Just thirteen years after the conclusion of the television show, Legacy Interactive has snapped up the hot Murder, She Wrote license for a PC game. The hidden-object game will feature five all-new mysteries, and will include both the classic Cabot Cave locale and “well-loved characters from the show” including Dr. Seth Hazlitt, Sheriff Mort Metzger, and, of course, crime-solving novelist and potential distant relative Jessica Fletcher.
Slightly more timely is Legacy’s announcement of PC and DS games based on the House M.D. license. In this game, players will control the members of Dr. House’s diagnostic team, including House himself, in five different cases. According to Legacy, the game will involve diagnosing and treating patients with rare diseases. It is unknown whether this process will involve breaking into their houses, as it always does on the show.
When it comes to the realm of board games, Hasbro is quite the … player. Over the past couple of decades, it has absorbed Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, Avalon Hill, Wizards of the Coast, Cranium, and others. Chances are that any board game, not to mention toys, you used to play with as a kid are now owned by Hasbro.
In 2007, Electronic Arts signed an exclusive agreement with Hasbro to produce games based on some of the items in its vaults, and so far we’ve seen Scrabble, Hasbro Family Game Night, Trivial Pursuit, and more. EA also just announced Hasbro Family Game Night 2 for the Wii and DS, due out later this fall, which will add Pictureka, Bop-It, Operation, Jenga and others to the mix.
But where are the titles like Risk, Axis & Allies, and Dark Tower? We spoke to Steve Flege, Senior Marketing Director for Hasbro Digital and Kyle Murray, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Electronic Arts about the deal, the first games we’ve seen, the pricing structure, and what’s coming up next. The good news: we might be getting Risk on next-gen consoles. It’s been on the PC, the PS1, the PS2, and the original Xbox, so it’s about time. Roll those sixes!
PopCap Games has just unleashed a new trailer for the ultimate Peggle experience, Peggle: Dual Shot. In this version, players can enjoy 120 levels and 90 challenges, as well as the unique Peggle Zoom feature. There’s also an all-new bonus underground and multiplayer duels, should that tickle your fancy. We can’t be the only ones dying to play this, right?
Peggle: Dual Shot releases for the Nintendo DS on March 3.
So says Sega A&R man Darren Williams in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, who also described the console as “the kind of thing that families will play at Christmas, and probably won’t play again throughout the remainder of the year.”
Before we all fetch the pitchforks and start constructing crude Darren Williams effigies, perhaps it would do some good to calmly consider whether the man has a point. In this blogger’s personal experience, a small number offamilies do only use the Wii sporadically, and Williams clearly isn’t referring to Wii Fanboy staff or readers.
Whether these occasional players are such a bad thing is another debate entirely. One popular theory seems to be that newer gamers are less likely to invest in new Wii software, but we saw yesterday that the Wii’s tie ratio is thoroughly healthy. What sayeth you?
Okay, so We Cheer is a game about cheerleading, and that immediately raises the hackles of most Wii gamers sensitive to the system’s relative lack of games about men firing guns at each other in space. Yes, this game was probably designed for someone other than males aged 18-35.
However, we can’t help but admire the soundtrack. Aside from a few diversions into modern “we had to put this stuff on here for the kids” territory like the Ataris’ “In This Diary”(which makes no sense for cheerleading), it’s a greatest-hits compilation of our high school pep rallies, full of vintage ’90s music designed to make EVERYBODY DANCE NOW.
We don’t really know the nuances of cheerleading, but we imagine that were we to try to rouse a crowd, “It Takes Two” by Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock would be a good start. Head past the break for the full track list.
We’ve heard some quiet rumblings that Fatal Frame IV might be better if it had a little more action (the whole point of the series notwithstanding). While it’s certainly not the voice of the majority, we can’t help but wonder if there is a perception that some of the self-proclaimed hardest-core gamers won’t be happy with anything short of a frag fest, which means that developers may be looking at either FPS games and other titles built around violence for the core contingent, casual and party games for everyone else, and the titles that are more deeply nuanced are being shelved. That could explain a few things, such as the disappearance of Disaster: Day of Crisis, and the lack of love for a few ports/sequels that would be absolutely appropriate for Wii gamers.
EA’s John Riccitiello? Nothing fazes him. The man’s as cool as a cucumber. Case in point: last week, GameDaily reported that EA’s Boom Blox, a game that has received universal praise from critics, has sold just 60,000 units in North America since its launch in early May — a figure that equates to 0.6% of Wii owners. “Ouch” doesn’t begin to cover it.
Yet whereas such paltry figures would have had seen most CEOs teetering on the windowsill of their eleventh story offices, Riccitiello remains confident that Boom Blox is a slow-burner. Speaking during a session with investors, the EA bigwig argued that casual games have a “much flatter, much longer [sales] curve” compared to core titles, which can see “20 to 30 per cent” of their lifetime sales take place during the first week.
“Right now, Boom Blox has met our expectations internally based on the model that was put forward,” announced Riccitiello. “Can it do several hundred thousand or a million or more units? Sure, it just has to keep selling.”
We just hope you’re right, John, if only because Boom Blox desperately deserves to do well.
Poor old Ubisoft. Contrary to popular belief, it turns out that casualgameswon’t pay for your entire HQ to be paved in gold. According to Ubisoft North American president Laurent Detoc, this is because any savings made on developing such titles goes towards marketing the things, which apparently costs an arm and a leg.
“The margins on these games are good when you look at development, but it takes a lot of marketing dollars,” revealed Detoc to Gamasutra, instantly endearing himself to all of us hardcore gamers who can’t stand a lot of the casual tat on the Wii. “It’s like packaged goods. You have to think about marketing, retail space, branding.” My, isn’t it nice to see that the creative flame still burns bright in the industry?
Anyway, Ubisoft is especially struggling with its Wii line-up of casual fare, with Detoc admitting that much work is to be done if Ubi’s games are to “sell as well as Nintendo’s own Wii titles.” Needless to say, our hearts bleed.
Sandlot Games’ Cake Mania franchise is coming to the Wii for the first time via Majesco, as Cake Mania: In the Mix! The new Wii game combines the time-management-based gameplay of the first Cake Mania with the storyline of the sequel, and adds waggle to the baking and serving action in new minigames.
Other new features include an unspecified “Shop Rating” feature that enables unlocks and a phone system that enables even more orders to come in.
Majesco expects to release Cake Mania: In the Mix during this holiday season. It will be distributed by Codemasters in Europe for an early 2009 release. We’re always interested in seeing how the PC casual games audience crosses over with the Wii casual games audence, and this is a perfect test case.
We spotted a Gamefly listing for some DS game called Ninja Reflex a couple of days ago. Now a Wii game of the same title has appeared on the site, with a release date of March 6. What is it? Nobody Only EA knows! If we had to guess, we'd say it's some kind of ninja-themed training game, which sounds like it might be enjoyable. EA did start up that EA Casual division after all; we can expect more casual-type content. And we welcome the spread of training games to the Wii, although the Wii's party focus may be at odds with training.
For us, though, the most important thing about Ninja Reflex is that it allows us to make repeated Duran Duran reference. If you get handed an opportuntiy like this, why-yi-yi-yi-yi don't you use it?
Just thirteen years after the conclusion of the television show, Legacy Interactive has snapped up the hot Murder, She Wrote license for a PC game. The hidden-object game will feature five all-new mysteries, and will include both the classic Cabot Cave locale and “well-loved characters from the show” including Dr. Seth Hazlitt, Sheriff Mort Metzger, and, of course, crime-solving novelist and potential distant relative Jessica Fletcher.
As Seen on TV: Murder, She Wrote and House M.D. games announced originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’ve heard some quiet rumblings that 
EA’s John Riccitiello? Nothing fazes him. The man’s as cool as a cucumber. Case in point: last week, 
