Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen will be sailing to Manhattan for Fleet Week New York from May 26-June 2.

What else is there to do besides the awesome ships and showing our appreciation to the military? Gamers can stop by Pier 88 (next to USS Iwo Jima) and play Top Gun.

That’s right, Top Gun the video game. Players can take the role of Maverick and try and graduate from Top Gun Academy. I can’t think of a more awesome way to play the game, than with Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen.

The event takes place today through June 2. If you attend, please send us a pic! Also check the official Facebook page for faq about the event. Look for important information like, “A ship is an industrial environment, so avoid high-heels; necklaces that can get caught and bags that will be too heavy to comfortably. ”

I think it’s a great idea to expand upon BEA. I was able to attend last year and I thought it was a great convention and was a good way to meet more authors and publishers. I also think that having a book week in the city would be good to just promote books and reading in general. “I am thrilled that New York Book Week is poised and ready to debut in a significant and meaningful manner,” notes Steve Rosato, Show Manager for BEA. “One of the things that we most wanted to do when we made the decision to keep BEA in New York City for the next few years was to work closely with the community. New York is the publishing capital of the world and there is already an enormous amount of literary activity taking place in the city. It seemed only natural that all of us should band together and call attention to our individual and collective efforts. That’s what New York Book Week is all about.”

To find out more information on Book Week, you can check out the page on the BEA site here. And be sure to stay tuned for my future coverage of BEA on Gaming Angels!

• Art – Kehinde Wiley
• Architecture – Angela Brooks
• Design – Yves Behar
• Fashion – Narcisco Rodriguez
• Film – Kathryn Bigelow
• Food – Dan Barber
• Giving – Jessica Jackley
• Music – Green Day
• New Media – Alex Rigopulos & Eran Egozy
• Writing – Nora Ephron

Arriving at the party I must admit I was a bit overwhelmed as this was the first big Manhattan party I’ve attended. There were tall models, several actors and of course the indoor red carpet line as well as many, many other guests. There was a good amount of time to mingle with guests and partake of the refreshments before the ceremonies got underway.

They spoke about each winner and their accomplishments: from compelling documentary filmmaking, the design of a $100 laptop for underpriviledged children, and the creation popular games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. A nice video with all of the winners talking was shown on a big screen which I really enjoyed because you were able to hear from the nominees themselves about why they do what they do. It was all pretty inspiring.

After the video presentation, the cast from the Green Day musical “American Idiot” was introduced to perform for everyone. It was a great performance, and they did three songs from the show. After they performed, everyone went back to mingling and I was able to talk with a few of the guys who were all very nice and very enthusiastic about the show as well as the band. Admittedly I was skeptical about the show at first, but I think that it may be a pretty good show and I’m sure I’ll wind up seeing it on Broadway sooner or later.

All in all it was a pretty fun event to attend and I look forward to see who they plan to nominate for the next set of awards!

CHICAGO
Sunday, February 14, 2010
11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Chicago Academy of the Arts
1010 W Chicago Street
Chicago, IL 60642-5490
(Parking behind building)

NEW YORK
Saturday, February 20, 2010
11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Shetler Studios
244 West 54th Street
12th Floor
New York, NY 10019-5515

More detailed information on the casting call can be found at http://www.realsteelcasting.com/.Good luck to those who try out!

Gaming can be an activity where you follow the character’s journey and everything in real life goes away. But is the escapism so real that gamers wouldn’t even know if there is an emergency?

New York State is testing a way to send emergency warning to video game consoles. The goal is to reach younger residents who spend most of their time on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or Wii rather than on Television or Radio.

Singleton, speaking Thursday at the Interop technology conference in New York City, said the plan makes sense, “considering the amount of time our youth spend on video games.”

Currently the Office of Homeland Security is using Second Life to train 700,000 first responders and are figuring out how to use Twitter to send out information.

Remember this is just a test.

[source via Information week]

StealthySlyth just got back from her trip at Big Apple Comic Con and wrote about her experience here. Con season is awesome but not when you have to choose between two conflicting cons. Next year’s con goers in New York will have to do just that.

The save the date for next year announced at Big Apple Con is set for October 7-10, 2010. That is the same weekend as New York Comic Con which has been scheduled since February.

Looks like Wizard wants to go head to head with New York Comic Con and see who wins. This isn’t just about which con will attendees pick, but also vendors. A “con war” happens as companies have to choose which con they will attend.

But in a recent interview with CBR, NYCC’s Lance Fensterman has the attitude to face the challenge.

“I think it’s great. It’ll be wonderful for the industry to look at these two events side by side and compare them without any spin, without any inflated numbers from Wizard – just look at them and honestly compare and ask the question, ‘Which show is better serving to grow the industry? Which is better serving the exhibitors? Which is better serving the fans and guest?’ We’ve kind of been sitting on the sidelines with having a change in dates and waiting 18 months since the last New York Comic Con, and it’s been tough sitting around waiting to do stuff. We’re ready to go, and I really welcome the direct comparison.”

Very interesting and positive attitude. You NY con-goers will have to tell me which con you enjoyed this past year and why.

In the end, Fensterman continues to exhibit his cool side with: “I’m happy that we know what the playing field is going to look like. We’re excited to do this,” he said. “People keep asking me, ‘What do you think about Wizard putting their dates on top of yours?’ and to be honest with you, it doesn’t matter what I think. I run an event that serves an industry and a fanbase. The more compelling question is, what does the industry think about this? What do the fans think about this move? What does DC think about this? How does it help DC’s business? How does this help Marvel’s business? I think if you read the comments on CBR, it’s pretty clear how everyone feels.”

As per usual for me, my first day at the con was on Saturday, and man was it busy. Getting in to the con seemed a bit disorganized as you had to enter one building to get to registration, then exit and go over to another for the main floor with a bare minimum of signs, but I made it in and began to roam the main floor. One of the first areas I saw was the massive booth that Nintendo had. They had Wii Sports resort, Wii Fit, a new Zelda game for the DS and stations with the upcoming Super Mario Brothers game set up. I checked out the new Mario game, and I have to say it was quite fun to play! Due to lines I only got to play one level, but from what I saw it was real fun and I’ll probably pick it up when it’s released.

After that I wound up browsing through what seemed like miles of comics and graphic novels from dealers. I of course forgot my list of things I want to buy so I mainly just perused to see what was available and try to make a mental note in case I saw something I wanted to pick up on Sunday. I wound up finding a couple of new graphic novels I wanted to check out when I wound up chatting with the guys at the PCB Production booth. They were showing off their latest titles Ascend, Dead Speed and Infex. The artwork is dark, yet really beautiful, and the storyline for Ascend really caught my eye. Always great to find cool new graphic novels to read!

I wound up meeting up with some friends and we continued to walk around the con, admiring the Batmobile (from the Adam West days), various weaponry for cosplay, and someone’s recreation of the Delorean among many things. Sadly I didn’t see too many people in costume and was quite disappointed by that. It was also at this point that I made my way to the celebrity autograph stand area. They had quite a list of people there that made it impressive. Among the many there, I wound up talking with Neil Kaplan (voice of Tychus Findlay in Starcraft II) for a little as well as Luciana Carro (Kat from Battlestar Galactica). I then wound up talking with Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh from BSG) who wound up being very nice and who I got a great picture with! In general the celebs there giving autographs seemed pretty nice and very willing to talk with you even if you weren’t buying an autograph or photo op. I think that was probably my highlight of the weekend.

Sunday was a lot more low key and a lot less people. There weren’t too many deals on comics either, so I wound up passing on those. BACC was pretty fun and I did enjoy myself, though I do wish it could have been in a bit of a better location than a pier on the west side. I will definitely want to attend again next year especially if they have the same caliber of guests, and I’ll make sure to bring my list o comics that I want to grab this time around!

Will Wright has announced to the LA Times his new company’s first project.

Will Wright left EA to set up Stupid Fun Club recently. He spoke a bout a toy that he’ll be revealing at the New York Toy Fair in February 2010. The toy will contain “robotic elements” and will “involve video games”.

Said Wright: “All of our projects have crossover elements. Even calling it a toy makes it too specific.”

Can’t wait to see what he’s talking about!

My first day was Saturday, and I arrived a little bit after the show opened. The con took place in the lower level of the Jacob Javits center, and was set up a bit better from last year. The dealers room seemed smaller, but there was still a good amount of things for people to browse, and happily it seemed that Artist Alley (independent artists) seemed a lot larger, and I had a great time browsing and wound up picking up a couple of chibi Zelda stickers (one now resides on my DS).

Along with the NYAF was the World Cyber Games competition for the US. I stuck around to watch some of the Gears of War 2 tournament as well as some of the Warcraft. The way these guys play really puts me to shame, but it was really fun to watch the teams!! While I was at the WCG area, I was also able to stop in at the Samsung booth and check out their Solid State Drive that was in all of the gaming systems at the WCG. The SSD is an advanced NAND flash based computer storage solution. The main feature is that the SSD provides high reliability, low power consumption, less weight and very fast performance. I was able to play Need for Speed shift which was running off of an Alienware laptop, and I definitely noticed a faster load and rendering time with the game.

There were some interesting panels that day. I wound up checking out a bit of Iron Cosplay (where people had to make a cosplay outfit out of materials given to them), some of Anime News Network’s panel, and some of the events that happened by the stage (some great dance performances!). I ended my day with a bit of the Korean and Japanese MMO games panel before calling it a day and heading home before my feet revolted against me being on them all day.

Sunday was a lot more subdued as most people I’ve noticed tend to come for Saturdays. I was able to navigate the dealer’s floor better and get a chance to play some Fairytale Fights (which was AWESOME!) and Bayonetta. I also was able to look through some manga and regret the fact that I don’t have the funds to buy some box sets of anime that I’ve been wanting. Since I arrived later, I made it to one panel that I thought would be really fun which was “How to Get A Job in Video Games” which had some bloggers and developers on the panel. It was informative and the crowd enjoyed it a lot as well. I stuck around for “The Top 10 Best and Worst Video Games” for a bit before heading home.

I did get to see some great costumes such as the Katamari girls, Auron, Chii, a plethora of Death Note characters and Bumblebee who was probably my favorite. There were also many great Lolita costumes which I enjoyed seeing. I will admit that there were still a bunch of costumes that I did not recognize that still looked pretty impressive.

All in all I had a great time and look forward to next year when the NYAF will be combined with New York Comic Con. It will be interesting seeing the two groups together in one place for both events!

Popcap games is going to be an official sponsor of the parade this year, and not content with just their name posted everywhere, they’re planning on organizing a PvZ troupe to march in the parade and are calling out to all PvZ fans to come dressed as their favorite zombie or plant – and join in as the PvZ part of the parade goes by. They are also reaching out to various groups in the NY area, such as the NYC zombie crawl and ZombieCon in order to make this the largest gathering of zombies (and plants) in history (at least until the zombie apocalypse that is!).

“Plants vs. Zombies seems to inspire people to new heights of zaniness, and we have the photos to prove it,” laughed Garth Chouteau, vice president of public relations at PopCap. “We wanted to give those rabid PvZ fans a fun time and place to gather and celebrate their passion for the game. What better way than marching up 6th Avenue in New York’s historic Halloween parade!”

The parade starts around 7pm on Oct 31st on 6th Ave south of Spring Street. And there will be a costume contest at the end with great PopCap prizes! For more details for the parade, check out the official NYC Village Halloween Parade website here.

Here’s the music video if you need costume inspiration:

Source: Kotaku