VIDEO GAMES BLOGS
VIDEO GAMES BLOGS

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 11 /PRNewswire/ — Move over, Sherlock Holmes! There’s a new Brit in town. The Feb. 10 launch of Professor Layton and the Curious Village(TM) brings a world of riddles, secrets and brainteasers to the portable Nintendo DS. The puzzle-filled game provides hours of mind-bending game play, thick story plots, funny, eccentric characters and a double murder-mystery.

In the curious village of St. Mystere, a wealthy baron passes away. His will reveals that a treasure is hidden someplace inside the village. Unable to locate the treasure, the baron’s family calls upon renowned archaeologist and puzzle expert Professor Layton for help. Upon his arrival, the search for the treasure is interrupted by the suspicious death of another member of the family. Now with two mysteries on his hands, Professor Layton must work his way through the village’s many challenges to get to the truth.

“Professor Layton and the Curious Village combines a mix of clever storyline and brainy twists,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales & marketing. “Like the Brain Age titles before it, this new puzzle genre requires players to use their minds as much as their thumbs. The strong story, charming hand-drawn animation and fully voiced movies appeal to hard-core gamers and casual gamers alike.”

Players will tackle brain twisters ranging from mazes and riddles to logic and sliding puzzles as Professor Layton progresses through an engaging 19th century anime-styled mystery. Touch-screen controls make working through the game a snap for players of all skill levels. What’s more, for a limited time new puzzles will be available weekly for download via Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection for extended replay value. The Professor Layton series is already a smash hit in Japan, where each succeeding game outsold the one before it. For more information about the U.S. game, visit http://www.ProfessorLaytonDS.com.

About Nintendo: The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii(TM), Nintendo DS(TM), Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube(TM) systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.5 billion video games and more than 430 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario(TM), Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda(TM) and Pokemon. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.nintendo.com.

Mobile World Congress, BARCELONA, February 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ –Gameloft, the world leading mobile gaming company, remains at the forefront of technology by announcing the launch of games designed especially for touch screen mobile handsets. Gameloft is the first publisher to cater to this new generation of mobile phones.

Using the company’s expertise from developing stylus-based games for the Nintendo DS, Gameloft sought out ways to best utilize the touch screens, which transform gameplay into a more intuitive experience and remove the limitation of small keyboards.

“The hype for 2008 will focus on the emergence of these new handsets and Gameloft has already gotten a head start,” said Michel Guillemot, President and CEO of Gameloft. “This is a new step in terms of development, one that leads us to rethink how we approach our game controls so that players can interact directly with the screen and get a greater gaming experience. Touch screen games are perfect examples of how modern technology can advance the gaming industry.”

Gameloft already has more than 15 touch screen games in its catalogue, including Block Breaker Deluxe, Brain Challenge and Brain Challenge 2, Bubble Bash, Platinum Solitaire, Chessmaster, Miami Nights: Single in the City, Paris Hilton’s Diamond Quest, Sexy Poker Manga, Catchphrase, Deal or No Deal, Shrek the Third, Real Football: Manager Edition, and CSI Miami. These games were developed for the first touch screen mobile phones available on the market, including the LG Viewty, LG KS20, the HTC touch screen line, and the Samsung SGH-F700. Gameloft’s touch screen games were initially developed in Java, though some will also be developed on the Windows Mobile platform.

The creation of touch screen games is part of Gameloft’s overall effort to make all of its games accessible to every commercially-available phone model on the market, which today stands at 1,200 different models for 180 carriers throughout 80 countries.

You can test touch screen games at Gameloft’s kiosk: 2B114 Hall 2.

Gameloft’s videos are available on:
http://fr.youtube.com/user/GameloftVideos

For more information, visit http://www.gameloft.com.