Rock and Roll is returning to the Scottish Learning Festival this year so be prepared to turn those speakers up to eleven once again with the return of the Scottish Schools Guitar Hero Challenge! The standard of competition last year was extremely high with David Whyte from Baldragon Academy in Dundee outperforming all comers to take the title. If you think that your pupils have the potential to win this then get involved in this year’s Game Zone Challenge at SLF’09. All you need is one of the following: a PS3, XBox360 or Nintendo Wii along with a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour (with an extra guitar).
This year’s competition is different in the sense that we are not looking for individual entrants but groups of players who will form a band to play the instruments in Guitar Hero World Tour. This would mean a drummer, guitarist, bassist and vocalist!
This year we are offering a choice of songs as opposed to just one. The songs that you can choose from are as follows:
You can open all the songs in the game by going in to the Cheats option and keying in the following combination Blue, Blue, Red, Green(2), Blue(2), Yellow
Scores that are achieved by bands should be validated by validated by their teacher and emailed to consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk and we will then upload these to the leaderboard. Schools can enter as many bands as they like. The closing date for submissions to the competition is Friday 11th September with the successful contestants being notified by Monday 14th September. Travel costs will be covered by LTS. This event will take place at the SLF’09 on Wednesday 23 September, 4:00pm.
Last year’s event was a great success and we hope that this year’s event will at least match if not better it. Who knows, we might even see this year’s finalists really going for it and coming ‘dressed for the event’. We’ll leave that idea up to you…
We have established a Guitar Hero Glow Group for schools to share the associated curricular work that can go on around a game such as a Guitar Hero but if your school is not yet in Glow don’t worry you can still participate by sending your high scores to the earlier stated email address and we’ll ensure that they are added to the leaderboard.
We have a small number of kits that we can loan to those who don’t have access to the game and the console so please contact us if you have are interested in this or if you have any other questions related to the competition
Sony has announced the PlayStation 3 exclusive release of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV Online.
A brief trailer for the game, which is due for release in 2010 on PS3 only, was shown at Sony's E3 press conference.
Rockstar North is developing a new PlayStation 3 exclusive title called Agent, Sony has announced.
The game will take players across the globe in the late 1970s and explore the shadowy world of espionage and assassins.
SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton said: "We expect Agent to have the same must have value” as GTA did on PlayStation platforms.
Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo PSP will launch on October 1, it has been confirmed at Sony’s E3 press conference.
The title will feature 800 cars, 35 tracks and offer a “full Gran Turismo experience,” according to the studio.
I think the main goal for Bethesda Softworks at E3 this year is to highlight the variety of things that we have coming up, and while E3 isn’t by any means an exhaustive list of our products in development, I do think this year will give folks a better sense of that than previous years where we may have only focused on a key title, like Fallout 3.
It was once customary at E3 for Bethesda to present single games made by its internal studio, like Oblivion and Fallout 3. But this year it has a full roster of titles, from those made by external developers, like Wet, Rogue Warrior and new announcement Splash Damage's Brink, to party games made by its sister company, Vir2l, and DLC by Bethesda Game Studios for Fallout 3.
Hideo Kojima has announced Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for PSP at Sony’s E3 press conference.
Set in the 1970s, ten years after Metal gear Solid 3, Kojima said the title would not be a spin-off or side story but “a true sequel of the Metal Gear franchise.”
He added that he will be “very deeply” involved in the game by writing and producing it, and that much of the MGS4 team will also be contributing to the title.
Sony Computer Entertainment president and CEO Kaz Hirai has confirmed “the worst kept secret of E3,” namely that the platform holder's remodelled handheld, PSP Go, will release this autumn.
“Built for the digital consumer,” he said that the UMD-free portable will be available in stores in the US and Europe on October 1 for $249/€249. It will launch in Japan on November 1.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has unveiled the Wii Vitality Sensor at the company’s E3 press conference.
The peripheral goes over the end of a finger and detects the user's pulse. Iwata said that while Wii Fit lets you see the balance of your outer body, the Vitality Sensor gives you info on your inner balance.
Iwata said that games are traditionally associated with stimulation, but that it might not be long before they “could be made for people to unwind or even fall asleep."
Nintendo has announced plans to release Metroid: Other M for Wii in 2010.
The trailer for the Team Ninja developed title switched between 2D and 3D and appeared to show gameplay in both first and third-person perspectives.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime described it as “a Metroid game unlike any you’ve ever experienced before… It will take you deeper into Samus' story, and further into the Metroid universe.”
