of the Lower Mainland promoting their music prior to hitting the studio to record their first commercial album, which is due in stores Spring 2009. The hard-hitting sound of Mendella is certain to rocket them to the top of rock charts around the world, and they put on a show to remember. Mendella first visited Vancouver for the New Music West Festival in May, and after seeing the plight of the homeless in the downtown eastside, were moved to write the song Saw Me Bleeding. Now, fresh from performances at the Digital Storm Videogame Tournament and the Tom Lee Music Hall in Vancouver, Mendella is ready to rock the country side of the valley before performing at The Roxy on August 13th in Vancouver. Mendella will be taking the stage at 7pm on Saturday night, but you can get a preview by visiting myspace.com/mendellaband.

Finalist bands will need to provide:

Drum Breakables – Sticks, Cymbals, Snare
Guitars, cords, pedals
Fans to cheer them on

We will provide:

Drum kit (minus breakables), amps, mics, PA, sound board, sound mixer (you can use your own sound tech if you have one)

If you have any questions, please use the Contact form and we’ll get back to you asap.

JoWooD Productions and DreamCatcher Games, leading publishers of interactive entertainment software around the world, today announced Bring the Pain ’08 – 2008’s Painkiller Tournament and Sweepstakes will begin late August 2008.

The tournament and sweepstakes has over $10,000 in prizes to give away, including complete Alienware® Gaming Systems, Creative Xi-Fi Sound Cards, Fatal1ty Titanium Pro Headsets, Speakers and Zen MP3 Player.

The tournament and sweepstakes coincides with the release of Painkiller Triple Dose, now available at Gamestop stores across North America. Get the full versions of the original Painkiller, Painkiller Battle out of Hell and Painkiller Overdose along with the Making of Painkiller DVD and the Official Soundtrack in this compilation pack for the seriously low SRP of $19.99USD.

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Digital Storm is very pleased to welcome Nexon and Combat Arms to this weekend’s event. Nexon will be sponsoring the Combat Arms Last Man Standing Tournament, which will be taking place at 1:00pm on Saturday, August 2, with preliminaries taking place on the evening of Friday, August 1. The final battle will be open to 16 finalists, all of whom will receive a Special Press Edition DVD of Combat Arms, with the tournament winners receiving Nexon Cash, which can be used for game upgrades in any Nexon game product.

Also in attendance at Digital Storm will be representatives from Nexon’s Vancouver studio, Humanature. They will be observing the tournament finals as well as discussing working in the Vancouver game development industry with event attendees.

Digital Storm LAN takes place this weekend, August 1st and 2nd at the Croatian Cultural Centre, located at 3250 Commercial Drive in Vancouver. Doors open at 4:00pm Friday, when several game tournaments and ladder scrims will begin. All World Cyber Games qualifying tournaments will take place on Saturday, August 2, and the UK rock group Mendella will be giving a 45 minute live performance at 8:00pm. Tickets for Digital Storm and Mendella’s performance will be available at the door. Tickets for Friday and Saturday are $35.00, Saturday-only tickets are $25.00, concert-only tickets are $7.50.

Press Release – TORONTO – July 30, 2008 – If you’ve ever returned from a getaway feeling that it didn’t live up to your expectations, you’ll appreciate the value of PlanetEye, a travel-planning Web site with a difference. The site offers geotagged photographs, insight from other travelers and local experts, and extensive travel metadata, all of which can be accessed from an interactive map — a geographic browser, in technical parlance. Because users can explore travel options and easily and quickly research, reserve, organize and share their trips, the result is smarter travel planning.

Part of what makes this Toronto-based startup unique is its use of a technology fresh from Microsoft’s research labs, which PlanetEye licensed through Microsoft’s intellectual property (IP) licensing program. Called World Wide Media eXchange (WWMX), the technology enables the indexing of a large volume of geotagged photographs and provides the tools to access them via the geographic browser. WWMX was invented in 2002 by Kentaro Toyama, then with the Interactive Visual Media group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., and currently assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India in Bangalore.

PressPass recently spoke with Butch Langlois, CEO of PlanetEye, and Bob Tenczar, director of marketing for Microsoft’s Intellectual Property Licensing division, to learn more about how an idea goes from the lab to commercialization.

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“BRING DOWN THE SKY” EXPANDS THE MASS EFFECT ADVENTURE

Leading video game developer BioWare™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. ( NASDAQ: ERTS ), has announced that “Bring Down the Sky,” the first piece of downloadable content for the award-winning space epic Mass Effect™, is now available for owners of the PC game version to download free of charge.

Fully optimized for the PC, “Bring Down the Sky” is the first in a series of planned downloadable content that will further expand the Mass Effect story and universe. It includes a new uncharted world that introduces the deadly Batarian alien race, approximately 90 minutes of new gameplay and an original soundtrack. Instructions on how to download and install the new content are available on the Mass Effect downloadable content page. “Bring Down the Sky” is currently available for international languages including English, Spanish, Italian and German, with additional language versions coming soon.
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Press Release – Toronto, July 29, 2008 – SilverBirch Studios, a member of the SilverBirch Inc. ( TSX-V: SVB ) group of digital media companies, today announced that N+, a DS and PSP game to be released by Atari, Inc. in August, has won two awards at the recently concluded 2008 E3 Media & Business Summit in Los Angeles.

N+ won best PSP game of show awarded by GamingExcellence and separately won the best handheld game of show awarded by the Blast Magazine. N+ is a physics-based platformer in which a player assumes the role of a ninja who by running and jumping has to make his way to a door while collecting gold, avoiding attackers and fighting the clock.

“This is obviously a great honor for us,” said Wojtek Kawczynski, Senior Vice President, SilverBirch Studios. “Winning two awards at E3 further validates the quality of N+ and is a reflection of the passion that went into the making of the game.”
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The leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, SteelSeries, today announced its acquisition of certain assets in Ideazon, Inc., the Canadian-based developer and manufacturer of gaming peripherals and technologies. This acquisition further strengthens SteelSeries’ peripheral technology and will help expand the company’s broad support within the gaming community.

“SteelSeries has brought together two rapidly growing companies in the gaming space, making SteelSeries one of the fastest-growing gaming peripherals manufacturers globally,” said Bruce Hawver, CEO of SteelSeries. “No other organization works as closely with both gamers, and now software creators, in order to create arguably the most responsive gaming products in the world, optimized for gamers’ preferences, as well as specific gaming publishers and specific titles.”

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Video Games Live: Volume I

After seeing Video Games Live on the stage in Milwaukee, I had to get this album when it was released.

The actual touring show has many of the game’s soundtracks that they play the music from for sale, but this is the first Video Games Live soundtrack that has been released of the actual orchestra and choir performing.

I got it in the mail today and I instantly popped it into my computer to start listening and I was stunned. It’s almost being right there seeing the show — maybe I think this because I’ve already seen it. Hmm… — Well, have a read of the CD’s description and go out and buy it! I have included a sample of Civilization IV at the end of this post. This song made me tear up it was so beautiful live and is by far my favorite video game song that I have ever heard.

Amazon.com says:

“2008 release, the soundtrack to the true gamer’s life! Conductor Jack Wall leads the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra and Crouch End Festival Chorus through many of the most popular video game themes and creates a glorious aural paradise for the gamer in all of us. If you are hooked on the music from video games like Sonic The Hedgehog, Myst, Final Fantasy, Warcraft, Super Mario Brothers and others, then imagine those themes as performed by an orchestra. Yes, it is like heaven without the joystick! EMI.”