Snoopy poached

Infogrames have sealed yet another deal to produce branded console and PC games using hot intellectual properties. This time it's "Peanuts" that is being subjected to the Infogrames treatment, thanks to "strategic development and distribution deals" with United Media. The deal gives Infogrames the right to sour Charles M. Schultz's wonderful 50-year old comic strip featuring the likes of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and others until 2006 with games on every platform under the sun. The first game past the post will be "Snoopy Tennis" on the GameBoy Color, due for release in March at the end of a pretty impressive development cycle of .. oh, about a fortnight perhaps. We can also expect Infogrames' latest hot property to hit the PC, Macintosh, PS One, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Dreamcast, GameCube and GameBoy Advance. After all, what use if a dead horse if one can't flog it? Speaking to GameCenter, Robert Watson, a senior VP at Infogrames, commented that "Peanuts is as American as apple pie, and more importantly, we feel it has mass-market universal appeal, even in Europe and Japan". In other words, it's about as close to a minting license as you can get around here. Not only that, but mass-market appeal means the company can create two-a-penny console dross and shovel it to the old and young, on every level. We hope you'll forgive the rant, but when we review these games in the next few months, we have a rather uncomfortable feeling that we will be proved correct about their quality. Still, that's all well and dandy. Related Feature - Infogrames et la femme