Features

The summer of 1999 was an interesting time. With the quickly oncoming Y2K scare gas and food prices rose, people were keeping a cache of money outside of the bank, and in general the easily worried population were beside themselves with worry about the oncoming computer crashes that would happen with the new year.

Gamers? We were plugging away at great games on our PCs, Nintendo 64s, and PlayStations. Among the most popular was Re-Volt, an RC-themed racing game where being tiny in a big world meant exciting gameplay. It captured players on the three above platforms as well as the Dreamcast, sucking them in to the oversized world. It was among the few candidates for testing the original Xbox LIVE. Sadly, the game never saw a retail release on the Xbox.

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E3 2012 is just days away and if the last few years are any indication that means we will soon find out which games will feature in this years Summer of Arcade promotion. In previous years it has been host to some true classics, including: Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Castle Crashers and Braid.

Places look to be hotly contested this year with just about every unreleased XBLA game currently sitting with a nebulous “summer” release window, many no doubt hoping to make the cut. With some of the biggest selling games on Xbox Live being entries in previous years it’s easy to see why. It’s anybody’s guess which games will make it, and in that vein we want you to tell us which games you think will be a part of the promotion this year. This isn’t just for fun either, we’ve got prizes! Find out how to enter and what you could win below. Read More

Huzzah! Finally some worthy Supercross tracks have popped up. We’ve also got some classic-styled skill games and a handful of Trials courses to keep your thumbs in tip top shape.

To download these tracks by entering Track Central, selecting Get Tracks, then pressing X to search. Enter the gamertag below to find the track. Be aware that the search is case sensitive. A big thanks to the Trials Evolution community for the borrowed videos. Hit the jump to see this week’s picks.

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The most non-American edition of the XBLAFancast ever, maybe. With no Andrew or Todd this week it’s up to myself and my two Canadian buddies Shawn and Perry to keep things going.

This week we talk about Mad Riders a bunch, plus a whole lot of other games. Perry drops all the news, like all of it. Then we have some twitter questions, thanks to @Lunchbox700 and @NodNolan for those, to round things out.

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/XBLAFancastEp63.mp3[/podcast]

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A bit of a lull in XBLA games this week, but nothing Trials Evolution can’t plug.
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5th Cell made their name with fairly cutesy games like Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts. Both handheld games with a kid-friendly art style and gameplay that encouraged creativity. So when they revealed their first XBLA game and it turned out to be a third person shooter, we were certainly surprised.

What we weren’t surprised about was the fact they had decided to do things a bit differently. Drawn to Life was a fairly traditional action platformer but it stood out by letting players draw characters and objects that inhabited the world. Scribblenauts is a fairly simple puzzle game in theory but has endless possibilities thanks to players having the whole dictionary at hand to help them complete levels. It’s because of these unconventional takes on traditional game ideas that we fully expected 5th Cell to put their stamp on their third person shooter, Hybrid.

In Hybrid players do not have direct control over their characters movement, not in the traditional sense anyway. While the right stick does move your camera and onscreen aiming reticule, the left stick will only move you around while on cover. To move from cover to cover, you’ll have to point the camera at the cover you want to go to and hit A, at which point you can strafe among other things. It sounds like it might over-complicate things for no reason but in reality it takes third person shooter gameplay and makes it a bit more tactical.

We don’t want to get too bogged down on the minutia of controls and such. Instead we asked some of our writers who took part in the recent beta to tell us about their experience, check out what they had to say below.  Read More

First thing’s first, apologies for the low quality audio in this weeks episode. Numerous technical difficulties caused some issues which led to some parts of the show to dip in quality, I did try to salvage it as best I could but it’s not perfect. Thankfully the show is still mostly listenable and everything should hopefully be fine next week.

This weeks episode sees the return of former podcast co-host and current Game Music Fans Managing Editor, Tyler Cameron. He shares a familiar story of getting sucked into Minecraft and not quite knowing why. Perry is on the review for Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, he gives us his not so great impressions.

Todd Talk this week is all about episodic gaming, after which we discuss what we think does and doesn’t work when trying to make an episodic game.

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/XBLAFancastEp62.mp3[/podcast]

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Where have all the Supercross creators gone? This is a callout to any makers of Supercross maps. Post your map name and gamertag in the comments below. We’ll try your map out, and if it’s good enough we’ll record footage of it.

But we digress. This week has a great mix of Trials and Skill Game tracks, and we mean that literally. Not only do we have a few of each, but some tracks cross the lines into both types. To download these tracks by entering Track Central, selecting Get Tracks, then pressing X to search. Enter the gamertag below to find the track. Be aware that the search is case sensitive. A big thanks to the Trials Evolution community for the borrowed videos. Hit the jump to see this week’s picks.

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Trials Evo and Minecraft remain popular while elsewhere a certain New York cop with a checkered history makes a long-awaited comeback.
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Today we’re showcasing seven amazing trials tracks and one wild skill game. To download these tracks by entering Track Central, selecting Get Tracks, then pressing X to search. Enter the gamertag below to find the track. Be aware that the search is case sensitive. A big thanks to the Trials Evolution community for the borrowed videos. Hit the jump to see this week’s picks.

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