XBLA Catch-Much: Farewell to XBLA

The most recent rumors were that it's not a free download. We'll see though.

Pacman was fun. Easy gamerscore points for those of ya who are into that stuff.

/*cough* 4575, myself

ok, 170 points after 2 hours of gameplay. Way easy. The challenging part being how to eat all ghosts four times in one level. Somebody please let me know if they can figure out how to do that one.

Even the wife wanted to play it. First Live Arcade game I could get her interested in.

Sinatar wrote:

Although it is nigh impossible to find these days, if you ever see an Xbox game called "Deathrow" give it a try, it's pretty much the spiritual successor to Speedball and runs great on 360 BC.

Picked this up on eBay for <$10 with shipping. I'll let you know how it goes, but thanks for the tip!

EDIT: By the way, just saw this over at EvilAvatar...evidently the makers of Deathrow are working on an XBLA game!

Southend working on XBLA game

August 23rd - Texas Hold 'Em
August 30th - Time Pilot
September 6th - Scramble

Also there will be some Cloning Clyde downloads coming to the Marketplace. Now where's Lumines Live and Contra..

*yawn* Seriously, where is Lumines Live?

Time Pilot should be good with the 'stick.

IMAGE(http://www.joystiq.com/media/2006/08/mad_cats_arcadestick_screen.jpg)

From Joystig:

Another safe assumption one can make is that the Arcade Stick will make a far more adequate (and authentic) tool for guiding our pellet-munching Pac-men through mazes and our amphibious allies across deadly divides. Then again, strapping a rabid badger to you lap and randomly shoving your fingers into its mouth is already a few steps up from playing XBLA games with the 360 controller's squeaky directional pad. The current retail listing has the Mad Catz stick releasing on the first day of October for an anti-retro, better-be-wireless $49.99. We've contacted Mad Catz for further details (and a larger picture!).

I couldnt find that stick on Gamestop.com, which is what that screenshot appears to come from, and there's a bit of a discrepency between the joystiq blurb and the screenshot ($50 vs $70)

But anyways, another ugly MadCatz controller, Im guessing it feels like a cheap POS like every other MadCatz controller and odds are, it will break just trying to play PacMan.

Pass

Hmm I've never had MadCatz stuff break. Actually none of my controllers ever broke, except while playing Soul Blade for the PSX or Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast. About 2 PSX controllers and 1 Dreamcast controller met "inoperable" by being thrown out a window or smashed on a concrete floor.

My ex-company had several madcatz xbox controllers. Many featured things like rubber grips and pointless palm-spikes and their size put even The Duke to shame. If there's rubber on a madcatz controller, its coming off within a week of normal use, so you'll have bare plastic with spiky parts that were supposed to keep the rubber on. Certain directions on analog sticks may not function properly and we even had one game that would crash if you had a madcatz controller plugged in at startup.

Time Pilot is up next. Damn you XBLA.

I just want Castle Crashers.

Castle Crashers hopefully will be FTW. It looks promising, but I would hate to fire it up and be offered the mind numbing simplicity of Alien Hominid.

Asz wrote:

It looks promising, but I would hate to fire it up and be offered the mind numbing simplicity of Alien Hominid.

It's an old-school style beat-em up in line with the old Final Fight and Streets of Rage game. How can it be anything but extremely simple? The big part of it for me is playing co-op with three other people.

That was always the best part of the beat-em up games.

Thin_J wrote:
Asz wrote:

It looks promising, but I would hate to fire it up and be offered the mind numbing simplicity of Alien Hominid.

It's an old-school style beat-em up in line with the old Final Fight and Streets of Rage game. How can it be anything but extremely simple? The big part of it for me is playing co-op with three other people.

That was always the best part of the beat-em up games.

Simple in a side scrolling fighter = lack of moves. It looks like it will be similar to Guardian Heroes on the Saturn which is a good thing.

This one actually looks and feels like they put some effort into it, like the Willams games- Robotron, Joust, to some extent Smash TV. Looks perfect on classic graphics with original sound; looks good with enhanced graphics, but enhanced sound is missing something. Worth 400 m$ though.

Just blasted, err, crawled through Scramble on MAME. This one may be a blech, but the graphics may be enhanced enough to forget how feh it has always looked. Can't figure it out.

You forgot a 'meh' you could have gotten the trifecta. Shame on you.

Meh, I always forget something.

Scramble delayed until next Wednesday.
Hopefully Lumines surfaces soon.

So what's next on the list..
Lumines Live? Contra? Super Contra? hmm..
*edit- Totemball?

I'm waiting for paperboy. Seriously.

Isn't Totemball going to be useless, unless you own the camera?

Also, Desram, I'm with you. I love Paperboy. That game was always so much fun.

Mills wrote:

Hmm I've never had MadCatz stuff break. Actually none of my controllers ever broke, except while playing Soul Blade for the PSX or Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast. About 2 PSX controllers and 1 Dreamcast controller met "inoperable" by being thrown out a window or smashed on a concrete floor.

The only games I can confirm killed joysticks for me were. Track and Field on the Atari 2600 killed two alone.(yeah I'm getting old) A combination of Strike Commander and Tie Fighter on the PC killed one too. Its been a long time since I've broken one.. but i usually stick with the 1st party ones.

The only consistant breaks for controllers I know of are the Atart 5200 pins. Garbage things.
IMAGE(http://www.atariage.com/5200/images/misc/5200_Controller_intro.jpg)

Mills wrote:

The only consistant breaks for controllers I know of are the Atart 5200 pins. Garbage things.
IMAGE(http://www.atariage.com/5200/images/misc/5200_Controller_intro.jpg)

I will have to agree with that. I have 4 of those things, and I doubt that any 1 of them will work consistently.

XBLA Japan news, from Joystiq:

* Contra !!
* Gyruss (previously unannounced) !!
* Dig Dug
* Track & Field with non-jumpy online play??
* New Rally-X (previously unannounced)
* Rush'n Attack (previously unannounced)
* Ms. Pac-Man !!
* Yie Ar Kung Fu: a "Japan-exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game" and "one of the very first fighting games" will be released in 2007..

Bring out the old, serve it as new-old. Excellent!

Mills wrote:

* Track & Field with non-jumpy online play??

Potential controller killer identified. Great way to bump up sales of accessories over time!

Mills wrote:

XBLA Japan news, from Joystiq:

* Contra !!
* Rush'n Attack (previously unannounced)

These two I won't be able to resist, even if Rush'n Attack was the first game that made me want to kill myself. Hopefully they bring the true arcade version to XBL, and not the console based version. The arcade version was so much better looking, at the time of course.