The Wii version is your standard city creator, allowing you to zone out your land, create transportation systems, and develop buildings based on 13 distinct city styles. Depending on which styles you implement, certain Hero buildings will become available that make your city stand out from the rest. Most importantly, SimCity Creator for the Wii puts you in control of disasters, allowing you to generate your own tornadoes and control giant killer robots hell-bent on destroying all you've worked for.

Meanwhile the DS version will allow you to manage a city through different time periods, from ancient times to the distant future. Both versions should be hitting stores in September.

SimCity Creator, an All-New Experience from The Sims Label for the Wii and Nintendo DS, Coming September 2008
Create, Enjoy, Destroy Amazing Cities on the Wii;

Develop Your City From Ancient Times To The Modern Day On The Nintendo DS

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—The Sims™, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) Label, today announced the first details for SimCityTM Creator, exclusively for the WiiTM and Nintendo DSTM. SimCity Creator is an open-ended, highly creative game with a sense of humor that allows players to utilize the distinctive gameplay aspects of the Wii and Nintendo DS to create, enjoy and destroy epic cities. The most accessible and light-hearted game from the SimCity franchise, SimCity Creator will ship on September 22, 2008 in North America and on September 19, 2008 in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. SimCity Creator is designed to be a city-game experience for families and players of all ages!

SimCity Creator for the Wii™

Be a powerful mayor — create, enjoy and destroy your ultimate city. Start by zoning your city, constructing homes, businesses, factories, skyscrapers, freeways, railroads, and much more. SimCity Creator is a visually exciting experience with a completely new user interface, designed specifically for the Wii and the Wii remote. You’ll discover many ways to customize your city, including 13 city styles to explore, such as American, European and Asian themes. More city styles will be revealed, so stay tuned for more information!

You can also place a selection of more than 30 “Hero” buildings into your city to make it distinctive and momentous. Some of these iconic buildings are based on the current day, some on history and some on fantasy. The more city styles you explore, the more Hero building options you have.

For the first time, take the liberty to build transportation systems with free placement of rounded and curved roads and rail lines, taking your city to new creative and curvy heights. And get a new perspective on your cityscape from a helicopter, a jet or a propeller plane which you can use to fly over your creation. Check out what you’ve built in your aircraft of choice!

Disasters that players of SimCity always love remain an important and entertaining element in SimCity Creator. Using the Wii remote you can create earthquakes, tornados, call in destructive robots and monsters, create fires and discover many more ways to cause havoc. You created it, and now you can destroy it. With hours of fun and replayability, the fate of your city and its citizens are in your hands!

SimCity Creator for Nintendo DS™

Guide your city from ancient times into the future with SimCity Creator for Nintendo DS. Evolve your city through time, starting with ancient times, the middle ages, modern times, present day and the future. Four play modes are available, Challenge, Free Play, Chance Encounter and Gallery, giving options to make the game as challenging or as creative as you want. Earn epic landmarks along the way to enhance your city and mark your progress into the next era. Choose your path through history and make a city for the ages.

“SimCity Creator for the Wii and Nintendo DS brings two separate, delightful new ways to create, enjoy and destroy your own cities,” said Rod Humble, Head of Studio for The Sims Label. “On the Wii, for the first time in the SimCity franchise, you will have the ability to build curved roads and differently shaped zones allowing you to make more authentic places all utilizing the motions of the Wii remote. Employing the new city advisor system, you will be able to make the game as complex or simple as you want. On Nintendo DS, we will give you the ability to make a city develop through time and to overcome the different challenges each era of urban development presents. I know both long-time and new SimCity players will enjoy these innovative experiences in SimCity Creator starting this September!”

SimCity Creator will be available on the Wii and Nintendo DS on September 22, 2008 in North America and on September 19, 2008 in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions.

"The SimCity Box is the perfect opportunity to discover the fun of city building with SimCity," said Rod Humble, Head of Studio for The Sims. "This is the greatest value SimCity has ever offered and players everywhere can get hands-on with a wide range of SimCity products from one box at an amazing price."

Hit up a jump for a primer on what each of the packed in games is about.

EA UNVEILS THE SIMCITY BOX

Popular PC Gaming Franchise Offers Five Innovative City-Building Games in One Box at One Low Price

REDWOOD CITY, CA. — April 10, 2008 — Today Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) announced The SimCity™ Box, a bundled pack of five games from the world-renowned SimCity™ franchise. The SimCity Box contains SimCity™ Societies, SimCity Societies Destinations, SimCity™ 4, SimCity™ 4Rush Hour and The Sims Carnival™ SnapCity. Valued at approximately $100.00 USD, The SimCity Box will be available this June in North America at the affordable price of $39.99 USD.

"The SimCity Box is the perfect opportunity to discover the fun of city building with SimCity," said Rod Humble, Head of Studio for The Sims. "This is the greatest value SimCity has ever offered and players everywhere can get hands-on with a wide range of SimCity products from one box at an amazing price."

• SimCity Societies: In SimCity Societies, players construct not only the cities they desire, but mold their cultures, societal tendencies and environments as well. They can build artistic cities, authoritarian dictatorships, spiritual communities and many more. With this accessible, innovative and versatile city-builder, players can create the city of their dreams, or their nightmares. With more than 500 buildings and decorative objects to place, the possibilities are almost limitless. Since launch, four free game updates have added new strategic modes that will challenge your mayoral skills, three new exotic disasters (UFO invasion, giant robot attack and a massive fire-breathing monster) new crises, new UI functions, new buildings and much more. More free content and features are being planned for future updates.

• SimCity Societies Destinations: SimCity Societies Destinations enhances the SimCity Societies experience by providing all the tools players need to create an entire city or town based on attractions and amenities that visitors enjoy. With an enhanced map generator, players can identify each city's opportunity for diversion and the city can capitalize on that draw. From sprawling theme parks and tropical beach resorts to country hiking trails, players can control more than 100 new buildings to create their customized destination.

• SimCity 4: Right from the start in SimCity 4, players will experience new God-like powers of creation as they lay the groundwork for their cities by molding mountains, carving valleys, seeding forests and laying rivers. With these new landscape creation features, players can now construct the most realistic metropolis imaginable.

• SimCity 4 Rush Hour: In SimCity 4 Rush Hour, players take control of their city's transportation with a wide variety of new options. They can create the elevated train networks of Chicago, the wide-avenues of New York, or the one-way streets of San Francisco. Players can develop a seamless mass-transit system including monorail, subway, or even a scenic ferry service that connects to a greater regional travel network. With all-new problem-solving maps and tracking tools, players can see the pulsing flow of traffic, map out the most efficient routes, and quickly get their Sims from one city to another.

• The Sims Carnival SnapCity: The Sims Carnival SnapCity is a unique city-building simulation game with a puzzle twist that is both strategic and accessible. In a fun, open-ended gameplay environment, players are challenged to position falling, colored blocks in just the right places to build the best possible cities. Featuring an array of industrial, commercial and residential neighborhoods, it's never the same city twice! The fun never stops as you save your city from natural disasters, man-made catastrophes, even out-of-this-world alien attacks!Players can also pick-up-and-play by jumping into 25 unique existing neighborhood levels.

The SimCity franchise is one of the most popular PC gaming franchises in history, having sold more than 17 million games worldwide to date since the SimCity launch in 1989.

Zero Punctuation [the escapist]

I have some reservations about BP's sponsorship of clean energy in the game (or more properly their un-sponsorship of dirty energy), but a sophisticated understanding of pollution ecology certainly should be easier to culture in a dynamic interactive model than in an expository text.

Will Game's Impact Surpass 'Inconvenient Truth'?

Some educators have asked Maxis to make SimCity expose more about the actual simulation itself, instead of hiding its inner workings from the user. They want to see how it works and what it depends on, so it is less of a game, and more educational. But what's really going on inside is not as realistic as they would want to believe: because of its nature as a game, and the constraint that it must run on low end home computers, it tries to fool people into thinking it's doing more than it really is, by taking advantage of the knowledge and expectations people already have about how a city is supposed to work. Implication is more efficient than simulation.

Last week EA announced that they are donating the original SimCity for use on the OLPC. Don Hopkins, who did the Unix, Linux, and now OLPC ports of SimCity, recently published his thoughts about how the new version of the game might allow kids to modify the underlying simulation model.

Here are some ideas about applying Seymour Papert's philosophy of "Constructionist Education" to SimCity, by integrating it with the OLPC's "Sugar" user interface and Python-based scripting system. ... The goals of deeply integrating SimCity with Sugar are to focus on education and accessibility for younger kids, as well as motivating and enabling older kids to learn programming, in the spirit of Seymour Papert's work with Logo. It should be easy to extend and re-program SimCity in many interesting ways. For example: kids should be able to create new disasters and agents (like the monster, tornado, helicopter and train), and program them like Logo's turtle graphics or Robot Odyssey's visual robot programming language!

The long term goal is to refactor the code so it can be scripted and extended in Python, and break out reusable general purpose components like the tile engine, sprite engine, etc, so kids can use them to build their own games, or create plug-ins and modify the graphics and behavior of SimCity.

SimCity for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): Applying Papert's Ideas About Constructionist Education and Teaching Kids to Program [Don Hopkins]
OLPC Give One Get One [OLPC]

Super Mario Galaxy (WII)
It'sa Mario again... in space!

Assassin's Creed (X360, PS3)
Altair is da man in 1191.

Crysis (PC)
Fight aliens!

BlackSite: Area 51 (X360, PC)
Fight more aliens!

Need for Speed ProStreet (PC, X360, PS3, PS2, WII, DS)
Race around the world in your custom car.

WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008 (X360, PS2, WII, PS3, PSP, DS)
Wrestlemania. Wait, that's something else...

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (X360, PS3, PC)
Co-op killing.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (PS2)
Dragon Ball Z. Still going.

SimCity Societies (PC)
Learn how buildings shape society.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (WII)
A zombie massacre on rails.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback (X360, PC)
The game based on the magazine based on killing and guns.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 (WII, PSP)
Invade WWII with your Wii Zapper.

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (WII, DS)
Rayman's Raving Rabbids return.

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (PSP)
My money is on Aliens because they look cooler.

Hilary Bevan Jones, Chairman of the Academy said "Will's immense, creative body of work and his continued contribution to the industry make him a most worthy recipient of the Fellowship and being such a pioneer, we are thrilled that he will be the first person to receive this honour".

Sims Creator Wright inducted into BAFTA Fellowship Creator of The Sims, Will Wright, joins legends such as Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin and Steven Spielberg as he is inducted into BAFTA's Fellowship at this year's Awards ceremony

Monday 15th October/... Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, the world's best selling PC gaming franchise with more than 90 million units sold, will shortly join an exclusive number of household names from TV and Film as he becomes the first recipient of the Fellowship from the video games industry at the British Academy Video Games Awards 2007. The Fellowship is the highest accolade the Academy can bestow on an individual for their creative work.

Until now, the much lauded Fellowship has remained an exclusive part of BAFTA's more established pillars, TV and Film. But today's British Academy recognises the massive impact of video games on popular culture and their huge contribution to the whole art form of the moving image.

Hilary Bevan Jones, Chairman of the Academy said "Will's immense, creative body of work and his continued contribution to the industry make him a most worthy recipient of the Fellowship and being such a pioneer, we are thrilled that he will be the first person to receive this honour".

Wright, who is widely accepted as one of the world's leading visionaries in the field of video game design, has been passionately creating games for more than twenty years. Although he has worked on a number of hugely successful games, among them Raid On Bungling Bay (1984), SimCity (1989), SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1989) and SimCity 4 (2003), he is best known for bringing to fruition one of the best-loved games franchises in history, The Sims - a game whose inspiration sprang from a combination of the aforementioned titles.

Other 'firsts' at this year's Awards include the BAFTA Ones To Watch Award in association with Dare To Be Digital which recognises up-and-coming talent, and the PC World Gamers' Award, the only publicly-voted award of the night (www.obsessedwithgames.co.uk). This year's Awards will be held at London's Battersea Evolution on 23 October. Music acts will include the indie rock band Athlete with another act being confirmed this week. The show will be broadcast on E4 on November 4 at 11pm and repeated the following weekend on Channel 4.

EA And BP Collaborate To Include Climate Education In SimCity Societies

New Game in PC Gaming's Most Popular City-Building Series to Feature Alternatives to Carbon-Producing Energy Sources

REDWOOD CITY-Oct. 10, 2007-Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and BP have collaborated to include climate change education within SimCity Societies, the next iteration in the genre-defining city-building franchise that has sold more than 18 million games to date. The collaboration brings together world-class game building skills and industry expertise on energy, electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions to highlight the impact of electricity generation on the emissions of carbon dioxide that are linked to climate change. The low-carbon electricity choices and monitoring of SimCity's carbon emissions provide an entertaining, fully-integrated and accurate look at some of the causes and some of the major solutions available to combat rising levels of carbon and to help address the threat of global warming. SimCity Societies will be available at retailers across North America and Europe November 15.

"Since their inception in 1989, SimCity games have served as excellent creative and educational tools to convey complex subjects. With SimCity Societies, we have the opportunity not only to demonstrate some of the causes and effects of global warming, but also to educate players how seemingly small choices can have a big global impact," said Steve Seabolt, Vice President of Global Brand Development for The Sims Label at EA. "BP was one of the first major energy companies to publicly acknowledge the need to reduce carbon emissions and begin taking precautionary measures. As such, they are the perfect partner to help educate people on this important social issue in SimCity Societies."

The game does not force players to power their cities any specific way, but allows them to make choices, each of which come with advantages and disadvantages. Similar to real-life, the least expensive and most readily-available buildings in SimCity Societies are also the biggest producers of carbon dioxide, an invisible gas that contributes to global warming. Should players choose to build cities dependent on these types of sources for power to conserve their in-game money, their carbon ratings will rise and, at reaching critical levels, the game will issue alerts about the threat of the various natural disasters like droughts, heat waves and others that may strike their cities.

Alternatively, players can strive to create a greener environment and avoid hazards caused by excessive carbon emissions by choosing from a variety of BP Alternative Energy low-carbon power options. Using hydrogen and natural gas plants to wind farms and solar power, SimCity Societies encourages people to learn about some of the causes and consequences of global warming in an engaging, educational and meaningful way. While these power sources maintain nearby property values and keep the cities' citizens safer from disaster, they also mimic real-life in that they cost players more of their funds, and do not produce as much power as less green options that take up similar space. Informative real-world snippets about power production and conservation will also be available in-game, informing players of global warming issues both virtually and in reality.

"The time was right for this partnership. EA was developing the next iteration of the SimCity series at the same time that we were looking for opportunities to raise awareness about low-carbon power choices," said Carol Battershell, Vice President, BP Alternative Energy. "EA has a powerful reach to the next generation and BP has a suite of low-carbon power alternatives. In our collaboration through this innovative game, we can provide education on the issues surrounding climate change, its association with carbon emissions and the ability to take early positive action through low-carbon power choices."

The SimCity franchise is one of the most popular PC gaming franchises in history, having sold more than 18 million games worldwide to date since the SimCity launch in 1989. Subsequent base game releases include SimCity 2000tm (1993), SimCity 3000tm (1999) and SimCity 4 (2003). SimCity Societies is being published by Electronic Arts and developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment.

###

A lot of handheld titles coming out this week with one of the only real console releases being RE 4 for the Wii. Even though I've already played it through on the other consoles, I'm still looking forward to the point and shoot ease of the Wii remote. It also looks like the Transformers game invasion has begun on the PSP and the DS. Will you be getting any of these handheld versions or just wait until the console versions come out. Or will you just be skipping the whole Transformers mishigos altogether? Flynn De Marco

• Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (WII) Slaughter zombies with your Wii remote
• Brothers In Arms DS (DS)
  The World War II shooting game redesigned for the DS
• Transformers: The Game (PSP)
  The first round of the myriad Transformers games yet to come
• Transformers: Autobots (DS)
  Play on the side of the good guys in this new Transformers games.
• Transformers: Decepticons (DS)
  Play on the side of the bad guys in this new Transformers games.
• Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)
  Create your own dungeons to become the top DM.
• SimCity DS (DS)
  After long last everyones favorite city building game comes to the DS.
• Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars (PC)
  A new fantasy third person action title for the PC. Throw in some RPG bits and you've got a game.
• PQ2: Practical Intelligence Quotient (PSP)
  Enlarge your brain by solving problems based on real life situations.
• Attack on Pearl Harbor (PC)
  Relive the famous incident that brought the US into World War II
• Hot Brain (PSP)
  Solve puzzles to heat up your brain and lubricate your mind. I always heard heating up your brain caused massive brain damage, but what do I know.

Earlier this year, Electronic Arts put SimCity DS on sale in Japan, while the rest of the world waited. Patiently. The game is a modded version of SimCity 3000 and looks like it'll suit portable gaming to a T. Good news! North America and Europe have received release dates — June 19th and June 22nd, respectively. Brian Ashcraft

SimCity DS Coming [VGB]

Spacewar! (1962)
Star Raiders (1979)
Zork (1980)
Tetris (1985)
SimCity (1989)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
Civilization I / II (1991)
Doom (1993)
Warcraft (Series) (1994)
Sensible World of Soccer (1994)

The games all represent firsts for lasting genres, such as adventure games, multiplayer, FPS, story-driven RTS, et cetera. Each gamer is required to save these titles to a microchip embedded in the base of their skull in order to preserve our gaming heritage. Michael Fahey

Is That Just Some Game? No, It's a Cultural Artifact [The New York Times, via Grand Text Auto]

SimCity DS: Hot or Not? Brian Crecente

As we've seen, the new SimCity coming for Nintendo DS will feature Wil Wright himself as your host and tutor and over on the NeoGAF forums, poster PantherLotus, has uploaded some new screens from the highly addictive city building game.

I know a lot of people really love SimCity, but I could never get into it. I am a rabid multi-tasker and ADD to boot, but all that micromanaging was just too much for my poor fragmented attention span. I'm afraid I would make a terrible city official, but I'm sure all of you with desires to govern over a town of tiny pixels will be thrilled by this release. Make the jump for more pics. Flynn De Marco

Sim City DS; it's About Damn Time [4 Color Rebellion]

GameBrink has posted the box art and some new screens of the Japanese version of SimCity DS, which include the first look at the game's own anime tour guide, encephalitic Will Wright. His head is so huge! If the game ever gets released stateside there'd better be a bobble head preorder promotion.

As we've said before, the game is based off of the PC version of SimCity 3000, and includes new multiplayer functions to spice up the mix. While it was exciting enough to have the power to cultivate and then ultimately destroy a major metropolitan area in the palm of your hand, the prospect of having a tiny Will Wright in your pocket definitely seals the deal.

Sadly there is still no word on a US release of SimCity DS, but with the game set to release in Japan in late February you still have two months to bone up on your Nihongo. Catch the box art, after the jump!

Can't get any more to the point than that, can you? Michael Fahey

Sim City DS Box & Screens [GameBrink]

When the biggest publisher of Dutch internet content Isle Media was relocating to a new, short-term office, the company decided to have fun with the location's interior design. The duo known as WATdesign were brought in to make something fun and cheap. The result? A SimCity-like pixelated interior. Huge stickers were stuck on aluminum sheets to brighten up the work environment. For example, British phone booths hide a cabinet, a pixel ice cream truck is the serving area and telegraph poles conceal wiring and plugs. Two words: super cool.

SimCity Office Garden WMMNA