When you've got a big event coming up, it's important to have your agenda well thought out beforehand. Fortunately, the organizers of the ION Game Conference have already finalized the schedule. They've also announced a new set of speakers, to boot. More event details come your way in the full article, after the jump.

The European division of D3Publisher has polished up its titles for maximum exposure at the vast Leipzig Business and Convention Center, Germany. And in the Games Convention Developers Conference (GCDC) fast approaching in less than a month, gamers are assured that the presence of Dark Sector, Ben 10: Protector of Earth, Ed, Edd and Eddy: Scam of the Century, and Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire will be felt throughout the four-day European-centric event.

 

The Leipzig Convention will be the first event to feature playable, early versions of Dark Sector (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC), a third-person horror, action adventure combining bio-weapons and morphing to truly recreate a plague-ravaged Eastern Europe.

And right off from the Cartoon Network, Ben 10: Protector of Earth (Wii, DS, PSP, PS2) will have players wielding the Omnitrix as Ben Tennyson, fending off the evil Kevin 11 and arch-enemy Vilgax. The game is planned to extend the cartoon adventures straight to accessible consoles, including popular handhelds.

Ed, Edd and Eddy: Scam of the Century (DS) will pit the triple misbehaving E's against their own neighborhood, after Captain Melonhead gains possession of their book of schemes and distributes it to everyone. The adventure game will have gamers scouring for the book through puzzles and the trio's collection of skills, before each of their schemes can be used against them.

Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire (Wii) will also be featured at Leipzig. This "massive" RPG was designed especially for the Nintendo Wii and its pair of trusty controllers, allowing players to control movement and attacks through the Wiimote and Nunchuk. The plot and storyline was penned by none other than "DragonLance" creator Richard A. Knack himself, and the game will be available for hands-on demonstration at the event.

Check out the D3Publisher Europe stand, labeled K37, at the first Hall of the Business Center starting August 22-28, 2007.

Just wondering: any of our readers actually old enough to remember this early-to-mid-'90's cartoon? (Or, anyone been watching Boomerang recently?)

For those too young to be sentient back in the rolling '90s, the premise of the Hanna Barbera "SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron" has a couple of hotshot pilots turned vigilantes take down the unfriendly skies in an advanced aircraft which looks similar to an F-14 (duh, TomCAT). Taking Top Gun and the A-Team under its wing - or claws, the edgy, flashy cartoon scored surprisingly high in the ratings, although it sadly only lasted a couple of seasons.

Sigh. Those were the days. Still, the show, for all its unbelievable premise and camp (hard-edged casualty-filled camp, but camp nonetheless), resonates with its fans, though - you should see the IMDB forums. Or me. Where do you think I got my love for Ace Combat and Warhawk (besides Top Gun)?

It's got a megacity full of vicious criminals and their lemmings, it's got high-tech gadgets, sky-high dogfights, and street-dirty brawls - oh, for heaven's sake, this cartoon ought to be a game! Wait - it is! It was an SNES game! And, given that there were games like the flight shooter Turn 'n' Burn: No Fly Zone and the Mega Man X series which carried parts of the concept, and carried it well... the SWAT Kats SNES game by Hudson Soft ended up a fade-to-black generic shooter.

... Do you hear that? That must be the sound of ejection seats popping. Maverick is not pleased with his afterburn. (Okay, to be fair, the SNES game was a fair challenge, but still uninteresting in the end.)

Alright, so this article isn't going to be a RE-GEN; I'm just skimming here. Need more time to throw a SIXAXIS around before a full RE-GEN can be made out of this. Same principle applies, though: next gen power, next gen promise. And this time, full exploit of the show's premises and mechanics, no short-changing due to "limited processing power." Some of us kats would hate it if such a promising license was re-botched on the re-gen.

Speed of Heat after the jump.

 

Given that the 2007 Online Game Development Conference (OGDC) is just a few more days away, we'll be updating the previously reported speaker list with a fresh new 8-pack. This latest announcement includes the presence of industry bigwigs like GameSpy director Todd Northcutt, as well as PopCap Games business development director James Gwertzman. Here's the full list:

• JJ Richards - GM, Xbox Live, Microsoft
• Charles Merrin - Vice President, RealArcade, RealNetworks, Inc.
• Brett Close - President & CEO, 38 Studios
• Todd Northcutt - Director, GameSpy Technology, GameSpy / IGN Entertainment
• Tom DuBois - Producer, Global Online Studio, Electronic Arts
• James Gwertzman - Director of Business Development, PopCap Games
• Victor Wachter - Online Community Relations Manager, Cryptic Studios
• Craig T. Dalrymple - Community Relations Manager, EverQuest II, Sony Online Entertainment
  

Also confirmed to be arriving at the event are groups like IBM, Nvidia, Electronic Arts, Microsoft Game Studios, Cartoon Network, K2 Network, Multiverse, DigiPen, Pearl Research, Fox Interactive Media, Gas Powered Games, Midway Studios, WildTangent, High Voltage Software, Flagship Studios, and Ensemble Studios.

Keep posted in case more information on additional speakers is announced, as this year's OGDC goes down this May 10 to 11, at at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, Seattle.

Marc Mencher, founder of GameRecruiter.com will be a speaker in Savannah, Georgia for the Women in Games International Conference. The event seeks to help women land a job in the game industry.

Mencher is a specialist in finding positions for people in the industry that they love. His site claims to have helped thousands of jobseekers land in a career path that they enjoy, all the while earning good wages.

The event is dubbed "Advancing Your Career in Game Development," which will be held on the 26th of April. It will be held in the Savannah College of Art and Design campus, coinciding with the Game Developers eXchange.

The panel at Mencher's talk will be headed by no less than Sam Lewis, Lead Game Designer at Cartoon Network. WomenGamers.com founder Ismini Boinodiris Roby will also be present at the event to give her insights on Mencher's discussion.

"I always look forward to the opportunity to give meaningful career guidance to up-and-coming game developers," says Mencher "Speaking at WIGI-Savannah provides another targeted opportunity to pull from my first-hand experience and provide young people with the knowledge, encouragement and wisdom they will need to thrive in our industry."

From NPD's report "Kids & Digital Content" comes these very interesting information: even two-year old toddlers are now into videogames. The study looks closely at how kids between two and fourteen years of age acquire and use digital content for their computers, portable digital music and/or video players, cell phones, and video game systems.

NPD reported downloading and playing games is the most popular activity followed by watching downloaded movies, television, music videos or online streaming video content. The study says kids play games at an average of 44 minutes in one sitting.

By the time kids are 7 years old, more than one in 10 are downloading content in some form. In the 10-year-old age bracket, 22% of all kids included in the online survey are downloading. Half of all 14 year-olds included in the study were into downloading digital content.

How many kids with access to the Internet are actually surfing the net? The figure is a big 75%. Almost half of them are online and surfing the Internet without any assistance. Only 25% are surfing the Internet with their parents or someone else. The top sites visited by kids include Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. MySpace and Yahoo! are also fave surfstops.

"Without a doubt, kids are digital content natives, seamlessly navigating between traditional and digital sources of media without missing a step," said The NPD Group. "To kids, there is nothing new or novel about digital sources of entertainment. The real challenge for marketers is to be one step ahead of their competition, providing the content and technology kids crave."