ONTARIO, Calif., January 10, 2006 – Alderac Entertainment Group, Inc. announces the release of the first set of the new collectible card game (CCG) City of Heroes™: Arena based on the highly successful City of Heroes® online computer game. The City of Heroes CCG was designed by award-winning game designer, David Williams (Legend of the Five Rings, Doomtown, Warlord, Initial D, Spycraft, Football Champions) and brings together hobby and computer gamers for a new gaming experience. Top Cow Productions (Witchblade, Tomb Raider, Hunter-Killer), which is also producing the City of Heroes™ comic book, illustrated all of the artwork for this new game.

“The fact that people can try out and play the City of Heroes CCG for less than five dollars with one of our new Battlepacks™ is just amazing,” says Williams. “Even better is that for the first time in the history of gaming, we will be crossing the barrier between online gaming and tabletop gaming with online rewards for league and tournament success as well as players of the online game being rewarded with promo cards for certain online achievements. Players have used our Hero Builder at http://www.cohccg.com to build their online hero as a playable card over 25,000 times in just the first month it’s been active which means the game is clearly a hit with players of the online game. Between the CCG and the success of the recent City of Villains™ release, it’s a great time to be a City of Heroes fan.”

“The majority of designers at Cryptic Studios are huge CCG players so you can imagine our excitement at working with the team at AEG on this project,” said Jack Emmert, creative director at Cryptic Studios. “We were thrilled to work side-by-side with the creators of the ‘Legend of the Five Rings’ and ‘Doomtown’ CCGs to fashion a title that truly reflects the best elements and mechanics from our MMORPG into the media that they have mastered.”