Shadowgrounds Survivor (PC)
Fight against aliens for control of the planet.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies (DS)
Now smaller and with multiplayer!

Boogie (DS)
Dance the night away on your DS.

Omega Five (XBLA)
A new sidescrolling shooter on LIVE.

Cruis'n (WII)
Racing to the Wii.

Cranium Kabookii (WII)
The board game in video game form.

Master of Illusion (DS)
Learn magic tricks. Fun at parties, fool your friends.

Speedball 2 - Tournament (PC)
Future sports hurt.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (WII)
The insanely addictive RPG puzzle game continues it's system wide dominance.

Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey (PC)
You know you want it.

What is it about Boogie that makes me so morbidly curious? Having just seen the trailer for the Nintendo DS version announced earlier today, I come away disappointed yet again. While I'm strangely fascinated by the 3D-glasses feature and the potential for mini-games (seriously!), this just doesn't seem to live up to its potential as a rhythm game contender. Maybe it's that cover of "Brickhouse" that makes me want to smash everything in sight that unfairly influences my opinion...

Both the DS and PS2 versions are planned to hit by Holiday '07, with the handheld port getting a true 3D upgrade. The kind of 3D only possible with the inclusion of red and blue lensed glasses. In addition, a new, now standard set of mini-games ice the cake that is Boogie DS.

Ease on down the road for a press release if you're still in the mood for some reading.

EA'S BOOGIE SHAKES ITS WAY ONTO THE NINTENDO DS AND PLAYSTATION 2 THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

Boogie on Nintendo DS Offers Players New Features Including 3D Gameplay

Chertsey, UK - September 5, 2007 - Shake it. Sing it. Create it. Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) announced today that Boogie™, which shipped for the Wii™ in August, is taking its dancing act on the road with a unique Nintendo DS™ version that features the first 3D gameplay on the handheld system. All the new modes in the game can be experienced in full 3D using special glasses packed in to the retail box. Boogie is also shipping on the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system and brings both singing and dancing gameplay to one of the world's most prevalent hardware systems. Both titles will ship to retail stores this holiday 2007

Boogie on Nintendo DS introduces new gameplay modes and mini-games not found in the Wii version for easy gaming on the go. The game's unique modes include DS Download Play and Multi-Card Play, three main dancing gamplay modes including Copycat, Freestyle and Choreography as well as more than 10 mini-games. Players can also dive into the career mode for a deeper experience as they embark on a quest to become the Boogie Master.

Boogie on the PlayStation®2 showcases the game's signature dancing and singing gameplay. Players can sing along to their favorite tunes or dance to the latest hit songs as well as catch their best dance moves, record their own voice and make music videos with the music video creator.

Boogie features new versions of tracks made popular by hit bands such as The Jackson 5, Kool & The Gang, Black Eyed Peas and Britney Spears. An all-new intellectual property developed at EA Montreal, Boogie is the perfect party game for gamers of all ages. For more information on the game, please visit the website at http://www.boogie.electronicarts.co.uk

Unfortunately, we ran into Boogie, after the Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 kiosks looked to be totally occupied. After a couple played songs—Daft Punk's "One More Time", Kelis' "Milkshake" and who knows what Old Man Crecente did—we were more sleepy than pleasantly boozed. Fuckin' Boogie. It's literally a buzzkill.

We're off to Hall 2.

"My philosophy in terms of design: Controls shouldn't be a showstopper...Difficultly should come from the game. It should be easy to dance...

Wii's 'Boogie' Vs. The Critics [mtv]

Obviously, EA has made no such announcement that the one-time Wii exclusive would be coming the Sony platform, so we're calling it rumor for now. But with its relatively simple control scheme and USB microphone support, a release of Boogie on the PS2 makes a Madden bus sized load of sense.

Boogie For PS2 [GameFly via Siliconera]

Boogie (WII)
Sing, dance and create your own videos with a great songlist.

Mega Man Star Force: Dragon (DS)
Mega Man goes the Pokemon route, releasing three slightly different versions of the same game. Dragon is exclusive to Gamestop/EB Games.

Mega Man Star Force: Leo
(DS)
Mega Man goes the Pokemon route, releasing three slightly different versions of the same game. This one is Liony.

Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus (DS)
Mega Man goes the Pokemon route, releasing three slightly different versions of the same game. This one is Pegasusy.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PSP)
Ms. Croft's redesigned first adventure comes to the PSP

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars (PSP)
Crazy Taxi 1 & 2 speed on to the PSP with new co-op modes and other cool stuff

The first mode of play involved choosing one of 39 songs and dancing in time using the Wiimote. You brandish the stick much like a conductor, moving your hand precisely to an unmarked beat. Meanwhile, your avatar dances, busting out embarrassing moves that are coordinated by the left, right, up or down of your flow. Using the analog stick, you can nail bonus maneuvers like the Cabbage Patch, or strike poses by hitting bullseyes on the screen (ala Ginyu Force in Dragonball Z.) It's totally obnoxious, but in the best way.

You can also play this same song in karaoke mode, which is a lot like other karaoke games on the market. Bored onlookers can make your avatar dance with the remote while you sing your heart out to Brick House.

But the neat gameplay aspect is that both of these modes can be recorded and synced as one. Users can create a music video, complete with scrolling text and video filters, of their ultimate performance. And get this—you can add a 3D filter. It looked like crap on the demo TV, but what a novelty!

Boogie is fun, nicely scored and ridiculously easy to play. It's the kind of game people expect to play when they come over to check out the Wii, but honestly, it probably won't keep most of us interested for more than a day or two.

EA ANNOUNCES SOUNDTRACK FOR BOOGIE
Highly Anticipated Dancing and Singing Game Hits Retail Stores this August With Music Made Popular By Hit Bands Including The Jackson 5, Britney Spears, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cyndi Lauper and Black Eyed Peas

Chertsey, UK - July 10, 2007 - Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) announced today the complete soundtrack for Boogie™, which will be released for the Wii™ on August 31st, 2007 in Europe. The game features more than 35 hit songs from over four decades including Celebration, Dancing Machine, Groove Is In The Heart, and We Are Family. The game ships with a packed-in karaoke microphone peripheral and includes new versions of tracks made popular by the hit bands listed below.

"This is a breakthrough game with a landmark soundtrack," said Steve Schnur, Worldwide Executive of Music and Marketing at EA. "We've brought together generations of the biggest hits in pop music history for a game that takes Wii innovation to a whole new level. Boogie is truly the ultimate family fun experience."

Players will dance, sing and create music videos with this ultimate videogame party package that takes advantage of the innovative Wii controls. Gamers can sing their favorite tunes or dance to the latest hit songs as well as catch their best dance moves, record their own voice and make music videos with the easy-to-use music video creator.

I'm still having problems understanding why Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants would want to have a duet with a Bratz doll, but I guess it will all come together when I play the game. Maybe I should have put a question mark at the end of that sentence. Kim Phu

Boogie Duet Trailer [Game Trailers]

The dancing, singing EA title that McWhertor initially hated and then started to like just a bit, has been dated.

Boogie will be coming to the Wii in North America on Aug. 7 and Europe on Aug. 31. The game will ship with that karaoke microphone we mentioned earlier this month and include songs from bands like The Jackson 5, Kool & The Gang, M.C. Hammer and Cyndi Lauper.

"We have assembled a great selection of music for the game that will appeal to players of all ages, making this dancing and karaoke game the ultimate party package for the entire family," said Alain Tascan, Vice President and General Manager, EA Montreal. "Wii is expanding videogames to untapped markets pulling in a new audience of gamers that typically did not play games in the past; Boogie will give these diverse players something new to enjoy as well as share with their friends and family."

I'm still not sold, though I yearn, YEARN to hear more Cyndi Lauper music in games. Brian Crecente

While a dancing game has already been nixed by Cousins—Boogie's got that covered, anyway—the creative director is light on details about what the team wants to do after Bad Company. If I can make a suggestion, Ben, EA's very light in the cooking genre and your nation's meatballs are just fantastic.

That idea is free, contact me for others. Michael McWhertor

DICE promises to diversify with new projects [Games Industry]

Boogie, Primeras Impresiones [RevoGamers via Go Nintendo]

Boogie now presents players with a much more finely-tuned, simpler to control experience. Many of the gameplay principles are the same, including Wii-remote waving to kick off dance moves, but now they must be done on-beat. A newly added metronome display gives players better feedback about when they should be waggling in time and new HUD improvements show your current dance style, with additional visual cues indicating how well you're performing. Moving your customized Boog around the dance floor is also easier, thanks to a switch in the controls. Superfluous modifiers done with the nunchuk appear to have been dropped.

While only one new song, a Daft Punk tune, had been added to the list, a huge number of character customization options were now available. No doubt about it, this game has great style. Boogie looks to be progressing nicely with new builds and further gameplay improvements expected at E3. Michael McWhertor

Boogie Hands-On, New Screens [Kotaku]

Want to see what Boogie looks like in motion? Press play. Want to know how it plays? Read the impressions. Any other questions you need answered? Ah, that would be "Martin Van Buren" and "ziggurat".

In case you haven't noticed, the girl in this clip is the same model in each shot of our Boogie gallery, which shows how varied the game's character customization is at this early stage. Smart move, EA. Smart move. Michael McWhertor

The game has two distinct modes of play, dancing and singing. The latter couldn't be more straightforward. It's karaoke. The interface (which appeared pre-pre-alpha) looked very familiar to anyone who has played SingStar or Karaoke Revolution and should perform capably in the tunes department.

Only one song was ready for play, The Commodores "Brick House", but other tracks populated the song list including "You're The One That I Want" from the movie Grease, KC & The Sunshine Band's "That's The Way I Like It" and The Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha." Yep, that's pretty much every song you'll never want to hear again.

One nice feature described to us by the Boogie dev team was the game's "vocal assist" which, optionally, will mix your own voice with the pre-recorded vocal track, making the tone-deaf a little more aurally palatable. EA staffers told us that while the game will ship with a packed-in microphone, the final design hasn't yet been decided.

Dancing mode looks like somewhat familiar territory for EA Montreal, taking the SSX Blur control scheme and mutating it for performing dance tricks. It's less Dance Dance Revolution than it is a trick-based rhythm title. Think DDX, with less focus on strict beats and more focus on personalized performances.

The controls are set up in a fashion that seems to be popular among EA designers, the nunchuk controller will see your left hand controlling specific body motions, including, oddly enough, modifying facial expressions with the analog stick. Rotating the nunchuk twists your head and spine with the Z button opening and closing your mouth. How that will affect your performance was unclear, but it appears that having your character "sing" in time to the vocal track will net you a better score.

The Wii remote performs your avatar's dance moves, which EA has turned into a series of tricks and stances. Motions with the remote will perform logical dance moves; moving the remote in an upward motion will make you jump; downward motions will perform squats and splits. Side-to-side motions will elicit side-to-side spins and shuffles. Twist the remote, do a hip twist. It makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's immediately intuitive or overly easy to coordinate. You can switch up these moves with the A button, for style changes, and the B button, which acts as a modifier. The cross pad is used to move your character across, up and down a 3-by-3 grid better known as the dance floor. In other words, no parking on that thing.

Frankly, I was put-off by the current control scheme. It seemed unusually complex for a game clearly targeted at the Wii's more casual audience. Like SSX Blur, I went into Boogie thinking the game would feature a simpler, more intuitive, possibly remote-only method, only to find myself stumbling through my dance routine. EA Montreal may intend for players to more slowly ramp up, to become more accustomed to the coupled waving, twisting and stick control, but jumping into the game with limited play time made me wish for Brick House to end early every time. Granted, the game is still very early and there's more than enough time for fine-tuning, but there's one more aspect to the controls left to consider.

You'll need to shuffle your Boog all over the danceable area to pick up tokens (used to buy new clothes, hairstyles, accessories), multipliers, as well as power-ups for your Idol Meter. The Idol Meter will fill up as you successfully pull off dance moves, on-beat, allowing you to pull of uber-tricks (in a dancing sense) with a series of Wii remote motions while holding down A+B. These were still not finalized for our playtest and will surely see some changes in their implementation.

One interesting feature of Boogie that will surely fit well with the Wii partying crowd is the game's video recording tool. Your dancing and singing performances can be saved to the Wii's internal storage for posterity and humiliation purposes. EA promises an editing "toy" that will let you change camera angles and add effects.

There's still a good deal of Boogie that is currently still unrevealed and unfinished. While the game's multiplayer capabilities elicited many "I can't talk about that yet" responses, it looks like two-player support will allow one dancer and one singer, or two dancers.

Boogie has promise, but I relayed my control concerns to the team who told me they're still early in development. The game has style and substance, and fans of SSX Blur will probably understand best the design philosophy behind Boogie, but how well it will ultimately play is still an uknown.

You can check out the game's visuals in five new shots in our gallery, or hold tight for video. Michael McWhertor

The party game will have an alien theme with customizable characters. Game play will include rhythm, dancing and singing player interaction. 'Boogie' will be a Wii-exclusive game with the usage of its unique controller capabilities.

Oh, Carnival cruise line "Hot Havannah Nights" kind of crazy. Nice. Kim Phu

Doing the Wii Boogie [Wii See]

Alice, once-a-month Kotaku poster and Wonderland blog queen sat in on her talk, showing off her incredible transcribing skills. Knight talks about the fiscal importance of pursuing the other half.

It is business bad practice to overlook an audience this big and this compelling. Star Wars was the biggest movie of all time... until Titanic came along. The reason? Women saw Titanic in droves - and they saw it more than once. We need to be sure that we're making content that is appealing to women. EA is the most successful developer of games for women, but we have a long way to go.

She points to games like the upcoming Rock Band and Boogie, as well as Bizarre's Boom Boom Rocket as examples of the company reaching out to the still largely untapped market. Read on to see how the world's biggest publisher is going to get your girlfriend, wife and mom hooked on gaming. Michael McWhertor

Women In Games 2007: Opening keynote, Sharon Knight, EA [Wonderland]

"We're creating something new and different for gamers of all ages to enjoy; the complete party package where gamers can dance as well as sing," said Alain Tascan, general manager at developer EA Montreal. "Nintendo's Wii is an amazing console that really gives us a platform to be creative and to re-think traditional game development."

Unfortunately the teaser press release EA sent us was just that, with the more information link sending us to a place with decidedly no more information, so hit up the Eurogamer link below for more screens. Michael Fahey

EA reveals Boogie [Eurogamer]