Boy am I glad that I don’t dismiss every newsletter that comes to my inbox because I would have missed this news.

The latest version of Peggle, Peggle Nights, is due to be released this summer. This is one of my favorite casual games. Think of Peggle as pinball but with less control because once you shoot the ball, then you have little control over it. You have to clear the board of all orange objects to advance. Clearing the board completely will earn you extra points.

Peggle is from Popcap Games and is a lot of fun. It’s also a fairly long casual game although you may complete the ten levels. There are many other challenges to this fun casual game.

Peggle Nights is set to be released at the end of July.

Our local Relay for Life event is coming up in a few weeks, and our team captain is trying to quit smoking. You’re surprised he’s a smoker? Well, I was when I first found out. He’s doesn’t look like a smoker. In fact he barely looks old enough to be of legal age.

Relay for Life is a yearly event that raises money for cancer research. It is ironic that our team captain places himself at risk of developing lung cancer by smoking. Hopefully he can find the will-power to quit for good. Of course, it could be just as easy to be at risk for lung cancer as any other cancer like mesothelioma. We do work in an older building. There’s no telling what we’re exposed to.

I’m looking forward to taking part in Relay for Life. This is my first time to walk and probably won’t stay all night but hope to make it at least past 11pm.

Finally! some more details about The Sims 3 have been released. First of all, The Sims 3 will be available sometime next year. There are two major areas that will be different about The Sims 3. It’s been in production for three years and will feature a new game engine that will take the game to a whole new level.

Now your Sims will be able to roam the neighborhood. No more having to take the taxi or phoning a friend to come over. Sims will be able to actually move about outside of their own lot. This is very exciting and should add a lot of gameplay possibilities.

The other big change will be the Sims creation process. You will now be able to create Sims with up to five personality traits. With the wide variety of personality traits, there are over 700 million combinations.

While we will have a long wait until we see it on the shelves, The Sims 3 does sound like it will have some nice improvements over The Sims 2, which I was doubtful could be done.

I’m so behind on The Sims 2 expansions that it’s not even funny. Now I see that the next Sims 2 expansion will be Sims 2 Castaway, which is very exciting to me since I”m a huge Survivor fan.

In Castaway, the Sims are stranded on a desserted tropical island and you must help them find their way back to civilization. In the spirit of Castaway, Gilligan’s Island, and Survivor, this could be a fun situation to have our beloved Sims in. Now if there is just a Wilson basketball in the game, it will be perfect.

The Church of England is upset over a new video game by Sony that features the Manchester Cathedral as a backdrop. The game for the PS3, Resistance Fall of Man, pits humans against an alien invasion. The church wants an apology from Sony as well as a substantial donation of the profits of the game. Other demands are that the church be removed fro the game entirely or the section featuring the church be heavily modified.

Officials with the Church of England say that Sony did not receive permission to use the image in the video game while Sony contends that they thought they had. The game has already sold 1 million copies. Sony plans to contact church officials to discuss this matter further.

Technorati Tags: Sony, Manchester Cathedral, Resistance Fall of Man

Video games are great entertainment, but I love to see stories like this where they have a greater purpose. Remission- the video game - helps young cancer patients by education and empowerment.

Game Access is a game rental online portal based out of Canada. Game Access seems to operate much like GameFly or Netflix. You pay a monthly fee and can rent as many games as you like. There’s not late fees, so you return the games when you want to.

Plans start as low as $13.95. At the price you can apparently have one game out at any given time. Not a bad plan and a relatively cheap way to play a game for a while and then get another one. Too bad there isn’t a PC casual game rental plan out there. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

CHD is congential heart defects, and what better day to bring awareness to the day devoted to all matters of the heart. I have a nephew who has HPLHS, hypo-plastic left heart syndrome. Basically his left ventricle was too small, so he went through three surgeries beginning when he was only four days old to make his four chamber heart a two chamber one.

He spent a lot of time in the hospital but is doing well today. He had his first surgery at four days old. His second surgery was when he was 9 months old. His third surgery was when he was about 2 years old. After each surgery, there was a lot of recovery time. Since his third surgery, he has really blossomed. He is a very normal kid and can do a lot of things that his brothers can do. He is in kindergarten and was recently named student of the month, which he is thrilled about.

1 in 5,000 babies are born with HPLHS, and this is only one congential heart defect. You can learn more about CHD Awareness Day through the official website.

You can vote on your favorite casual games for 2006. The Zeebys will be honoring casual games in 6 categories including Casual Game of the Year.

Besides the People’s Choice winners for the six categories, there will a set of craft awards given to recipients from the Casual Game Association. The voting continues until January 31st. Winners will be announced at CGA Europe West: Amsterdam, on February 8, 2007.

We are in need of a new cellular phone. Since the announcement of the Apple iPhone, we have been intrigued by it. Here are some great pictures of the iPhone:

The iPhone is very feature rich. I like the touch screen controls that is built to ignore accidental touches. The battery life of the iPhone will last for 300 minutes of phone conversation. The iPhone looks to have it all: MP3 playback, PDA-like function, and a built in digital camera. The iPhone will also have downloadable games as well.

We may have to keep our current phones for a few more months since the iPhone isn’t due to hit the market until the summer.

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