Round Up: GH2 Partners, Nintendo World, Canadian Games

Today's round-up includes news on multitudes of Guitar Hero 2 product partnerships, new info from Nintendo's forthcoming Japanese consumer exhibitions, and details on the 'Great Canadian Video Game Competition', as well as the latest Game Career Guide updates, Serious Games Source posts, GameSetWatch posts and Gamasutra job postings. - Officials from Guitar Hero publishers RedOctane have revealed the full array of in-game product partnerships for their soon to be released Guitar Hero 2. Though the first volume in the franchise licensed popular guitar models from real-world manufacturers like Gibson, Guitar Hero 2 looks to push the trend even further, with a laundry list of products and ephemera like amps, strings, pedals, cymbals, music stores and venues. The partners revealed by RedOctane include BOSS Effectors, DW Drums, Eden Bass Amplication, EMG, Epiphone, Ernie Ball Strings, Gibson Guitar, Guitar Center, Hofner, Kramer, Krank, Line 6, Mesa Boogie, MusicMan Basses, Orange, Randall Amplifiers, Roland, Vans and the Vans Warped Tour, VHT, and Zildjian - nearly all instantly recognizable names to musicians and fanatics. - Nintendo of Japan has announced the dates and software lineup for its Nintendo World 2006 exhibition, set to open in various points across the country. Nagoya will see the first such exhibit, starting Friday, November 3rd, followed by Osaka on November 12th and Tokyo on November 25th and 26th. The Wii software lineup holds few surprises, with new iterations of major first party franchises like WarioWare, Zelda, Pokemon, Mario, Fire Emblem, and Mario Party all being shown, as well as a healthy lineup of third party titles from Sega, Hudson, Bandai Namco, Konami, and Square Enix. The DS showing has a few more tricks up its sleeve, however, with a first party version of popular logic puzzle series Picross making its first appearance since SNES and GameBoy versions. Also interesting is the surprise appearance of a first party title known as 100 Poems by 100 Famous Poets, an obvious spin off of Nintendo's cultural exhibit Shigureden, which allowed visitors to use a DS to navigate the exhibit and play simple matching games as they toured the grounds. Other selections from the DS lineup include a strong showing of non-game DS applications such as those in the Training series, including more cookbook and recipe applications, as well as more traditional first and third party offerings in the Wario, Phoenix Wright, Chibi Robo, Dragon Quest, and Chocobo series. - Federal cultural agency Telefilm Canada has announced a new drive in partnership with Electronic Arts, Radical Entertainment and Ubisoft to create the next great Canadian video game. On November 8th, Telefilm will unveil the full plans behind its 'Great Canadian Video Game Competition' at the Montreal International Game Summit. The company expects the competition to elevate the commercial profile of Canadian-owned game development companies and grow the industry, and is convinced Canada has the talent and potential to be a world leader in the $20-billion video game market. Industry information sessions will be held at the Game Summit at the Montreal Convention Centre, Room 522, Level 5, on November 9th at 10am, and more information will soon be available at the official site for the competition. - The latest updates on Gamasutra sister alt.gaming weblog GameSetWatch include a look at the Unreal Anthology soundtrack, the Computer History Museum-hosted Vintage Computer Festival 9.0, and Nom heading to North American mobile phones. - The latest updates on Gamasutra sister website Game Career Guide include a new feature on the basic steps to becoming a game programmer by Rockstar Games' Steven Messinger. - Also updated today: the latest Gamasutra job postings, including openings from Destineer, Gamasutra, Rockstar San Diego, and The Art Institute of California.