Tag Archives: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

Rare’s dropped us word of a special Valentine’s card it’s made for Pinata fans. Get it here.

All you have to do is waggle it in front of your Vision Camera and the little hearty fox thing will appear in your Trouble in Paradise garden.

If you can’t remember how to do the whole Panata card “thing,” there’s full instructions here.

Oh. And here are three Killer Instinct cards. You knew they were working on a KI MMO for DS over there, right?

Rare’s put out some charming Christmas wallpapers to keep you and, well, you, smiling through the festive season.

Look! There’s an Indiana Jones wallpaper with piñatas in it. Put them on your computer. Make an old man happy.

Rare popped over an email this afternoon with details of a jukebox you’re going to be able to stick in your Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise garden for the festive season.

All you have to do is scan the Piñata card you’ll find after the break with your Vision camera and you could be on the way to fame and glory.

There’s more! See, in Rare’s words:

• The Piñata Vision Jukebox card lets the player place the romance dance jukebox in their own garden.
• Special Piñata Vision cards allow the player to add tracks to the jukebox’s playlist in exchange for chocolate coins. These are then played in the garden in place of the usual ambient music.
• When the Christmas Top-Ten Romance Dance Poll closes on December 10th, we’ll do a Top-Ten countdown, releasing the appropriate Piñata Vision card for each romance dance. One card will be released each day.
• We’ll also be releasing other exclusive cards throughout December.
• We intend to write this up as news on the Rare.co.uk website as well.

So do it. Go on.

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UK retailer GameStation has announced a slew of Christmas reductions, including Samba De Amigo for £17.49, Battlefield: Bad Company for £19.99 and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise for £17.49.

That is literally cheap.

Press release after the link.

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The Major sends word that a demo for Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is now up on Live. Blurb:

The Pinata Central database has been ruined by Professor Pester and his band of Ruffians. It’s your job to restore the data by collecting, customizing, & caring for over 100 different piñata species in Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise. Professor Pester has plans of his own to slow this process down. New features include: 2 person coop on one console, and 4 person coop over Xbox Live. Ability to compete in mini-games with your Pinata against others on Xbox Live. Over 100 Piñata from various realms including the new Polar Pinarctic & Dessert Desert. Photo Mode ability to share your amazing garden with everyone online. Piñata Vision allowing you to invite new species to your garden with the flash of a card at your Xbox Live Vision Camera.

Do it. Right now.

Yes, we know. We were supposed to announce this on Monday. We’re a bit rubbish, when all’s said and done. so we’re sorry.

Anyway. Last week, for the grand prize of a copy of Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise signed by the team at Rare, we asked you to complete the following sentence:

• I enjoy playing with animals, because…

And the winner is poster lovemoose, with:

…because I severed both Alan Price’s arms below the elbow, and now they have to pay me to do the organ bits on “House of the Rising Sun”.

Thanks to everyone that entered. You’re all winners in our eyes. Lovemoose, mail patrick@videogaming247.com with your details and we’ll get the game in the post.

Rare’s very kindly sent us a copy of Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise signed by the team. We’d like to give it to you. Chances like this don’t come along every five minutes. This is a signed copy of an original Rare game. You can see what you’re playing for in the pictures after the break.

You can win, tiger. All you have to do is complete the following statement in the comments thread below.

• I enjoy playing with animals, because…

We don’t care where you live. US, Australia, anywhere in Europe: whatever. Best one wins. Enter as many times as you like. We’ll announce who’s got it on Monday. Do your worst.

And once you’ve done that, read our review.

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Speaking to ChannelFlip at Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise’s London launch, Rare’s Adam Park said that a decision was made at the beginning of the game’s development that the game’s Piñata Cards wouldn’t be sold in shops.

“We decided quite early on that even though it was something that was quite marketable, we thought that we’d rather people used it as something they could create themselves,” he said.

“So rather than selling these things in the shops – you can’t go in and buy cards – what you can actually do is generate your own within the game.”

Players can customise their piñata in the game and create cards to others to bring into their own gardens via the Live Vision Camera.

Watch the full interview after the link. The game’s out now: read our review here.

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Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is here. We’ve played it to death. We thought we’d tell you all what we thought.

After the break.

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Eurogamer’s posted the its proper Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise review, and it’s an 8/10.

The game’s out today. Mike’s going all gooey-eyed over it as we type, so we’ll have a review for you next week.

If you’ve got a score you want listing, just drop it in the comments and we’ll update this story.

More scores:

• Eurogamer.de – 8
• 1UP – A
• Team Xbox – 9
• IGN – 8.5
• Gamespot – 8.5

On CVG. This is the last media you’re going to get before the game actually launched tomorrow, so take a look at what you should be playing this weekend, if you’ve got any sense.

Go and watch the funny animals getting sexy.

The first proper Viva 2 score’s in, and it’s from Japan. The cutesy animal sequel’s score 31/40 in Famitsu ahead of its European launch on Friday.

Still nothing from any European or US sites, but there’s not much time left, so expect a launch-time deluge.

Update: A few more scores. Worthplaying’s given it 8/10, while French site Jeuxvideo’s given is 16/20. Thanks, Gekidami and Rudolph.

Update 2: More scores. 1UP, A; EGM, A; Gamespot: 8.5. Thanks, Psychotext.

Rare’s just sent word that the Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise community site is to launch tonight in preparation of the game’s release on Friday. You’ll be able it here, but the new stuff hasn’t gone live yet.

Game-owners will be able to upload photos of their gardens – along with their Piñata Vision cards – to the website and share them with the world. Which is lovely.

And that’s not all. AceyBongos, aka Xbox Europe community manager Graeme Boyd, is launching a VP2 Piñata-themed treasure hunt over on Xbox.com this Friday. Basically:

1. You look for the Piñata egg icon hidden around Xbox.com.
2. When you mouse over it the little Piñata pops out.
3. When you click on it you open up a PDF doc featuring an exclusive Piñata card that can be printed out.
4. Shove it in front of your Live Vision Camera – free Piñata.

There are 25 to find on Xbox.com, and Mr Bongos will be seeding 25 more through the XCN.

Groovy, huh? BUY THE GAME ON FRIDAY, you cheapskate.

Speaking in this fansite interview on MundoRare, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise lead designer Justin Cook has confirmed that there’s no plans for any Viva 2 DLC at the moment, and that the team itself will be moving off onto something completely non-Viva related after the game ships.

“We don’t have any plans for DLC,” he said.

“As far as the team is concerned we are taking a break from VP for a while to make something new. But things change quickly in the software industry so next week it may be a completely different story.”

Hot shit. No Viva 3? The game’s out next Friday. That’s next Friday. Buy the fucking thing. Make the magic happen.

According to this Perfect-Rare story – translated from the Dutch by Gamer.tm – the Dutch (and Belgian) versions of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise are to cost more than elsewhere as they’ve been fully localised.

The rest of Europe ill pay €39 for the games, while if you want to play in Dutch it’ll cost you €59.

“We decided to fully translate both titles, which drove up costs,” a spokesperson said.

“If you look at the Dutch speaking market, then it’s hard to spread the costs across a limited number of consumers.

“A French or a German version, for instance, would be subject to the same costs, but the costs would fall due to there being a larger number of users.”

Don’t moan. If you want to play it in English, buy it in English. At least you have the option of buying it in Dutch. If you go and buy the Dutch version, maybe more companies will translate games into Dutch instead of just assuming you can speak English so you don’t want to play in your local language, right? Alstublieft? Dank u wel.

According to this Eurogamer piece, Rare’s finished work on the Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise demo, which is now in certification with Microsoft.

“Yes, a demo is on the way,” lead programmer Will Bryan said. “As soon as possible.”

He added: “We built the demo from starting, so we’re pretty much ready to roll on it, we’ve just got to get it through certification.

“It’s from the main game, but there’s pointers to the fact there are Live features and Just For Fun mode. It’s 25 minutes of the main game basically.”

More through the link.

In the wake of July’s NPD figures, we thought we’d look at just how well the ‘big three’ have fared over the last seven months by tallying all hardware data for 2008.

We all know Nintendo is having a fantastic year, but just how well is Wii doing?

Microsoft and Sony are fighting their own high-def battle, but how big is the margin between the two, and who has the lead?

After the drop.

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Not sure how legit this is, but there’s a Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise Achievement here called “Full House” that’s awarded for playing “4 Player Online Co-op for 1 hour”.

We’ll have an ask this morning. Good though, eh?

Rare’s put the first Piñata Vision Card online, as you can see on MundoRare. It’s a Hootyfruity card, as you can see. This chap’s a newbie, according to this story. Unless we’ve got this completely wrong, you can now scan the barcode on the card using the Vision Cam and get the owly detective in the Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.

The game’s out on September 2 in America, and September 5 in Europe, so you won’t have long to find out. Full thing through the link.

Amazing what you find when you’re least expecting it. There’s a new teaser for Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise after the break, which has seemingly randomly appeared on YouTube.

It’s an obvious piss-take of Bungie’s Halo 3 “Believe” trailer.

The movie’s live as opposed to CG, and features “good” piñata getting into pickles with the nasty red type. Poor piñatas. Take a look.

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