Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 73

WHAT'S 0 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2005 G11 START MENU TOP 10 RENTALS Top video game rentals lor the week ending Oct. 30 1. Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (PlayStation 2) 2. The Warriors (PlayStation 2) 3. The Warriors (Xbox) 4.

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (Xbox) 5. Tony Hawk's American UPCOMING RELEASES 't Kb Ti gaming, gadgets and gizmos MORE REVIEWS Wasteland (Xbox) 6. DragonBall Budokai Tenkaichi (PlayStation 2) 7. Shadow of Colossus (PlayStation 2) 8. Soul Calibur III (PlayStation 2) 9.

Socom 3: US Navy Seals (PlayStation 2) 10. Battlefield 2 (PlayStation 2) Sonne: Kngrr itleii Monday LEGO Star Wars: Tlie Video Game (GameCube) Tuesday Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PSP, GBA, DS) Opinions from across the land. www.edmontonjournal.com and click on Online Extras EDMONTON JOURNAL jfU 4" 'j i Jk; Vjr Prime Pinball designed for full-tilt players But old-time action watered dom by video elements Disney scopes out position as player in big game world Buena Vista Games' Chicken Little is first in avalanche of titles to be offered 7 VIDEO GAME REVIEW Metroid Prime Pinball Platform: Nintendo DS Rating: (out of 5) Two aspects of video-game production and marketing Nintendo has perfected are: Spinning off their Golden Goose properties into totally different genres (Mario Paint, Pokemon Puzzle League, etc.) and making innovative andor weird gaming devices (pick from a long list of examples). Metroid Prime Pinball, with its cool little rumble pack that slips into the DS's GBA cartridge slot, combines both impulses in one. The very idea is elegant.

The heroine of the Metroid games, space bounty hunter Samus Aran, has always hadherMorph Ball ability in her legendary arsenal just putacurled-up Samus on a series of pinball tables based on Metroid levels and there you have it. The blend of the 4 racking up multipliers controlled triggers that good (physical) only things feel of real your hands, pounds of your body Met iijy NKIL DAVIDSON The Canadian Press TORONTO The sky may be falling with today's release of Disney's Chicken Little movie, but Disney itself sees the sky as the limit when it comes to video gaming. Buena Vista Games, the interactive entertainment arm of The Walt Disney Company, has spent much of 2005 expanding and improving its own video game world. The Chicken Little game is living proof. The title is the first by Salt Lake City developer Avalanche Software since itwas bought by Buena Vista in April.

Buena Vista also has Propaganda Games, a new development studio in Vancouver. Plus Buena Vista has restocked with some top officials from other gaming companies. Buena Vista is moving from licensing its product to external developers to publishing and developing its own games. It is also looking to expand from focusing primarily on families and kids to catering to all gamers. It wants to become a bigger player in the burgeoning video game market.

"The average gamer's 30 years old," said Michelle Liem, senior marketing manager for Buena Vista Games' Canadian arm in Toronto. "So the video game market is no longer about kids 50 per cent of gamers are 18 and over." Buena Vista is already well-placed in the gaming market, growing about 200 per cent last year. Its Finding Nemo game sold five million units worldwide. The Incredibles did almost as well. And Buena Vista has found a profitable niche with girl gamers by transferring such TV titles as Lizzie McGuire, That'sSoRavenandKimPossi-ble to handheld gaming.

Disney saw that growth and success as an opportunity to invest in and expand its own gaming arm. "It's our intention, our goal, to become a top game publisher," said Liem. "We want to basically model our business on the likes of Activision and EA and THQ, who have a wide portfolio of games." By doing everything under one roof publishing, developing, marketing Disney can maximize its resources and profit. Having its own development studios also allows for Buena Vista to create its own original game product, something that can be very lucrative if the title turns out to be hit. Chicken Little (the game is out Tuesday) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Nov.

15), once you start combos and the barely chaos of the board classic flipper-slappin' adrenaline rush of a table. The missing are the hammers under and 500-plus machine to slam against. 9 A fct. SUPPM1D Chicken Little, the video game version, is available on Tuesday. familiar Metroid sounds and music with that special frantic energy you get only with pinball feels right.

Put it all on the DS's two beautiful screens a great setup for displaying a pinball field and add in a clever kicker for tactile feedback, and you've got the best portable pinball experience ever. Of course, a term like "the best portable pinball experience ever" is pretty relative; there's not exactly a broad and deep array of competition though I'll confess a soft spot for those old Reagan-era LED handheld pinball units that went bip-bip-bip and not much else. So how is the pinball, as pinball? Pretty good; the table layouts are very well designed, balancing lots of tricky target-shooting with wide-open play for a really speedy flow with few if any dead SllPPIIII) Samus Aran is the heroine of Metroid Prime Pinball spots or frustrating cheap bounces. There's lots of ramps and locks and specials for gimmick fans, and once you start racking up combos and multipliers the barely controlled chaos of the board triggers that classic flipper-slap-pin' adrenaline rush of a good (physical) table. The only things missing are the feel of real hammers under your hands, and 500-plus pounds of machine to slam your body against.

Metroid Prime Pinball isn't pure pins, though; it a video game and it's based on a video game so it does a lot ofvideo-gamey things. Classic Metroid enemies including, of course, the eponymous energy-leeching Metroids come into play to plague our balled-up little Samus, sometimes just drifting around and causing problems during regulation play, other times doing their thing in little bonus mini-games where an un-morphed Samus has to gun them down shooter-style. This is kind of fun for a break, I suppose but why would we need a breakfrom such good pinball action? When real-life pinball tables started adding video game elements to its play in a desperate attempt to keep a scrap of their arcade market share, it gets pretty weak, and the "video game" elements are the weakest part of Metroid Prime Pinball. The two screens work really well except when the aforementioned enemies end up in the "hidden zone" between the screens' respective display areas and the little kicker gives it a feel unlike any other DS game. With the pick-up-and-play familiarity and quick playtime of pinball, it's pretty much an ideal portable diversion.

"grim" consequences. "If we don't start attracting women, we're ignoring half the freaking world," he said. "And if we don't start paying attention to non-Anglo males, we are ignoring most of the world." The internationalization of gaming is inevitable and has already started, he said. North American developers had better realize it. "We're starting to compete with a lot of developers in Asia and eastern Europe who are as clever as we are and creative as we are and get paid a lot less." "There might not be a Canadian development industry, there might not be a North American development industry if guys in eastern Europe and Asia can do our jobs better than we can." Still Spector says competition is good, forcing the industry to change and adapt.

As development costs soar, outsourcing some jobs on a game project around the world is an option, he suggested. doesn't needs to. It rated, gang-related game still in the works that has drawn fire for its violence. The game was in production before Buena Vista took over Avalanche. Propaganda Games, set up by four former Electronic Arts employees, will focus on action-adventure titles to attract an older audience.

Its first project (which will probably be out in 2007 on next-generation consoles) will be the dinosaur-hunting adventure Turok, a franchise that sold five million units before Buena Vista acquired its rights. While looking within to develop games, Buena Vista is not giving up on partnerships with developers. Traveller's Tales did its Narnia game, for example. Still, Buena Vista has shown it means business by licensing the Unreal Engine 3, seen as a top-of-the line tool in game development. "That was a huge move for us," said Liem.

unfolding as it making games, said the rich will get richer while smallerplayers might fade away. Ten years ago, Spector said, he made games for $2.5 million US, with 30 people on the development team. Then, for Deus Ex; it went to $5 million to $7 million with 50 people. "Then it's 12 million bucks and 80 to 90 people, It's just crazy. And that's just the starting point for next-generation (games)." The entry-level budget for a game on one platform is $8 million, he said.

"That's insane. Most games lose money." Spector, who is working on as-yet unannounced projects at his Junction Point Studios, also worried about a huge game audience that is being excluded. "There's age, gender and ethnicity, and all of these things are about to start biting us on the butt if we're not careful." The core demographic for gaming is getting older. That is good and bad news, he suggested. and Tim Burton's Hie Nightmare Before Christmas (already on shelves) are Buena Vista's first multi-platform releases as publisher.

Disney has Harry Potter-like hopes for the Narnia movie, out Dec. 9. That optimism extends to the video game, given that the books by C.S. Lewis have sold more than 80 million copies. Now Disney wants to mine the rest of its content for gaming.

That includes movies made by Touchstone and Miramax plus its TV programming. The hit show Lost, aired on Disney's ABC, seems tailor-made for a video game. Down the road, Buena Vista hopes one of its games will generate the movie, rather than the other way around. Avalanche, which developed the Chicken Little game, will focus on creating titles from feature animation films. Ironically, Avalanche has made headlines recendy with 25 to Life, a mature- mander, DeusEx, Thief: Deadly Shadows and several of the Ultima series.

He also lamented the cost of making games, saying the price tag had chased away "indie" developers who had contributed much of the creativity. While Spector also talked of the opportunities awaiting developers via next-generation consoles and other improved hardware, he also warned the industry could become "marginalized." "There are a lot of pitfalls and problems facing us. It is definitely the best of times and the worst of times. I think it is important for us to recognize both." His speech followed the more optimistic comments from Wayne Clarkson of Telefilm Canada who noted a study that pegged the worldwide video game industry growing from $25 million US in 2004 to more than $58 million in the next five years. Spector agreed there is money to be made but, citing the increased costs of Video game universe not should, developer warns "Older players have different life experiences, trust me.

And they want and demand different kinds of content. Skateboarding? Not part of my life particularly. Urban thuggery? Not interested. Extreme sports? It's been a while forme." Age is also a factor in making games. Older developers have lives outside the office and aren't willing to forgo that during crunch time in making a game.

"I want to have a life," Spector said. As for gender, the industry has done a dismal job in attracting women as gamers and developers, he added. "By and large (female developers) work on guy games, which is the only kind of games we make, and their work is sadly indistinguishable from the world of their male counterparts. On the ethnicity side, I'm sorry, I see literally no progress." The industry needs to reach out to new developers, find new content or else face NEIL DAVIDSON 77ie Canadian Press MONTREAL Video games may make billions of dollars a year, but the industry needs to take risks and be creative in widening its universe and audience orelseriskstag-nation, a veteran game developer warned this week. Warren Spector, in the keynote address at the Montreal International Game Summit on Wednesday, urged an industry audience to step outside of the box, to look beyond merely making "prettier" Grand Theft Auto clones and sports titles.

"Sadly sticking with the tried and true is going to result in financial success for some, for a time. But stagnation is not the friend of any medium. And anybody who thinks it is (is) going to go out of Spector, an American developer whose resume includes Wing Com Surge Protectors? Sure lightening strike twice. Then again, it seldom ti 11.