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Leading Educational Games Publisher, Knowledge Adventure, To Develop Award-winning JumpStart series for Nintendo’s Wii system with Unity

16th September 2009. San Francisco, USA. Unity Technologies – unity3d.com – the provider of the revolutionary Unity development platform which enables console-quality games for the Web, iPhone and the Nintendo’s Wii™ system – today announced that leading educational games publisher Knowledge Adventure (KA) is developing its award-winning Jumpstart 3D Virtual World on Nintendo’s Wii system with the Unity engine.

Trusted by over 30 million parents, the JumpStart brand has been a leader in the educational software market for over 10 years. With the entrance into the console market, Knowledge Adventure continues to evolve JumpStart to a multi-platform brand delivering content into whatever form parents and kids desire.

Nicholas Francis, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Unity said, “It’s fantastic to have Knowledge Adventure on board – this is a great example of how our technology attracts some of the biggest brands in the world. We’re especially pleased with how Knowledge Adventure is using Unity to branch out to the Nintendo’s Wii system and I think it goes to show how we’re able to deliver to cross platform development tools”

“We chose to work with Unity because it’s a cutting-edge game engine that allows us to seamlessly transition between versatile gaming platforms, which gives us a tremendous advantage in the marketplace,” said David Lord CEO of Knowledge Adventure. ”The Wii system is the fastest growing for kids and it represents a huge opportunity for us to leverage our trusted brand and leading market share in kids’ games.”

JumpStart Pet Rescue is the first of its kind learning game to tap into younger audiences for Wii, ages 3 to 6. Pet Rescue will be available with a retail launch date of September 1st.

ZeroTolerance writes: When I reviewed the original DiRT nearly two years ago it was considered one of the best looking games ever created. Here we sit more than 24 months later and the game still looks phenomenal, which makes the fact that DiRT 2 looks even better, all the more astonishing. Codemasters takes great pride in their racing games, and it shows. DiRT 2 presents itself with some of the slickest navigation as well as the lushest visual appearance I have seen in quite some time. Combine this with the fact that it plays like you would imagine a Codemasters iteration of a rally racing game to play, and you have the ultimate off-road package. The only downside is that the team seems to have slowly stripped away a lot of the sim aspects of the series, which will be good for some, and not so much for others.

Need For Speed keeps on giving, this time Electronic Arts’ racer will arrive with some added Nitro.

The latest installment of the racer is being developed for the DS and Wii exclusively and is aimed at casual gamers. Read more…

As was rumoured, it’s been officially revealed that the next Tony Hawk game from Activision – called Tony Hawk: Ride – will be shipping with a giant, hulking skateboard peripheral.

This is either the smartest, or stupidest, thing Activision have ever done. Read more…

As promising as Capcom’s upcoming Wii game Spyborgs is, it runs the risk of suffering the fate of the company’s last Wii original. But Capcom thinks it figured out what went wrong last time.

Spyborgs, the impressively-rendered co-op brawler created by Bionic Games for the Wii, gives a good first impression. It looks better than most Wii games and plays well.

The same things could have been said about 2007’s puzzle-based treasure-hunting game, Zack & Wiki. It looked great. It played well. It wasn’t a hit.

How to avoid that history repeating itself?

Just hours ago, as we wrapped up a two-person co-op run through the same levels Kotaku chief Crecente played in Monte Carlo, the game’s senior producer, Daryl Allison told me what lesson Capcom had learned:

The struggle for Zack & Wiki, Allison said, was that “the art style made the game come across as a kids’ game, but it played like more of an adult’s game.” The graphics were silly; the gameplay complex.

Spyborgs is going for a teen market (but I enjoyed it, ok?) and therefore pushing a more all-ages Pixar style.

If this is already more than you’re used to reading about graphics for a Wii game, that’s no accident. Graphics are important to this Wii game. Allison said the team’s philosophy is that: “If we can be compared with the God of Wars and Devil May Crys then we have to look that good. There’s no excuses.”

Spyborgs will be out for the Wii later this year. And, if all goes well, it will look not just like it plays, but as good as it’s supposed to play. That, perhaps, is doing a Wii game right.

Been a while since we had a good, new cricket title. That may hopefully change later this year when Codemasters releases Ashes Cricket 2009 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Wii.

Beating EA’s Cricket 09 to the punch, and with new developers at the helm (Australia’s Transmission Games), the game is being released to cash in on the hype surrounding this years Ashes series of matches between Australia and England, one of the world’s oldest sporting contests (the first series was in 1882!). Read more…

Ubisoft’s giving the hideously adorable rabbids from the Rayman spin-off series their own adventure, one that’s not a collection of Wii mini-games. Rabbids Go Home offers heavy-handed zaniness, Ubisoft style. Read more…

The core Virtua Tennis gameplay is certainly strong enough to stand on its own, but the addition of bizarre, sometimes freakish “Court Games” is what makes the series so memorable. Read more…