Features

We go round 2 with The Walking Dead and bend time itself with a spot of spelunking. What do you mean Spelunky’s been available on PC free for three and a half years?! Just jesting.
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One can’t skim the internet without running into a forum thread about the potential release of Shenmue 3–the next installment in a saga that began on Sega’s Dreamcast in November of 2000. Fans of the series sip on every drip of information on its development, though nothing of the sort truly exists. Shenmue’s creator, Yu Suzuki, even left Sega last year though some reports suggest he still has a consultant role within the company. Despite these gloomy prospects, die hard fans are still hopeful that the third of the series will finally breach the coffin it had been placed in so long ago.

William Shakespeare once said: “Love me or hate me, both are in my favor…If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart…If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.”

Had William Shakespeare been around in the 21st Century, we believe he’d be referring to Shenmue. Never will you discover a title so adored by critics and gamers and abhorred by others in the same demographic. You play as Ryo Hazuki, an unassuming young man on a quest to avenge his father’s death. In order to achieve this, Ryo must emphatically harass the locals of a small Japanese town by asking questions like the infamous, “Are you guys sailors?” Ryo finds himself in a lot of trouble during his exploration of leads, but he can always stop by the arcade and play an emulated, in-game version of a few arcade hits. Read More

Board games are making a comeback. While everyone remembers the classics – Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue (and so many others) – the board game industry has expanded dramatically over the past decade or so, thanks in part to the success of Settlers of Catan. Many of the most popular board games of today have made the transition over to XBLA, including Catan, Carcasonne, and Ticket to Ride. Despite that, we think there are some others that would fit right in among their XBLA brethren. Read More

Filler maps. It’s a common problem when content tools are released to the public. Trials Evolution is no exception. For every amazing, good, or even decent tracks there are hundreds that you have to sort through. So how do you get yours to rise to the top? How do you make yours a track that doesn’t fall under the filler category? I have to sort through these tracks every day looking for the best of the best, and I’ve got years of video game modding experience under my belt in games ranging from open-source racing to Star Wars titles. While I’ll leave the specifics on Trials Evo track creation to the experts I still want to share five tips that will help you become a better editor. Who knows? You might be come a RedLynx Pick, or even a top download for the week.

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Speed running has been around for as long as games with beginnings and endings have. There are some people out there determined to rush through everything in a game, especially platformers, as quickly as possible. Well Alien Spidy takes speed running, fleshes it out a bit, and presents platformer enthusiasts with a skill-based platformer designed to be played at mach speed.

In Alien Spidy, you play as Spidy (imagine that) as he rushes to find the remains of his ship on Earth. He ventured from his home planet to find a friend of his who didn’t return, and ended up crashing on our humble planet. The story is really a mcguffin to get you crawling around this 2D Earth, dodging all manner of hostile flora and fauna. The world is a scary place when you’re a spider. Read More

Mini Ninjas Adventures, the Kinect focused XBLA follow-up to IO Interactive’s family friendly action-adventure, should be hitting the marketplace this week. To get some insight into the games production, specifically the audio, I recently spoke with the games Composer and Sound Designer, Yarron Katz.

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Welcome to a special Tuesday edition of Minecraft Monday! Apologies for the delay this week, hopefully this weeks world will make up for the wait.  Each Monday for the foreseeable …
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Andrew returns from his travels and he brings with him a long list of games he’s been playing. So needless to say the what we’ve been playing segment is dominated by him. Before we head to news we all share our thoughts on Indie Game: The Movie, which is now out to purchase around the web.

Perry hits the news as usual and Andrew rounds things out with the Community Corner.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

Big thanks to Chris Green for the awesome theme music, be sure to check out his site BlurredEdge and why not follow him on twitter too @BlurredEdge.

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastEp67.mp3[/podcast]

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Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews, and releases from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

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With Summer of Arcade looming on the horizon, we dip back into some recent hits to tide us over.
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