Half way through last year Blitz Arcade revealed plans to release 5 games to PC and downloadable services. While none of them have yet hit the Xbox Live Arcade one of the titles, CodaChain, was shown a couple of months ago at the Animex Festival in Middlesbrough, UK.

Spotted by the Superannuation tumbler blog, a great source for leaked projects, an off-camera video was captured of the event and put onto YouTube.

CodaChain was originally one of the winners in student game competition Dare To Be Digital in 2005, and was picked up by Blitz late last year. The game has an odd premise - a 3rd-person puzzle game where you must create a chain of people, each person giving new a new ability to overcome obstacles, as well as having a musical element where each character adds a new instrument to the background.

Of the 5 titles announced last year, only Buccaneers has been released, and only for the PC. CodaChain still appears to be working on an Xbox 360, so its safe to say it's still coming. Since this announcement, Blitz have also separately revealed and released PowerUp Forever, and announced Invincible Tiger.

PomPom Games have been known for their shooters - both Mutant Storm games on Xbox Live Arcade and the recently released Astro Tripper on PSN have done quite well for them. Now they're working on a new top-down title, but with a little less shooting.

PomPom have revealed the first screenshots of Gemini Rings, an upcoming game for the PlayStation Network. Little is currently known about the game, outside of the fact that despite its appearances it is not a shoot-em-up. Instead you control a little missile like thing, and you blow things up.

From the looks of it it may have more in common with a game like Every Extend Extra and Geometry Wars 2's Pacifist mode more than your standard shooter. We should be seeing some more in the next few months, so keep a look out. Continue reading for some more screenshots.

Source: PomPom Games - A little peek...

This week on the XNA Roundup Podcast, Nick has a shot of several bite sized reviews in a single episode. This episode covers the recently released NextWar, Dromedary, The Exterminator (sic), Halfbrick Blast Off, BeatBlox, SuperCow, and Little Racers.

If you haven't given the trial a download yet, check out this episode. You can also download each episode via the iTunes music store.

To download the trial for NextWar, click here for the web marketplace page.

To download the trial for Dromedary, click here for the web marketplace page.

To download the trial for The Exterminator, click here for the web marketplace page.

To download the trial for Halfbrick: Blast Off, click here for the web marketplace page.

To download the trial for Beat Blox, click here for the web marketplace page.

To download the trial for SuperCow, click here for the web marketplace page.

To download the trial for Little Racers, click here for the web marketplace page.

"Experience the mayhem and action of OutRun Online Arcade as you test your time, speed, and handling ability, bringing your next-gen skills online with this coin-op classic.

"Feel the kick as you put your foot to the floor in one of 10 high-performance Ferraris racing your way across the U.S. with an open top and a girl by your side. Winding roads, beautiful beaches and big city lights—it's mile after mile of unrelenting acceleration through 15 action-packed courses, all visually enhanced in stunning high definition. Jump behind the wheel for the ultimate arcade racing experience and push yourself on the road as you race up to six others with online multiplayer. OutRun Online Arcade … it's a beautiful journey!

It will be released on XBLA this Wednesday for 800MSP.

Click here for the official Xbox.com splash page.

Party Fun Pirate

Wii Points: 500 Wii Points
Game Type: Otherr
Control Type: Wii Remote
Players: 1-4
Publisher: Tomy

"Based on the popular Pop-Up Pirate toy, players take turns thrusting swords into a barrel that holds your captain captive, trying to see who can insert the most swords into the barrel. Thrust a sword into the wrong hole and you'll send your captain flying, which means it's game over for you! Unique Wii features add to the excitement, making for a fun-filled party game. Try swapping out the captain and putting your custom Mii™ character in the barrel for some real laughs!"

Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure

Wii Points: 800
Game Type: Action
Players: 1
Publisher: Activision

"Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure is a side-scrolling action game in which you play adventurer Pitfall Harry Jr. in search of his father, Pitfall Harry. Pitfall Harry has been taken captive by the dreaded warrior spirit Zakelua: Lord of Evil. Armed with only a trusty sling and his father's journal, young Harry Jr. must now venture into the unknown to rescue him...before it's too late! Bungee jump and boomerang your way to safety as you battle through treacherous Mayan jungles, waterfalls, and deserted mines. With 13 levels of fast, gripping action, you will need to be attentive and quick—or prepare to die..."

Just as we were speaking of the original 5 titles from Blitz Arcade, it appears that one has finally got a publisher, and will be making its way to Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network courtesy of publisher Atlus.

Droplitz takes the classic game of "guessing which pipe water comes out of", generally used as a fail safe mini-game in titles like Super Mario Land 2, and creates a puzzle game around it. The game revolves around the player trying to make water droplets go from their starting point and finish in the score buckets at the bottom - but instead of just guessing where it will lead to, players must turn dials and make them go in the right direction.

The game will include four game modes - Classic, Zendurance, Power Up, and Infection, where you must deal with different kinds of dials or clear levels using bombs on the board.

The game is heading to XBLA, PSN as well as PC and iPhone by the end of the year.

Source: Gaming-Age - Droplitz Preview

While most of the new digital Konami titles are being used to create new IP, one has raised some eyebrows - a return of a classic franchise is quite normal for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, but a strategy RPG?

Vandal Hearts was a game released back in 1997 for the original PlayStation, and had spawned a sequel in 1999. Since then the series has been left untouched, but Konami plan to resurrect it with Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment.

Two screenshots have been revealed. It's certainly a cut up graphically from its predecessor, but it appears a little more westernized. It might be for the best, as the original game was not exactly pretty.

With both this title and Military Madness coming to both platforms soon it looks like gamers will be set for their turn based strategy games. The game is set for release on Xbox Live Arcade in August and the PlayStation Network in September

The long awaited Death Bringer from Infinite Interactive has found itself a new publisher and a new name. Now you'll be battling in horizontal Columns gameplay with Puzzle Chronicles.

Puzzle Chronicles, based in the same world as Puzzle Quest brings a real-time puzzle battle system to the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, DS and PSP. Unlike Puzzle Quest which had you play on a rectangular board, you do battle with enemies on what plays like a horizontal mix of Columns and Puzzle Fighter.

You battle enemies by connecting 3 gems together on your side of the board. Each piece will fall from the left side of the screen and land in the middle. The pieces are three gems in size, with the gems on the top and bottom able to rotate around the one in the middle. Using the various colored gems, skull blocks and other blocks, you must attack the enemy until his stack reaches the top. To help with this you can cause the playing field for him to get smaller, while yours gets larger.

It's an interesting premise, I'll give it that. My main worry is that it'll be difficult to comprehend the different direction of the blocks in comparison to every other puzzle game. Who knows - it might be something really easy to deal with.

Check out the preview of the title over at Destructoid, complete with tons of screenshots of the game in action.

Were you a kid who tortured ants as a child? Well now you can relive those enemies in this new action title Ant Nation from Konami for WiiWare.

While you are technically torturing Ants in this game, you're also training them. Damaging the Ants to near death then nursing them back to help will cause them to get stronger. Getting them stronger allows them to do battle with the likes of Ladybugs and Red Ants, and help find items underground to expand your arsenal

It's all a little weird, so it's best to check out the above video to really get a good understanding on what the game is about. With 96 missions in the Wii version the game could last quite a while - hopefully they can change things up throughout the game to keep things interesting.

Source: GameSpot - Ant Nation Hands-On

Creat Studios, via the PlayStation Blog, have revealed their plans for downloadable content for all three of their current PlayStation Network releases - Magic Ball, Cuboid and Mahjong Tales.

Magic Ball will be receiving 25 brand new levels to play through the Magic Ball Booster Pack , which will also include brand new Trophies to earn.

The Cuboid Booster Pack will feature 33 new puzzles as well as a level editor. The level editor allows you to create all sorts of new puzzles, and share them with other players, even if they don't own the expansion.

Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom Booster Pack will contain 25 new layouts for infinite mode, as well as its own level editor for multiplayer matches, which can be shared instantly once you challenge someone else - once they've played on the table it's on their system to play once more.

Each of the three games will also have free patches released to allow these new features to work for those who don't download the expansions. Mahjong Tales will also feature a newly added mouse support option.

The Magic Ball expansion is set for release this Thursday, with the others to follow shortly. No price was announced.

Source: PlayStation Blog - Booster Packs Coming for Magic Ball, Cuboid and Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom

With the March NPD numbers coming up and the end of the week, at GamerBytes I thought it would be a good idea to look back at the last month of sales for downloadable spaces -- as best as we can with the data we can get.

For Xbox Live Arcade sales, we've gathered the Major Nelson Top 10 lists for weeks that the NPD covers for March. Alongside that, we've been able to gather some Leaderboard statistics which give us a fairly decent idea on how popular a game might be, and then finish it off with a bit of armchair analysis and hard opinion.

We'll take a look at the 10 different releases for the month, and see how well they did. March was perhaps the most experimental Xbox Live month we've ever had, with 6 of the 10 games released being quite different to your standard release. Did they fail or succeed? Continue reading to find out...

One of the most well remembered Arcade games of the 80's was Super Off Road - a racing game where the camera showed a top down perspective, allowing 4 players to battle it out on the same cabinet. Now Konami plans to polish off those memories and boost the player count with Driift for WiiWare.

Driift is a top down racer which allows up to 8 players to battle it out for supremacy through the use of Wii Remote and Nunchuck being used separately. The game contains 12 tracks over cityscape, hills, snow and desert oasis landscapes.

The game contains your standard championships, but also includes 7 additional play types - a Team Race mode where each team accrues points, VIP mode where a team must protect another car from damage from the opposite team, Contamination mode where one player must contaminate the rest of the players, 'Cold Potato' where you hold onto an object for as long as possible, and 'Meteorite' where you must avoid the added obstruction of falling rocks.

The game is coming out of Konami's European development studio, usually set on creating mobile phone games in Konami's name. It's good to see other small developers, even if they ar owned by larger companies, get the chance to work on console development once in a while.

With Konami's ever increasing lineup, along with their subsidiary Hudson pushing out new games like there is no tomorrow, Konami's got WiiWare pretty well wrapped up.

Click here for more screenshots of Konami's Drift.

Outrun Online Arcade

Developer: SUMO Digital
Publisher: SEGA
Genre: Racing Games
Price: 800MSP

Click here for the official Xbox.com splash page

Click here to download the trial game through the web marketplace

[Update: It has been confirmed by CVG that Banjo-Tooie will be hitting on April 29th]

Banjo-Tooie is still set for an April release, meaning if all goes according to plan it'll be out in just two weeks. To celebrate the past Easter Rare and Microsoft released this video onto the Xbox Live Marketplace, showing off just what was meant to happen with the original Stop & Swop idea that they planned to have between the two Banjo titles.

Stop & Swop was meant to allow players to open up new areas in the original game if you quickly swapped the Banjo-Tooie cartridge out and plugged the original back in. You would get the secret eggs in those areas and then do the same thing back with Tooie, which would then unlock new stuff in the second game. Due to Nintendo 64 hardware problems, this never came to be.

Rare and 4J Studios completely redid the original secrets in Banjo-Kazooie which were unlocked through a Banjo Nuts & Bolts save file. Collecting the eggs would then unlock new car parts in N&B.

But that's not all - the original idea has been reinserted into Banjo-Tooie, so collecting those extra eggs will unlock new moves that Banjo and Kazooie can perform. The first one shown in this video, which is somewhat useless, but pretty damn funny.

Zen Studios, the company behind the very popular Pinball FX for Xbox Live Arcade, have revealed the first footage of their new game for the PlayStation Network - Zen Pinball.

Unlike a few of the games coming to the PlayStation Network recently, this is not a porting effort of Pinball FX or some of their iPhone pinball tables - it is an entirely new game with brand new boards.

The game will also support 4 player multiplayer modes, video chat and new downloadable tables. Zen Pinball will be hitting in Spring 2009.

With the March NPD U.S. game sales numbers coming out at the end of the week, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the last month of sales for downloadable spaces -- as best as we can, with the data we can get.

For the PlayStation Network, we delve into the Top 10 PSN games of the month, brought to use courtesy of the Pulse video show released online, and through the PlayStation Store -- which releases a new list every month.

We also have a deeper look at Keita Takahashi's quirky Noby Noby Boy, and the web statistics based on the amount of people reporting to the GIRL in the sky, and then finish it off with a bit of armchair analysis and hard opinion.

In March, the North American PlayStation Store received 7 new titles - Watchmen: The End Is Nigh, Astro Tripper, Buzz Junior: Jungle Party, Red Baron Arcade, Wheel Of Fortune, Worms and Burn Zombie Burn. But as you can see, only two made it into the month's Top 10. So what happened to the rest of them?

OutRun Online Arcade
OutRun Online Arcade (Full Game)

Category: Racing
Publisher: Sega Europe
Players: 1-6
Price: €9.99 / £7.99 / $15.95AUD

"Experience the mayhem and action of OutRun as you test your time, speed and handling ability with this coin-op classic. Feel the kick as you put your foot to the floor in one of ten high performance Ferraris racing your way across the US. Winding roads, beautiful beaches and big city lights: it’s mile after mile of unrelenting acceleration as you discover 15 action-packed courses all visually enhanced in stunning High Definition.

"Jump behind the wheel for the ultimate arcade racing experience and push yourself on the road as you race up to six others with online multiplayer. OutRun Online Arcade, it’s a beautiful journey."

PixelJunk Eden
PixelJunk Eden: Encore Expansion (Patch Also Available For Regular Players)

Price: €2.99 / £2.39 / $4.95AUD

Dylan Cuthbert, President Q-Games Ltd: "First things first, what have we added? Well, basically we have added five whole new stages, each one choc-a-bloc full of ideas and gimmicks. We also designed five brand new backgrounds for them (each background for a garden is programmed uniquely just for that garden’s style - just in case you hadn’t noticed that in the original), and Baiyon went away and created five brilliant new tracks of music to match it all up."

Magic Ball
Magic Ball Booster Pack (Patch Also Now Available)

Price: €2.99 / £2.39 / $4.95AUD

"Magic Ball, a fresh spin on classic brick-breaking gameplay in which players bust apart 3D environments, offers gamers new action with the release of the Magic Ball Booster Pack, featuring a whole new world to destroy. Players will be able to smash their way through 25 all-new magical, witch-themed levels, earning a series of new trophies along the way. Custom music support will also be made available via a free patch download."

With the March NPD U.S. game sales numbers just a few hours away, GamerBytes looks back at the last month of sales for downloadable spaces, with the data available to us and the public

Specifically, every week, Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb posts a Top 10 for the Xbox Live Community Games, which gives us somewhat an inside look at which games are selling better than others. It's no secret that the XBL Community Games are not selling as well as some developers hoped, but many of the games that appeared in the Top 10 list were not a part of the analysis we did.

Inside, we have a look at the new titles for the month, look at the comparison between the sales of ZP2K9 and its positions each week, and then finish it off with a bit of armchair analysis and hard opinion:

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Telltale Games, Blizzard and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

PixelJunk Eden
PixelJunk Eden: Encore Expansion (Patch Also Available For Regular Players)

Price: $5.99USD

"PixelJunk Eden Encore is an expansion pack to the popular organic platformer that sees you take control of a little ‘grimp’, swinging and jumping between tall alien plants, and collecting pollen to grow more life. Lush visuals, slick controls and amazing music make it an incredibly atmospheric and addictive experience. Download this add-on to expand the game with five stunning new levels, complete with unique new Trophies and music."

Magic Ball
Magic Ball Booster Pack (Patch Also Now Available)

Price: $2.99USD

"Magic Ball, a fresh spin on classic brick-breaking gameplay enabling players to bust apart 3D environments, offers gamers new action with the release of the Magic Ball Booster Pack, featuring a whole new world to destroy. Prepare to smash your way through 25 all new magical, witch-themed levels, earning a series of new Trophies along the way. If you think you’re up for the challenge, check out the Magic Ball Booster Pack today!"

Xbox360Achievements.com have revealed all 12 of the achievements list for classic 2D fighter Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, a game long rumored, but yet to be revealed by Capcom.

The list reveals achievements for online ranked matches, completing the game using certain characters, like a team of three street fighter characters, and performing a crazy combo of over 200 hits.

Capcom are set to announce two titles at their upcoming Captivate '09 on April 29th. We assume this will be one of them, and most likely will be there with a PSN version as well, going by Capcom's release streak.

Now to find some of those damn Fight Pads. They're absolutely impossible to find.

Source: Xbox3660Achievements.com - Marvel Vs. Capcom 2

With the latest update to the German USK Rating board, we can confirm that a new Bubble Bobble title dubbed Neo will be coming to the Xbox Live Arcade.

The game has also been confirmed by the Partnernet leaker Pure De Garbanzos as well as Ron Workman but nothing about the game has been revealed. Will it be a recreation of the original or one of its may sequels?

Source: USK Rating Board