Hello PS.Bloggites, today we’re giving you something a little different! We are pleased to welcome ourselves — Jeff Green, Community Manager for PopCap Games and Neil Sorens, Zen Studios’ Creative Director — to the show, as we dynamically tag-team this entry. We wanted to share with you a little bit about how Zen and PopCap worked together to create the Plants vs. Zombies Pinball table, releasing today right alongside Zen Pinball 2 for PlayStation 3 and PS Vita. Enough of us rambling though; take a look at the trailer.

Jeff: The first thing you need to know about this Plants vs. Zombies table is that it is built out of authentic Plants vs. Zombies bits and pieces. We handed Zen Studios original game assets including art, sounds, objects, zombies, flowers, plants, defenses – ok, you get it – in a beautiful package of digital goodness. Zen took these and went to work designing another brilliant pinball table. We asked Crazy Dave for some wisdom to send along to Zen: “MMMMMM PINBALL”.

Neil: When we first received all these assets, our excitement level went through the roof. We were beyond excited! The second thing that went through our mind: wait, Plants vs. Zombies is 2D, are there any 3D assets? Obviously, the answer was no. One of the first things we had to figure out was how to translate a very deliberate, slow-paced 2D game into a fast-paced, frantic pinball game with 3D interactive characters. The team went to work creating a bunch of 3D models for the zombies, plants, Melon Pults, and Crazy Dave’s jalopy. We then had to figure out how to incorporate all of these into the table geometry. Luckily, we received tremendous help from the Plants, and Crazy Dave also turned out to be very supportive.

Jeff: When the Zen Studios team started sending us materials for approval, we were seriously impressed with how they were translating 2D to 3D. It was like Plants vs. Zombies was completely new again, totally remade for a brand new experience. The day playable code showed up, we were all lost in a “wow” moment. We about lost it when the “Going Nuts” mission started and fog came billowing in across the table, while zombies started marching toward the door step. That’s when we knew the true spirit of Plants vs. Zombies had been successfully captured in this pinball creation.

This was the very first time PopCap has ever licensed out any of our game properties or worked with another developer on this level. Zen did a stellar job — the table turned out better than anyone could have expected.

Neil: It’s been quite a good time working on pinball over the past few years. We have had the privilege and honor of working with some of the biggest names in entertainment, and some of the most creative people in the industry. Working with PopCap has certainly been an amazing experience, and it’s really cool that our first project together will release today along with Zen Pinball 2. When I look at the game, I see the work of so many… not just Zen Studios people, but people at Tecmo, Capcom, Marvel, and now PopCap have contributed so much to this game.

We sincerely hope you enjoy the new Zen Pinball 2 platform and Plants vz. Zombies table. Don’t forget, this is a Cross Buy game, so buy it once and get it on both PS3 and PS Vita! If you have any questions about Zen Pinball 2, check out the FAQ we have put together in the Zen Pinball 2 forum. We’ll be here to answer your questions all day long!

In addition, we have a great surprise for you! Our latest table creation, based on a PopCap Games mega-hit (and I do mean MEGA), will be releasing as new DLC content the same day! What might this table be? All details will be revealed later this month during PAX Prime! If you are at the event, we invite you to stop by PopCap’s booth and get first hands on with the table!

As you all probably know, we take pinball very seriously here at Zen Studios, and we see pinball development in two different parts. On one end you have the actual pinball table, which had better be fun and entertaining. We have worked hard to make sure you have an awesome selection of themes and table designs, the most advanced physics, and stellar-looking tables.

On the other end, you have the game presentation, features that make it competitive among friends (beating your own score over and over is fun, but beating your friends is SO much better), and the overall experience. We have worked really hard to make Zen Pinball 2 the finest pinball platform available!

• Zen Pinball 2 is cross platform entitled. Any content you buy will be playable on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita at no extra charge!
• Zen Pinball 2 is a free download for everyone, with trials available for each table so you can try each table before you decide to buy.
• For those of you who already own Zen Pinball or Marvel Pinball content, you will be able to import your purchases into Zen Pinball 2 for free, receiving graphics, physics and social system upgrades at no extra cost!
• Zen Pinball 2 will launch with 26 different pinball tables including the mystery PopCap table!
• A beautiful layout and design featuring all Zen pinball tables under one roof.
• New trophies for all tables!
• New social system with in-game score notifications, challenges, Facebook posting, ProScore (personal performance across all tables) and TeamScore (a combined score ranking you and your friends).
• New rule sheets to help you better understand the tables, while still providing opportunity for discovering the secrets of the table on your own.

As you can see, Zen Pinball 2 is set to take pinball games to the next level. Any guesses on what PopCap game is coming to pinball?

Hello PlayStation.Blog fans, and other citizens of Earth! I’ve got some good news for Bejeweled fans: We stopped watching kitten videos, fixed the hamster wheel, and are now happy to report that Bejeweled 3 is finally coming to PlayStation Network! Huzzah!

Now if you’ve played Bejeweled 1 or 2 before, you may be asking why you should upgrade to Bejeweled 3. “How much different could they make a Match 3 game?” you may ask. “What do I do this time—Match 4?” “Do I really need to give those clowns more of my money just to swap more gems?”

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you: Yes, you do. I mean, “need” is such a relative word, when you think about it. I mean, sure, I suppose some of you “need” to pay the rent, or feed your family, rather than buy the new Bejeweled. Whatever. Frankly, the landlord can probably wait a few days, and I’m sure there are plenty of leftovers in your fridge if your family starts whining at you while clutching their swollen, distended stomachs. Meanwhile, those gems in Bejeweled 3 aren’t going to swap themselves, are they? No sir. No, they are not. I rest my case.

But perhaps you want a few details on what it is you’re actually buying with Bejeweled 3, other than the satisfaction of knowing your purchase will spark a dudebro-like high five amongst the bean-counters over here at PopCap. You may want to know, for example, what you’re getting in Bejeweled 3 that you couldn’t get in 1 or 2. This is where I come in, thanks to this handy cheat-sheet I printed out and stapled to my dog’s head as I type this. So here’s what you get:

8 modes of play, including:

• Classic (regular Bejeweled, but now better-looking!)
• Quest (kind of like an RPG, minus the characters, story, dialog, or combat, or anything else RPG-related. But there are 40 puzzles to solve!)
• Zen (You can’t lose! Be happy! You are your own shiny gem!)
• Lightning (a fast, time-based game kinda like Bejeweled Blitz)
• Four more “secret modes” of play that you can unlock, but that I can’t spoil here even though you could totally Google it in like one minute!

12 trophies and 20 badges to collect!

The satisfaction of knowing you justified me writing this blog post!

Seriously, I know there’s not much I can say that’s going to sway you or not. You probably already know whether you’re going to buy it or not. And that’s cool. All I can tell you is that if you are a Bejeweled fan, you will not regret it. I promise you. All the new modes are great. I personally didn’t know how much you could vary the formula in ways that would be fun and not too gimmicky, but I’ll be dag-gummed if they didn’t do it. And, sure, I work for them, so you could blow all this off as just more marketing hoo-hah, which, sure, it is – but as soon as you get to (SPOILER ALERT!) Diamond Mine mode, you’ll know I was right. Because good grief is that thing addictive.

So if you’re already a Bejeweled fan and don’t have 3 yet, get ready to get it on Tuesday afternoon! And if you’re not a Bejeweled fan yet, this really is the best one yet. You could do a lot worse with your money. Like pay your rent!

Anyway, now that the awkwardness is out of the way and we’re friends again, I am here to tell you that I have another exciting announcement for you! Plants Vs Zombies is coming to your brand-spankin’ new PS Vita today! Yay! If you have never played our action-puzzler — that pits a horde of horticultural heroes against a mob of fetid, undead, brain-eating zombies – there is no better time than now. The PS Vita version is darn near the most perfect version of Plants Vs Zombies yet, taking advantage of the handheld console’s touchscreen and internal motion sensors. And if you have played it before, well, why not play it again? Think of it as training for the real zombie apocalypse, which, not to be too much of a bummer here, could be coming any day now. Why be one of the unfortunate ones who end up in some undead guy’s brain sandwich? Do the responsible thing and prepare now with our game! Your loved ones will thank you later.

If you want to know what you’re actually getting in this version, which I guess is a reasonable enough question, I can tell you that the PS Vita version includes all of these positively wonderful features:

• The complete, classic 50-level adventure game
• The Zen Garden
• 20 mini-games
• 18 puzzle games
• 10 survival games
• 43 Trophies, including one Platinum trophy
• The Zombatar zombie-creation tool
• Online leaderboards

All for a paltry $14.99! That’s less than you’d pay at the movie theater for the latest rom-com movie and a bag of popcorn, and you’ll feel less bad afterward! Or, heck, if you must see the new rom-com movie, you can bring the PS Vita with you and then boot up Plants Vs Zombies once you realize the mistake you made! Either way, it seems like you should get the game, if you ask me.

So download Plants Vs Zombies from the PlayStation Network today! Do it for humanity! And the plants! And for those of us at PopCap who have kids going to college! Don’t make us beg! Because we will if we have to! Enjoy the game! Bye!

So now that we’re all caught up, I have even better news for you today: Plants Vs. Zombies is available NOW (read: soon!) on PSN for a measly $14.99. In a short time, you can close this window this second and start pummeling those infernal, annoying, and dentally-challenged zombies with your loyal, brave army of peashooters and cabbage-pults and gloom shrooms right from the comfort of your very own PlayStation!

I know you want details, rather than more of my dribble, so here’s what I can tell you. Plants Vs Zombies has:

• 50 Adventure levels. The complete, original game.
• Five modes. Adventure, Puzzle, Mini-Games, Survival, and everyone’s favorite, the bliss-inducing Zen Garden.
• Co-op and Versus Play. Team up with a friend or challenge them by each choosing a side—plants or zombies.
• 21 mini-games. Fight the fun-dead in minigames like Zombatany, Wall-nut Bowling and Heavy Weapon.
• Interactive leaderboard. Upgrade to bigger & better houses as you progress and stroll through the leaderboard neighborhood to see your friends’ digs.
• 12 Trophies. Earn awesome ornaments to decorate your lawn.

And that’s really all I know. I’ll be happy to stick around to answer questions. Just try to keep it relatively civil because my therapist says I need to avoid hostile situations ever since I punched that stupid old lady next to me on the plane because she wouldn’t give me the armrest.

Oh yeah, and enjoy the game!

Yes, Plants Vs. Zombies, our splendiferous strategy game that pits loveable eco-friendly plant life against undead, traffic-cone-wearing, brain-eating zombies, is coming soon to PSN. And the only thing we can tell you, if you don’t want your brains to be part of a delicious and wholesome zombie lunch—perhaps with a side of intestines, or maybe some foie gras—is that you get your plants ready hold ‘em back.

Perhaps you did not know that plants are an effective weapon against zombies. Perhaps you weren’t aware, for example, that flinging a slab of butter from a Kernel-pult at an approaching, fly-specked, dentally-challenged zombie would temporarily freeze him in place, allowing your trusty pea-shooters to pummel him with abandon.

If you did not know this, then I humbly submit that you are woefully and shamefully ill-prepared for the upcoming apocalypse. And you only have yourself to blame. The solution? Thank you for asking. We here at PopCap recommend that you pick up Plants Vs. Zombies for PSN. It will teach you everything you need to know to stop the zombies from eating your oh-so-delicious-especially-with-a-lovely-glass-of-Chardonnay brains.

I was the Associate Producer of Peggle and Peggle Nights for the PS3, and I know a number of you wanted to see this game come to your PSP so you could take it on the go. Remote Play is awesome, but you don’t always have an internet connection when you want to play, right?

Our expert Peggle Institute Programmers were able to get the full, original Peggle Experience into your PSP. All the original Masters, challenges, and levels in adventure mode are here! There were some late nights and long meetings with Bjorn and Master Hu, but we got there! Peggle on the PSP took us a lot of time to get right to make sure we created a game that looked good on the smaller screen (I hope your PSP has a smaller screen than your TV!) and felt right with the PSP controls.

I hope you are all as excited about this as I am, and thanks for liking our games as much as we do! It’s a pretty awesome feeling to get such a warm reception for the games we release on the PlayStation Network. Look for Peggle on PSP this Tuesday for $9.99.

I am super excited to be able to tell everyone on the network that yes, we have listened, and yes, YOU CAN PLAY PEGGLE ON YOUR PlayStation 3 this Thursday! Peggle took the PC world by storm back in 2007, and quickly became the casual game that everyone – including a ton of hardcore gamers – played. Following on its heels, Peggle Nights was released and has also received major excitement and fanfare from the gaming masses.

Peggle PS3 fans, I bring you the double-shot of good news that not only is Peggle available this week, but Peggle Nights will also be available as additional downloadable content. This gives you two separate Adventure modes and two sets of Challenges to complete, in addition to the online Peg Party & Duel modes for multiplayer competition.

Just like Peggle on the other platforms, you have the ability to replay your best shots. Everyone has seen some of the amazing shots people have found ways to post to YouTube.com to show off their skills, right? Well there’s an exclusive new feature in Peggle and Peggle Nights on the PS3 that enables you to automatically upload your replays to YouTube without ever leaving the game! When I saw this for the first time, I was pretty blown away, and I am looking forward to seeing some really crazy and amazing shots from the many Peggle masters who have been waiting for PS3 Peggle to come along.

On behalf of everyone who worked on this title (and there are a whole lot of us) we all hope you love playing this game as much as we loved working on it.

Hey everyone, I’ve got some exciting news out there for all you PlayStation Network downloadable gaming fans! I am happy to announce that Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) and PopCap have teamed up to bring our hit casual game titles to PSN and PLAYSTATION 3 for the first time ever! This collaboration has been a long time coming, so we’re happy to finally be able to talk about it with you guys.

Our first title is none other than the classic online puzzle game Bejeweled 2. Many of you may be familiar with the franchise – it has won dozens of awards and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. It’s our biggest franchise at PopCap and our most successful title, which is why we chose Bejeweled 2 as our first title for PSN and PS3. The game is a natural fit for the platform – it plays great, looks great and is as compelling as ever. And there is a ton of gameplay in Bejeweled 2 – four different game modes, more than 60 puzzles, power-ups, high-definition graphics and much more. And if you’re like me, you’ll sit there for hours playing late into the night, wondering why you’re unable to pull yourself away!

The team at SOE has been fantastic to work with, and they share our vision of making the best versions of our games possible, with features that are specific to the PS3 platform. For Bejeweled 2, that means exclusive stuff like Trophy support and PSP remote play, which you’ll only find on PSN. We’ve got similar exclusive features (and some surprises) planned for future games and franchises that we plan to produce as part of this alliance.

And this is just the beginning. Teams at PopCap and SOE are hard at work developing several more titles for PSN, to be announced soon. We are so psyched to finally be on PS3 and can’t wait to see you online.

Greg Canessa