Flower is a PlayStation 3 video game. It was developed by thatgamecompany, designed by Jenova Chen (pictured), and announced at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show. Flower was released on February 12, 2009, via the PlayStation Network. The game was intended as a spiritual successor to flOw, a previous title by Chen and thatgamecompany. In it, the player controls the wind, blowing a flower petal through the air using the movement of the game controller. Flying close to flowers results in the player's petal being followed by other flower petals. Approaching flowers may also have side-effects on the game world, such as bringing vibrant color to previously dead fields or activating stationary windmills. The game features no text or dialogue, forming a narrative arc primarily through visual representation and emotional cues. Flower was primarily intended to provoke positive emotions in the player, rather than to be a challenging and "fun" game. The team viewed their efforts as creating a work of art, removing gameplay elements and mechanics that were not provoking the desired response in the players. Flower was a critical success, to the surprise of the developers. Reviewers praised the game's music, visuals, and gameplay, calling it a unique and compelling emotional experience. It was named the best independent game of 2009 at the Spike Video Game Awards and by Playboy, and won the "Casual Game of the Year" award by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. (more...)

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• ... that Matthew Stockford won three bronze medals for Great Britain at the 1992 Winter Paralympics?
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• An earthquake in Turkey's Elâz?? Province kills more than 50 people and injures at least 50 others.
• The Hurt Locker wins six Academy Awards including Best Picture and the first female Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow (pictured).
• A series of storms passes through Victoria, Australia, producing flash floods and 5-cm (2-in) hail in Greater Melbourne.
• Inter-religious attacks result in hundreds of deaths near Jos, Nigeria.
• Icelanders reject a plan to pay ?3.8 billion to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as compensation for the collapse of Icesave bank.
• A paper in the journal Science, authored by a team of 41 scientists, affirms that an asteroid impact likely caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other species 65.5 million years ago.
• Vladislav Ardzinba, the first President of the partially recognised Republic of Abkhazia, dies in Moscow at the age of 64.
• More than 60 people are killed during a stampede at a temple in Kunda, Uttar Pradesh, India.
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March 9: Baron Bliss Day in Belize

• 1276 ? Augsburg in the Holy Roman Empire became a Free Imperial City.
• 1841 ? The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that captive Africans who seized control of La Amistad, the trans-Atlantic slave-trading ship carrying them, had been taken into slavery illegally.
• 1842 ? Nabucco, an opera by Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi (pictured), premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
• 1862 ? American Civil War: In the world's first major battle between two powered ironclad warships, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia fought to a draw near the mouth of Hampton Roads in Virginia.
• 1945 ? World War II: A bomb raid on Tokyo by American B-29 heavy bombers started a firestorm, killing over 100,000 people.
• 1956 ? Soviet military troops suppressed mass demonstrations in Tbilisi, Georgia, against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy.

More anniversaries: March 8 ? March 9 ? March 10