XBLA: Xbox Indies - Radiangames: Inferno (Radiangames)
Radiangames have released their third quality shooter for the Xbox Live Indie Games service -- Inferno, an amazing looking dual-stick RPG.shooter.
The game lets you explore 30 levels while you collect gold, upgrade your ship, and destroy everything in your path. Reminds me a bit of Gauntlet mixed in with Geometry Wars. It's got 4 player cooperative play too!
XBLA: Trailer: Dance! It's Your Stage (DTP Young Entertainment)
So we spoke ofDance! It's Your Stage a few months back, but now we have a date: next week for 800 Microsoft Points. But what is it?
A new trailer has popped up for the DS and Wii retail versions, but it also includes some additional footage of the Xbox Live Arcade version. It's a dance mat game, but it can also be used with your Xbox 360 controller. The Wii version contains 20 dance routines on eight stages.
Not something for me, but you could probably get your 800MSP out of it. Certainly better than Beat'n Groovy at least.
XBLA: Atari To Publish The Undergarden For Xbox Live Arcade
The German USK rating board has revealed another one of Atari's upcoming entries into the digital distribution of new titles -- Vitamin G Studios' Undergarden will be published by Atari and released on the Xbox 360, likely Xbox Live Arcade.
The only footage available is the piece above -- which is from way back in November 2009, so while it still looks pretty good, there's a chance it's gone through some overhauls since. The game appears to be a mixture of Flower on PSN, the PC title Aquaria and the style of PixelJunk Eden-- you float around and solve puzzles while bringing the world back to colorful life.
No official word just yet, but with the rating now available we should expect a reveal in the near future. Atari's now got Blade Kitten, Haunted House and now The Undergarden under its belt -- wonder what's next?
XBLA: King Of Fighters: Sky Stage Out September 15th
Famitsu has reported that the bizarre SNK Shoot-Em-Up King Of Fighters: Sky Stage has finally got a date -- September 15th.
The game follows classic KOF fighters like Mai Shiranui and Terry Bogard as they shoot -- and fight -- in the skies to stop the revive of Orochi, the demon boss from King Of Fighters '97. Why they're flying is anybody's guess, but it gives SNK a good excuse to make a sweet shmup.
The game will include both online and offline cooperative play, and will be available for just 800MSP, or $10.
A Kingdom Of Keflings was a surprise hit on the Xbox Live Arcade, but it did have its problems -- it was quite limited, and chugged along at a pretty low framerate.
Looks like most of that has been dealt with in A World Of Keflings -- Keflings following you around holding your objects, canons to explode them out of, and a much wider variety of environments to deal with -- just what the original game needed.
The game is set to come this Winter, meanwhile -- check out the trailer.
XBLA: Xbox Indies - Treasure Treasure: Fortress Forage: Extra Edition (Ishisoft)
One of the earliest winner titles in the Xbox live Indie Games scene was Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp by Ishisoft. Now more than a year since and a sequel under his belt, Craig Forrester has now brought one of his original Indie projects Treasure Treasure: Fortress Forage over to the Xbox Live Indie Games scene with large improvements and some quality presentation.
The game follows two players as they forage for treasure. Simple enough -- but each player must be controlled separately, either by a the same person switching around, or as a second player. The game supports split screen modes as well, which will join up Toejam and Earl style when they're close.
The Gameboy dot-matrix graphic design really stands out, and much like Arkedo Pixel! looks great even at high definition. It's available right now for just 80MSP.
XBLA: Game Feast Promotion Announced With Four Main Courses
I usually don't go for the pun, but this was practically begging for it.
Microsoft have revealed a new promotion brewing this October with Game Feast. Much like the Summer Of Arcade, it will feature a variety of titles that Microsoft believe to be the pinnacle of their genres, and get a bunch of promotion.
Those games are Hydrophobia (September 29, 1200MSP), Comic Jumper (October 6th, 1200MSP), Pinball FX 2 (October 13th, separate tables) and Super Meat Boy (October 20. TBD Price).
There are an awful lot of new Xbox Live Arcade titles coming this year that look pretty spectacular -- but not everyone could get in, leaving a lot of big games (which likely cost a lot of money) out in the cold. I hope that the Game Feast continues each year, and hopefully there's new promotions for every season as well.
XBLA: Treasure's Bangai-O Goes HD With Missile Fury
Treasure has done quite well on the digital front with their port of Ikaruga to the Xbox Live Arcade back in 2008 -- now they've got plans to bring back another one of their quirky, brainbleed-inducing franchises with Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury.
In essence this is similar to their 2008 DS title Bangai-O Spirits -- a collection of puzzle levels in which you use hundred upon hundreds of rockets that spew across the screen, in which the HD version looks like it takes full advantage of.
This new version will feature over 100 levels, a full level editor and more. Check out the preview for it over at IGN.
So I'm probably going to reiterate myself a little later on today, but Super Meat Boy has been revealed to be coming out on Xbox Live Arcade on October 20th, in a part of a new promotion called Game Feast.
What's Game Feast? That'll likely be revealed a little later today, but it appears to be a brand new Summer Of Arcade-style promotion for the month of October. Super Meat Boy and Pinball FX 2 are both a part of it.
It appears that due to the fact that everyone attempted to get into the Summer of Arcade this year, it means there's a ton of quality content on the horizon, and it would be a damn shame if they weren't able to sell a stupid amount of copies. We should hear from the rest of the lineup later in the week.
XBLA: Pinball FX 2 Revealed, Free For Owners Of The Original
When Q-Games did an update to PixelJunk Racers to make it go for its 2nd Lap, it was a pretty bizarre way to release a title. A free update to those who purchased the original, or a new title to buy for new customers? Crazy stuff. Not to be one-upped, it appears Microsoft and Zen Studios have joined forces to bring new life into Pinball FX.
On October 13th you'll be able to download Pinball FX 2 -- for free. All it will be is a trial, but you'll also be able to import your Pinball FX the 1st tables for free. All the old tables will have new achievements and be completely revamped, which considering the original came out in 2007 is probably necessary by now.
Alongside this upgrade, there will be four new tables available for purchase, and each table will be able to be tested in the trial. New players can test everything out as well, and download each table separately.
It's such a bizarre thing to do -- but it's exactly what a pinball game should be. Pinball FX 2 has now set itself up to be, figuratively, the Game Room for pinball. I don't expect to see The Addams Family table to pop up any time soon, but this is at least how a downloadable pinball game should work.
So we're in a bit of a weird week this week -- Dead Rising 2: Case 0 is the new game this week, but for whatever reason they've released it in Tuesday instead of Wednesady. That means you can grab it right now for just 400MSP, or check out the demo.
Tomorrow we should see the regular updated to Game Room, as well as any DLC that might pop up.
As sister site Gamasutra reaches the milestone of one million unique monthly readers and nearly 450,000 registered users, the leading video game art and business site is announcing notable new contributors including Simon Parkin, Chris Morris and Kyle Orland.
Cementing its position as the largest, most-trafficked website in the game development and business space, internal Omniture traffic numbers for July 2010 revealed over 3.3 million page views from more than 1 million unique readers for Gamasutra.com alone -- with hundreds of thousands of others reading related sites such as GameCareerGuide.com and IndieGames.com.
In addition, following the departure of editor at large Chris Remo to become Community Manager at Irrational Games (BioShock Infinite), the site has added multiple new contributors to bolster its cutting-edge coverage of all facets of the video game business.
Joining existing core staff -- including news director Leigh Alexander, senior news editor Kris Graft and features director Christian Nutt -- will be Simon Parkin as the site's European editor, providing UK-timed news and original reporting for the site.
XBLA: Xbox Indies - Fish Squid Time Machine (Farbs)
So the one-button Indie title Fishie Fishie was released on WiiWare and XBLIG a few months ago. It's alright, a bit odd, but it was an example of making a simple, one button game.
But what if that game was made by Jeff Minter? You'd get Fish Squid Time Machine.
Essentially an "Indie Kombat" remix between Fishie Fishie and Squid Yes, Not So Octopus, and the result is something that looks like it's from the mind who brought you Space Giraffe. It's weird, watch the video, and then download the trial. It's only 80MSP too.