coming soon/rumors

Unlike Spooky Slots, Ali Baba Slots, and the forthcoming Sock Hop Slots, Monopoly Slots will have a different take on slots — more like Hog Heaven and Vaults of Atlantis Slots. It won’t have a storyline like the most recent Pogo slot offerings, but it will have five reels with multi-line bonuses.

Here’s a sneak peek of the “game board” which serves as the face (or screen) of the slot machine:

This game is in the very early stages of development and Pogo’s got their hands full with many other releases before this one will be out, so try to contain your excitement; it may be 2009 before we see this one.

Hopefully they won’t postpone it any longer than this!

The Monopoly Premium Badge Album as well as the Playful Pets Premium Badge Album will be released on November 18th.

Well, we didn’t want to be right, but we were. The Monopoly Premium Badge album that was listed on the Badge Central page to be released today (and previously listed as October 7th) won’t be coming out today. We weren’t optimistic because none of the ‘flavor text’ for the album had been written and the challenge requirements weren’t in place yet either. They’re still not ready, so don’t expect the album today/this week. In fact, we’re not even optimistic about next week (though we do hope to be proved wrong then). Sigh.

Those of you who were looking forward to Diner Dash Family Style will be pleased to hear that it’ll be released today or tomorrow. We’ve gotten our hands on an advance copy but it’s not quite ready for release. Rest assured, the folks at Pogo are working hard to get it just right. So keep your eye on the downloads section of their site today (or maybe tomorrow or maybe next week) for its release.

Here’s a screenshot of the main menu:

In the meantime, visit our sneak peek page for a reminder of the great mini items you’ll be able to earn in the game.

There are some pretty spiffy things coming to the Mini Mall in coming weeks!

There will be the yearly no-smoking campaign, which will urge players to play Pogo while trying to kick the habit. (Last year, the event took place on November 16. This will bring free items to the Mini Mall: a crown, two t-shirts, and a serene “Lung Retreat” background.

Do you remember the mini items from last year’s Guy Fawkes’ day? The Bucket O’Works and Penny for the Guy are coming back, if you didn’t grab ‘em last time.

Thanksgiving minis are also coming! A few favorites from last year will return and there will be a new Pilgrim outfit, a Native American outfit and a couple great new backgrounds (one of the animated ones is called Land Ho, and is a gorgeous, stormy, Plymouth Rock view). Something of note, the pilgrim outfit was created with a lot of research and enthusiasm by the talented Julia Lundman. She wrote about it on her blog and frankly, we find the whole process (and her creative abilities) totally fascinating!

Dog lovers can look forward to some new additions to the Pet Store as well: a German Shorthaired Pointer, a Westie, a Sheltie, and a Bichon Frise.

Oh, and did you know Winter’s on its way? Your minis will be glad to know there are some cold-weather items coming soon: a couple sweaters, a long coat, and more!

Details on the first of the two Premium Badge Albums we mentioned earlier have surfaced. This one will be called “Playful Pets”. It will have 12 animated badges and one badge for completion. Each badge will contain a certain type of animal “playing” a game (we say “animal” loosely because one of the animals is a toucan, and toucans just aren’t pets). The challenges will be in Poppit!, Mahjong Safari, one of the Word Whomps, one of the jigsaw games, Tumble Bees, Hog Heaven Slots, Turbo 21, Phlinx (maybe?), Stack’em, Squelchies, and Mahjong Garden.

We keep an eye on all things Pogo-related here at BadgeHungry and of note today is a press release about Electronic Arts’ new studio in Austin, Texas. Pogo Austin will join EA’s Bioware team and create the Hasbro titles, the first of which will be Pictureka! Museum Mayhem.

The game will be released for download from Pogo in November and will cost $19.99. In addition, the press release text indicates that it may be a time management game (”the frantic director”), but we’re hoping it will (also?) have game play reminiscent of a hidden object game.

The first title to be released from Pogo Austin is PICTUREKA! MUSEUM MAYHEM. This quirky seek and find game is based on the Hasbro game PICTUREKA! which debuted in 2007 and launched globally in 2008. In the digital version, a player becomes the new curator for a museum and investigates some odd things that are afoot. Someone has been breaking in and re-arranging the exhibits. The frantic director needs the player to restore items to their proper location and catch the person responsible. The game is set to launch online in November at Pogo.com for $19.95 (US) and £11.95 (UK); it will be available at retail in early winter.

The full press release is available here.

Here’s the latest news: the Monopoly Premium Badge Album will be released next week, on October 21st. In the past, this album had been listed on the Badge Central page as being released on October 7th, but with the next update it was changed to the 21st. We haven’t seen any details on the actual challenges, but we have seen the nine animated badges that were created for this album. We aren’t exactly optimistic about this album being released as promised, but we’ll keep you posted.

If you haven’t activated one of those two Monopoly Mix-n-Match challenges yet (the Limited Edition one that asks you to “Pass ‘GO’ 10 times in 2 hours or less!” or the more recent Floating Money Badge where you need to “Have a player pay you rent 50 times in 5 days!”), you may want to hold off on doing so until the album is released.

And last, but not least, there are two new premium badge albums in the works. One appears to have 12 badges and the other has 6. Beyond that, no other information has been released yet.

As we promised last night, here’s the full text of the rules for Way to Go! Bowling. We’ll let you speculate as to whether or not Pogo would give us a free download. Every time we read over the paragraph (which is in the section entitled “Tokens, Tickets and Prizes”), we are pretty certain the game will be free; let’s just hope that paragraph isn’t removed!

To celebrate, we’re going to show you the never-before-seen mini backgrounds you can win in the game. (The rest of the mini items are here, and the badges are here.)

It should be out really soon, now. Keep your fingers crossed for a timely release!