XBLA Catch-Much: Farewell to XBLA

Crazy Taxi... Oh man, the arcade memories. I would love to have a go at that again.

That said, I also thought I'd love After Burner Climax. It's certainly very pretty, but wafer-thin and not in a good way, I'm afraid. It should be in a cabinet.

I thought Q3A was announced a long time ago?

As much as I love and spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Q3A, I don't see it working well on the 360 and have no desire to play it there.

How would you pull off strafe jumping, circle jumping, or even simple stuff like snap RJs? Those physics quirks are what made the Quake games IMO.

Quake Live does me good when I need my Quake fix.

It might've been? I seem to recall rumblings, but can't remember an official announcement.

You can strafe with thumbsticks. Move the left thumbstick to the left or to the right, it's that simple. Circle-strafing isn't an issue either.

Edit: Sorry, must've misread your post. As far as strafe-jumping and circle-jumping are concerned, I'll bet that -- as with any set of game mechanics -- similar advantages will be uncovered and added to the skilled play repertoire for 360ers. Closing one door usually opens a few more.

RJs are another story, because either you'll have to get crazy-good with really high sensitivity on your look thumbstick, or RJs will require a bit more forethought and planning to execute.

Clemenstation wrote:

You guys hear about those rumoured games coming to Live?

Crazy Taxi, Quake 3 Arena, uh... and another one? Sonic Whothef*ckcares. Clearly I am not a Sonic fan, but I could enjoy Crazy Taxi. It was probably the most played game back when I had a Dreamcast.

And I am morbidly curious to see how well Q3A would work with thumbsticks.

I would definitely get Crazy Taxi. Played the hell out of it on Dreamcast as well.

Tecmo Bowl this week for 800 pts. Can I still get Bo Jackson to run for 90 yard touchdowns?

Spoiler:

Only if you zigzag.

Downloaded Final Fight Double Impact last night and played through it (local co-op) along with Magic Sword.

The game is awesome and the arcade cabinet view is worth $10, no doubt about it. We dropped the lights and turned up the volume and it was like being at the awesomest, cleanest, best-smelling arcade ever. I highly recommend the download.

Magic Sword was a lot of fun, too. At about level 35 (of 50) the repetition settled in but the final few levels went quickly. It's definitely more of a coin chomper than Final Fight but it's a fun game and a worthy pack-in.

Again: Final Fight is an awesome download. Previous ports of the game really don't do it justice.

One note: setting up an actual local co-op game is a little confusing at first and definitely more cumbersome than it should have been, imo. (It's possible I missed something last night.)

The Dishwasher is 400 points this week, but nobody seems to care over in the deals thread.

It's Castle Crashers meets Ninja Gaiden: hyper-violence + huge combos + crazy dodging skillz.

Clemenstation wrote:

The Dishwasher is 400 points this week, but nobody seems to care over in the deals thread.

Is it on Steam, Impulse, or Direct2Drive? No? Then they probably won't care about it in the deals thread.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Clemenstation wrote:

The Dishwasher is 400 points this week, but nobody seems to care over in the deals thread.

Is it on Steam, Impulse, or Direct2Drive? No? Then they probably won't care about it in the deals thread. ;)

I have come to understand this. If it's not a gigantic pack of 60 PC games from the 1990s at 80% off, nobody wants to know about it!

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Clemenstation wrote:

The Dishwasher is 400 points this week, but nobody seems to care over in the deals thread.

Is it on Steam, Impulse, or Direct2Drive? No? Then they probably won't care about it in the deals thread. ;)

Did he have hands? Did he have a face? Then it wasn't us!

anyone playing Tecmo Bowl? How is it?

Lothar wrote:

anyone playing Tecmo Bowl? How is it?

I played the demo. They only give you one 5 minute quarter, but it seemed pretty fun. I had the original back in the day, and remember playing the hell out of it. The graphics are updated nicely, but I'd need more time with it to decide if I want to get it or not.

The Quake III rumors have been around since 2008, when it was supposed to release on XBLA during the summer.

After Burner Climax, if you like the old arcade version, I recommend this one. The speed is awesome, although there is some stuttering. I've progressed more than I ever did in the arcade versions, this is much more smooth and forgiving. Plus dropping a squadron of what look like Superfortress jets with some lock-on action is insane! It has me jonesing for the cancelled Planet Harriers (Dreamcast) to finally come to a home console, and Hydro Thunder Hurricane coming this summer.

Tecmo Bowl is fantastic. I never played the SNES version but was addicted to the NES versions back in the day. This is exactly the same; you can even toggle between the original and new graphics on the fly like with the Monkey Island remakes. Pretty awesome stuff. Only difference is that the teams are not licensed so it's all just city names with made up logos and players. You can edit the player and team names but without the ability to exchange those files I don't see much good in it. Maybe it'll be worth it on the PS3 version if you can swap game saves with someone.

It is awesome though. If you enjoyed Tecmo Super Bowl back in the day you'll love this. Has two player offline preseason and season options too which is awesome. Really love the simplicity of classic sports games.

Lothar wrote:

anyone playing Tecmo Bowl? How is it?

I managed to get away from work for an hour or two last night to play it and I've got mixed feelings.

On one hand, the single player game is a spot-on cover of Tecmo Super Bowl, complete with the ability to switch between the updated hi-res graphics and the old-school sprite art in real-time, a la R-Type: Dimensions. There's no NFL license, but all of the rosters from the 1993 SNES game are intact and editable, if you want to go through and update the player names to reflect their real NFL counterparts. If you liked Tecmo Super Bowl, you're not going to have any problems with the offline game modes.

On the other hand, online multiplayer is unstable and - at the moment - kind of pointless, since there's no loss penalty for quitting out of a game early. Rather than countering latency through dead reckoning or any other kind of prediction/correction, it appears that the game saddles both players by buffering through a broadcasted game state and, as a result, the lag affects everything, even the responsiveness of the controls. For an arcade football game that thrives on sharp, accessible controls, this essentially murders the online game.

(Note: there is supposedly a patch coming out to address the loss penalty on early quitters; one hopes that maybe they'll find a way to tweak the online performance as well.)

Also, I feel like Tecmo completely missed an opportunity to include some subtle tweaks, many of which actually made it into later revisions of the series. The single glaring issue that still stands for TSB, in my opinion, is the severe lack of options on defense: you try to guess the opponent's playcall, you select and control one (and only one) player on defense, and that's it. TSBIII: Final Edition helped alleviate this by allowing you to switch up formations (e.g. nickel and dime packages) in addition to trying to call the opponent's play, but that's nowhere to be found in this remake. Tecmo also left the cursor-based receiver selection on pass plays untouched, which will completely wreck your passing game if you're playing multiplayer against a team with a speedy safety who can simply shadow your cursor around the field and knock down incoming passes.

Ultimately, it's an okay investment for fans of the original game at 800 spacebucks and it's certainly a far sight better than Madden NFL Arcade, but it seems like Tecmo is a bit too willing to rest on their laurels with the Tecmo Bowl franchise.

This week we've got RayStorm HD and Zeno Clash with the kind of pricey price point of 1200 pts per title. That being said, bring on RayStorm!

Lazy Week time! Direct from Major Nelson via cut/paste:

Rocket Knight (1200 points) and Things on Wheels (800 points) are scheduled to be available this Wednesday 12 May on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

.. and XBox.com:

Rocket Knight

Sparkster makes his triumphant arrival on next-gen consoles with Rocket Knight, the newest entry in the beloved 2-D side-scrolling rocket action series. Our favorite opossum hero returns home after 15 years to find the kingdom of Zephyrus in shambles. Use your wits and Sparkster's trusty rocket pack to dodge and defeat a menacing wolf army threatening the lives of the people.

* Sparkster returns: Featuring gorgeous next-gen graphics and dazzling new environments, blast possuming has never looked as good as this before!
* New levels and challenges: Play through four exciting new worlds, featuring expansive platform stages and thrilling flight stages.
* Classic rocket action gameplay: Launch and bounce Sparkster through obstacles and enemies that get in his way. Ricochet off walls, or create a Burst Vortex to repel enemy bombs right back at them. Use Burst Assist and hover in place to maneuver in mid-air, and then shoot Burst Projectiles from Sparkster's sword to attack distant foes. Rocket Drill through weak walls and create new passageways, and hang from and slide down rails with your prehensile tail.
* Who's the best? Show off your high scores and fastest times with leaderboards on Xbox LIVE.

Over a year in the waiting:

Things on Wheels™
(ToW) is a fun and fast remote-controlled car racing game playable in single or multiplayer (with up to four players)! Drive miniature racers with various features–the agile Vintages, the powerful Muscles or the fast Sports cars–and compete in dozens of crazy races. The tracks are completely insane, loaded with shortcuts, ramps, loops and other surprises. Count on a lot of items to pick up to spice up the races even more and upset the final rankings!

* Multiple game modes: Different game modes of Things on Wheels assure you hours and hours of fun, alone or with friends! In solo mode, win the Championship by completing dozens of races through four chapters, each one crazier than the others, or perfect your skills by driving against the A.I. in Arcade mode!
* Multiplayer: Challenge a friend in split-screen, or play up to four players on Xbox LIVE in single race or in team mode!
* Achievements and leaderboards: Unlock Achievements and reach first place on the online leaderboards!

Anyone try Zeno Clash? I downloaded the demo but won't be playing until later on this evening.

I haven't tried Zeno Clash, but I'm really digging Raystorm and After Burner Climax.

Magic: The Gathering on XBLA released the second expansion deck DLC yesterday for 400 points (and a free multiplayer expansion update too, so you can play against expansion decks without purchasing the DLC,) if you've got MTG on XBLA already you owe it to yourself to get it, the new decks are way different than what was previously there, the new challenges are fun but not impossible, and the actual base game interface and some other stuff were streamlined and improved a great deal. Also, you get 3 more card unlocks for every deck you already had so it can improve your older decks even if you don't care about the new ones with Landfall abilities and stuff in them.

Yesterday morning the expansion was crashing people's systems but it's already been fixed.

They also added 80 point purchases for each individual deck in MTG: DotP and all expansions, so that you can drop 1 dollar and unlock ALL the cards in a chosen deck without having to get 18-24 wins first. Not a bad time/money trade, imho! You must have the expansion which the deck came with if you buy an expansion deck's unlock though - the 80 point purchase is only for unlock cards, and you can't buy 1 just to download a deck to avoid purchasing the DLC expansion pack. It's not like it's prohibitively expensive, anyway.

Also, for people who liked Outpost Kaloki, Kingdom for Keflings, [/b]Cloning Clyde[/b] and the other NinjaBee games, there's so new Ninjabee stuff up on the market. Like this sweet avatar costume!

IMAGE(http://imgur.com/b4YhT.png)

Rocket Knight is a great way to party like it's 1992. 3D graphics aside, it's more-or-less a 16bit platformer in design and execution. It's fun enough, but I don't know that I'll shell out for the full version.

Metal Slug XX(1200) and Aqua(800) this week. 1200 seems a steep price for Metal Slug (insert character).

The remake of Prince of Persia is half price this week (400 pts). Totally worth it.

I used to play this game relentlessly... when I was a kid I got it for my birthday, and it was the only PC game I had for at least a year.

Also for Defense Grid fans on the 360 there are 4 micro-map packs incoming, each containing two maps and a new achievement. 80 spacebucks per pack.

RASPBERRIES!

Snoopy Flying Ace this week, check the thread for people fence sitting and buying! Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure heat up the rumor mill again, maybe being prepped for Summer Games in August. Could be a Dreamcast-centric Games of Summer.

Contra Hard Corp: Uprising is coming to XBLA/PSN in wonderful 2D form. The original Genesis Hard Corp was fast and awesome, but with terrible voices. If this stays in the same mode as Hard Corp, it should be pretty damned good.

Weird question for clemenstation and other Canadian GWJers: have you tried to buy DOOM (the original) or Duke Nukem 3D? I have tried both (most notably last time DN3D was on sale), and get a message that the item is not available in my area. I've googled around to no avail, and even asked George Broussard on Twitter (he did reply, but had no idea wtf it was happening).

Strangely enough, last night I tried to purchase DOOM 2 on a whim, and it went through without a hitch. Tried to go back and get the others, and still no go. I've checked the parental settings and everything else I can think of. Thoughts?

Blind_Evil wrote:

If you're into arcadey dogfighting (Ha!) I can't reccomend Snoopy strongly enough. Very reminiscent of Crimson Skies, with a SP campaign, online co-op missions, and a very fleshed out competitive multiplayer scene. It's a huge value at $10

I saw that it had 2 player split-screen. Can you play the campaign in co-op?

MaxShrek wrote:

Snoopy Flying Ace this week, check the thread for people fence sitting and buying! Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure heat up the rumor mill again, maybe being prepped for Summer Games in August. Could be a Dreamcast-centric Games of Summer.

If you're into arcadey dogfighting (Ha!) I can't recommend Snoopy strongly enough. Very reminiscent of Crimson Skies, with a SP campaign, online co-op missions, and a very fleshed out competitive multiplayer scene. It's a huge value at $10