The people behind the Ghostbusters: The Videogame and the upcoming Marvel titles, Thor and Captain America games, as well as the upcoming Def Jam Rapstar have released a full-featured foundation engine that is cross-platform compatible and allows for rapid development of video games:

Terminal Reality announced today an incredible listing of upcoming titles that are using the powerful and versatile Infernal Engine to bring them to life. Games as different as Def Jam Rapstar, Disney’s family-pleasing Guilty Party, and Wipeout: The Game are just some of the titles using the Infernal Engine’s unique, cross-platform technology to deliver their various experiences. The complete line-up of notable titles includes (in order of release date):

• Wipeout: The Game (Wii) – currently available
• Disney’s Guilty Party (Wii) – August 26, 2010
• Def Jam Rapstar (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) – October 5, 2010
• The Force Unleashed II (Wii) – October 26, 2010
• The Grinder (Xbox360, PS3) – October 2011
• Thor (Wii, PSP) – May 2011
• Captain America (Wii, PSP) – TBA 2011

In addition, Terminal Reality, the development studio – best known for their work on the hit title, Ghostbusters: The Videogame – is currently putting finishing touches on the groundbreaking Def Jam Rapstar, due out October 5. Def Jam Rapstar is all about Hip-Hop and the music that makes it great. Aspiring emcees spit bars with the best in the history of Rap, both past and present, as they try to prove that no one else can fade them on the mic. The game features custom, proprietary voice recognition technology that keeps tabs on lyrical accuracy, because you can’t respect a fraud.

Can’t wait to see some office mates pull out Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.” in the upcoming Def Jam Rapstar in October 5th.

[ Links: Terminal Reality, Infernal Engine ]

Guess what I got running via VMWare Fusion? If you guessed the recently shown off Google Chrome OS you’d be right. So far, it feels a bit unoptimized and slow but I’m only giving it only 512mb of RAM, 1 virtual processor on my Mac Mini running VMWare Fusion 2.06. I’ll retry in a bit once I’ve installed VMWare 3.0. Make sure that you use bridged and not NAT for your networking setup otherwise you’ll not be able to login.

This build of the Chrome OS is running 4.0.253.0 (32516). And speaking of logins, at the login screen (seen below) you input your Gmail login and password in order to login.

To get your download running, you will need a couple of things. If you have one of the VMWare [ site here ] applications, on the Mac it’s VMWare Fusion which has recently been upgraded to version 3.0, that’s a good start. Some people have used VirtualBox, which is free, and I have on the PC, but have yet to attempt. Then you will need to head over to via gdgt.com [ site here ] and download the Google Chrome OS VMWare Image.

You will need a login to their site, which is free, painless and takes like 1 minute to obtain a login.

Helpful tips, if you download it:
1.) To use the vmdk file, open VMware and create a new virtual machine. One of the options will be to use an “existing virtual disk.” (In VMware Fusion, this is the last option below, “use operating system disk” and “use OS disc image file.”)
2.) Make sure your VM is set to use bridged networking, rather than NAT.
3.) The username and password to login to Chrome OS / Chromium OS is your google account!

Alternatively, if you don’t have VMware, some users have had luck getting this image to run using VirtualBox, which is a free cross-platform (Windows / Mac / Linux) virtual machine created by Sun Microsystem.

Again, I haven’t tried the VirtualBox method yet, but might try it out on my main Windows PC later today. So far, it’s quirky, has twice randomly stopped on me, but for something that’s coming out next year, I could easily see using this on my OQO 01+ as a web only way to access the web and get to the internet when I’m mobile and want access to a full-blown Flash player and a keyboard. Can’t wait for the final release in the second half of 2010.

[ gdgt ] [ VirtualBox ] [ VMWare ] [ Related: Chrome OS as Open Source Project ]