operation mania

If for whatever reason you haven’t downloaded and/or purchased your copy of Operation Mania, it’s now available from retail stores. If you want to purchase Operation Mania from Amazon, it’s listed for $19.99 right now. One benefit of buying a retail version is that you’ll always have the cd-rom and physical copies of the associated game materials at hand.

We’re particularly impressed with the slew of new stuff at Pogo.com with today’s release. Everyone Wins Bingo is a Club Pogo release, Operation Mania is a downloadable deluxe game (with mini items and badges!), and last but not least, the Mix-n-Match Challenges for August 2008 are out too.

We’ve gotten a little bit more information about Operation Mania for you, this time it’s more detailed information on the badges and ranks and mini items you’ll be able to earn in this upcoming downloadable game.

There will be (not 50, but) 51 ranks in Operation Mania, and as with most Pogo game ranks, each will have a name. The first and last are “Anesthesia Technician” and “Super Surgeon”. To advance in rank you will cure patients. For each rank you earn, you will also earn a picture to hang on your hospital wall.

Five of the six Operation Mania badges will be awarded at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. (We assume that also, as with most deluxe/downloadable games, you’ll receive a badge just for trying out the game, somewhere between ranks 0 and 1.)

We’ve shown you the Operation Mania mini items, but now we also can report that you will receive a full set of mini items (not sure what order they’ll be awarded in yet) at ranks 5, 15, 25, 35, and 45.

In addition, the game will feature a “trophy room” where you can display trophies you have received for various in-game feats (kind of like achievements, if you are familiar with the Xbox achievement system or “postcards” from the recent Slingo Quest games). Some will probably be very difficult to acquire.

Here are the mini items you’ll be able to win for your mini in the upcoming August release Operation Mania.

Male and Female Hairstyles:

Female Outfits:

Male Outfits:

Goodies:

Electronic Arts has announced that Operation Mania (formerly rumored to be Operation Deluxe: Quest for the Funny Bone Badges) will be available on Pogo.com (both US and UK) in August and at retail stores for $19.95 in September. This downloadable, deluxe game will have 35 levels (ranks?), two modes of play, mini-games, and more. You’ll be playing as the up-and-coming surgeon Dr. Humerus, operating on everyone’s well-known body Cavity Sam. The multiplayer mode is described with “Overcrowded waiting rooms can be alleviated by referring patients to friends and family online.” Ranks will be achieved via story mode.

So far, we know there are six badges for Operation. The badges are as follows:

Happy Healer

Earn this badge by simply playing.

Polar Pediatrician

Reach Rank 1 to earn this badge.

Jungle GYN

Reach Rank 2 to earn this badge.

Desert Doctor

Reach Rank 3 to earn this badge.

City Clinician

Reach Rank 4 to earn this badge.

Super Surgeon

Reach Rank 5 to earn this badge.

Here are some screenshots:

Cavity Sam’s Got Butterflies in his Stomach!

Full Emergency Room - Gameplay Screenshot

Operation Mania - World Map (Various Hospitals)

The full press release about Operation Mania can be read here (PDF).

The badges for Operation Deluxe: Quest for the Funny Bone have been created. There are six in total (possibly seven, because the last one has been duplicated as a placeholder) and they feature a rather gruff-looking, mad-scientist type doctor; two nurses; and a red cross symbol. Our favorite from the set shows the doctor being chased by a polar bear across frozen terrain, past an igloo. This game promises to be lots of laughs!

Here are a few things of note that we haven’t had time to cover in a single post this week:

The mini pets are on their way! Pogo’s artists have created two new backgrounds — a pet shop and a dog park.

The Flawless Victory badge in Golf Solitaire is now being awarded.

There were a lot of problems with this week’s patch for Word Riot Deluxe (especially for Windows Vista users). Some Vista users have had luck by running it as administrator, but others have not been so lucky. If you are having problems playing Word Riot after the latest update patch this week, we suggest you contact Oberon directly (support at Pogo will just tell you to contact Oberon, anyway).

The badge is now being properly awarded for the 8th Mix-n-Match album completion. It’s called “Jumpin’ for Joy”. It shows up in your Special Edition album and you will be credited 5,000 tokens. WTG Pogo.

Those of you who wanted to know what it was, Poker Pop is now available for online play.

If you haven’t taken advantage of it yet, we added a new token offer for 3,000 tokens to our free Pogo tokens page. Yay for free tokens!

Pogo is starting to work on the upcoming Hasbro releases Operation and Pictureka. Operation Deluxe will be a downloadable game with badges, ranks, and probably mini items. Pictureka may be called Pictureka Museum and if you’ve never played this fun game, you can check out a game demo off this page.

According to a press release today, Hasbro and Electronic Arts Casual Gaming have teamed up to provide a bunch of games for EA’s Pogo.com collection. Yahtzee for online play is scheduled to be released in Summer of this year, and Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit are scheduled for Fall. There’s no word yet whether or not these will be available to everyone or just Club Pogo members.

Yahtzee will offer two ways to play: team/collaborative and competitive. The rooms will allow up to 20 people per room.

Monopoly will be the Here and Now: World Edition. You’ll be able to play alone or play against up to three other players online. The Here and Now edition of Monopoly is a modern makeover of the classic Monopoly board game where you can buy and sell destinations from around the world as you play to win it all.

Not much information is included about the version of Trivial Pursuit for Pogo, but we found this sentence interesting: “Answer the trivia questions correctly and earn points towards your wedges in pursuit of completing your pie collection by the end of the week.” This could be a daily quickie like Word Search Daily, perhaps?

Also mentioned in the press release are Operation and Pictureka, which are described in such a way that we believe they will be Deluxe-style games.