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EA has released a new trailer and screens for their Sim spinoff SimAnimals. Like the initial assets released during E3, this trailer, while putting on a happy-go-lucky face, illustrates a game almost exclusively about being a total jerk to animals.
"Oh, look, a happy little bear cub with his family," the interior monologue of the imaginary player seems to say, "Let's kidnap him! I wonder if bears eat squirrels? I wonder if this bear cub can swim!" The floating, gloved hand continues to disrupt the lives of once-peaceful forest residents like that while the narrator cheerily describes how much fun it is to interact with animals. This is horrifying.


[Via press release]

EA has just announced a new Sim satellite game called SimAnimals, in which, much like you mess with virtual families' lives in The Sims and ruin people's houses in MySims, you control a floating hand that interacts with various wild animals. You can "reach out and touch, pick up and move everything in the game from foxes and bears to trees and flowers." See those bears? You can throw 'em.

If you can refrain from being a jerk, you'll be able to gain the trust and friendship of the various animals that populate the SimAnimals forest. SimAnimals is planned for Wii and DS this January.

In a press release sent out this morning, EA revealed some details of the new MySims sequel, MySims Kingdom. Fascinatingly, Kingdom is designed as more of an adventure than its predecessor, with things like a story and goals other than "build stuff and make friends."

That's still the basic gameplay, but this time you're building (medieval) stuff and making (ye olde) friends at the behest of King Roland (and his daughter, the amusingly-named Princess Butter), who charges you with improving his kingdom. As you build and achieve goals, you'll unlock new building capabilities including bridge-building (or at least bridge repair). These will allow you both to increase the size of your kingdom and to expand into other kingdoms, each with their own unique inhabitants.

Surprisingly, given the setting, you'll also be able to create electrical devices. We assume you will then be run out of town by a frightened mob.

Sure, we could have shown some other E3-centric videos here in our weekly spotlight, but we really wanted an excuse to talk a little more about the fun potential of MySims, which continues to bear a strong (though less anthropomorphic) resemblance to Animal Crossing. We even saw a little guy with a shovel in this trailer. Since there has been no real sign of Animal Crossing for the Wii, this looks ripe to tide us over while we wait. Who knows, we may even (gasp!) like it better.

Also, splashing in a fountain sounds pretty good right about now. Oh, July, July ... how you make us long for December.

Cute they may be, but those little Sims are vicious. One can't help but wonder, however, if the little fellow there was singing a raucous round of "You ain't got no ice cream" just before the cone dropped. Then it's not mean to laugh at him. It's karma.

Senior Producer Ben Bell recently spoke with GameSpot about the many features EA is implementing into the The Sims 2: Pets for the Wii. Of course, the game will still keep the same classic Sims gameplay everyone is used to. Not only that, but Ben discusses how the Wiimote will improve the already tried-and-true gameplay of the franchise.

Head past the post break to catch the video.

Gamefly has added Wii and DS listings for The Sims 2: Castaway Stories to its website. There's no official confirmation of the title yet from EA, who have only announced it for PC so far. As the title suggests, the game will offer a story mode featuring 'romance and dramatic twists.'

These games could work really well on DS and Wii, particularly if the online/wi-fi aspect is exploited - imagine being able to create and share your avatars - or replays of your characters' most entertaining moments.

Castaway Stories hits the PC in Winter, with DS and Wii versions hopefully arriving shortly after.

[Via Siliconera]

Well, today your Mii may only cross the Plaza a few times and stop to chat with Walter about bowling and Vietnam, but tomorrow, the sky may be the limit. Shigeru Miyamoto, in a recent interview after GDC, indicated that Nintendo may well craft their own Home-like system, a la the coming PS3 interface. But it's not a matter of copying from Sony; Miyamoto made a great point when he said that the idea of Miis is certainly not new. He referenced other examples of avatars over the years, and also said that he hopes more developers work along these lines.

For Nintendo's future, Miyamoto indicated that they may move in a Sims-type direction, which sounds an awful lot like 'Mii Crossing' to us. But some of the most interesting parts of the interview come when Miyamoto compares the Mii creation experience to game development. Making Miis, he says, is almost like putting the player into the developer's position, and that's something he would like to expand in the future. We're pretty sure we could get behind that as well.

[Via Joystiq]

Is it just us, or does MySims look more and more like Animal Crossing with everything we see from it? That's tough, considering it looked like Animal Crossing when it was first announced. But we can't be mad. It's too adorable, and we cannot resist the power of MySims. After the jump, there are enough screenshots to convince even the hardest of hearts.

We're really not sure if these are work (or other public place) safe. They are so freakin' cute that they may cause a complete emotional breakdown. You've been warned.

Celebrity Miis have competition now, from Celebrity MySims caricatures. Game|Life's Chris Kohler got a chance to mess with the character creation utility, and, rather than creating a lil' Chris Kohler, he decided to test the game's Sanjaya Malakar-creating capabilities. Sanjaya, for those of you not hooked on the longform game show American Idol, is a very popular contestant who makes it really hard to watch the show with the sound on.

On the one hand, the likeness is incredible, indicating a very intuitive and feature-rich character creation system. On the other hand, noooooo.

If you're already a Sims fan and interested in the unique look of the new Wii iteration, you will be pleased. We finally have some detailed video of the My Sims gameplay, and it looks quite similar to its predecessors, with some significant tweaks made in the "community" and "general cuteness" categories.

The first video shows the main gameplay-- setting up furniture, wandering about the little town, listening to music, and being a huge jerk to neighboring Sims. The second video details the character creation process, wherein your Sim waits very patiently for you to finish deciding what skin color to paint him or her. You can change your Sims' voices in this mode as well, and they provide voice samples by chatting in Simlish on their little cell phones while you adjust the voice with sliders. How novel! Of course, along with the return of Simlish comes another only-in-Sims kind of event: Simlish music, or the even darker side of EA Trax.

Unlike Sims, we can't turn your free will off, so we can only ask you to check out the two videos. We think they're worth your time anyway.

"OMG! The Wii is so cool," an enthusiastic female developer screams during a GDC session. That developer is Robin Hunicke, designer of the upcoming Wii-exclusive MySims. Designing the title began long before the team had a chance to get their hands on the system, so they had to rely on the "aesthetic" of Nintendo's advertising. "We wanted to bring The Sims to the Wii in a way that we could say we were at home on the Wii," she said, trying to find a unique look, style and feel for the Wii version.

Converting a game for play on Wii doesn't necessarily mean changing everything. What the team focused on was how it feels to touch the characters on screen with the Wiimote: wild, flailing actions probably wouldn't be appropriate for a title such as this. One of the biggest changes that needed to be made was how the game was managed: there was a great deal of opposition to focusing on a single character (rather than a large family), and there was an even greater uproar against the loss of urination, and other micromanagement features.

Streamlining The Sims process was key to moving the franchise to the Wii, and that's where the character designs came from. Although they look strangely like Mii, the look wasn't based on Nintendo's character creation system. The lead character designer, when showing off her simplified look for Wii Sims, was told: "it's perfect."

See also:
Joystiq: Moving The Sims from PC to Wii
Gallery: MySims design process
Gallery: MySims

One of our astute readers was just speculating in the My Sims DS comments thread about why EA didn't use Miis in My Sims, especially given that the Sims as they appear are very similar to Miis, and now we have an answer: Nintendo is being stingy! According to a quote in Next Generation from a producer at EA named Eric Chartrand, Nintendo hasn't let any of its third-party friends have development tools for integrating Miis into their software. Whether this means they haven't yet or they won't is still unknown.

Nintendo not cooperating with third parties... this sounds familiar somehow. We hope this isn't an ominous portent for the future of non-Nintendo games.

The Next-Gen article is not just about Miis, although they do figure into the whole idea about user-created avatars and content as a step into, and reaction to, the Web 2.0 participatory culture. It's a pretty good read.

[Via NeoGAF]

EA's reimagining of The Sims (aka their take on Animal Crossing) is headed to the US, and there's a brand new English website complete with the cutest trailer you'll probably ever see, game details, and a few screenshots. The trailer is a must-see, and we've tucked it away after the jump for your viewing pleasure. We've already seen most of the other content on the website, but these adorable chibi Sims never get old.

MySims is also slated for the DS, but don't get too excited ... it'll be months before we see this one on shelves.

By way of CVG, we're given more details on the upcoming installment in The Sims franchise headed to the Wii. Many thought that the game would incorporate Miis, but that rumor was debunked awhile back. Regardless, we knew this wouldn't be your average game of the The Sims when we first saw the game in action. Still, it looks fun and we're looking forward to it.

As for these new details, they include:

• A total of 80 characters will be available to the Wii version of the game
• The game starts in a pretty crummy town, where upon fixing it up, you'll attract more residents
• All of the usual character customization returns: clothes, facial features, etc.
• The game emphasizes relationships and charges the player with constantly maintaining them
• Players may create their own furniture, houses and accessories through a block-building system
• There's a volcano

So, anyone excited for this game?
[Via Go Nintendo]