XBLA’s Most Wanted

Castlevania has been a major part of the gaming world for over 20 years, bringing us many a Dracula slaying tale. This story encompasses many families, crosses thousands of years, and tells stories of love, betrayal, power and revenge. Each game delivers a solid story, but some lack the gameplay it takes to keep non-enthusiasts interested. Through out the years Castlevania has appeared on almost every system since the NES, telling one piece or another of this amazing story.

Though this is a huge story encompassing many years and games, it all started with just one game. The basis was simple: every 100 years Dracula comes back from the dead unleashing his evil terror upon the world. You control Simon Belmont, a man who comes from a long line of Vampire hunters. With Dracula awake and doing his worst, Simon sets out to send him back to where he comes from, just like his family members before him have done.

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The Nintendo has always had a fond place in many gamers hearts and one of the forgotten games from that era is Fester’s Quest. It was a top-down view action game based off of none other then Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. The story line was completely off the wall, Aliens appear and start taking over the town, so you (Fester) grab your gun and go forth to become the savior. Encountering many of the Addams family members along the way who help you and make for some rather funny run-ins. Fester’s Quest was was a fun adventure taking you all over town, creating chaos with all sorts of aliens and bosses.

Fester’s Quest relied heavily on the actual fun of the gameplay, which is all games really had back then, requiring you to stay in-tune with what was going on if you wanted to continue on to the next section. The over-head view  gives a very Zelda-like feel, but was not the only one you encountered during this journey. As you find out the developers ventured into 3D with mazes that you had to journey through in certain sections. Filled with tons of weapons, characters, enemies and collectible items, Fester’s Quest provided an abundance of entertainment for its era.
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Meat cleavers, a harpoon, shrink ray, a bottomless hole generator, and a massive shredding lawn mower; what do these things have in common? They’re just a few weapons of the incredibly strange arsenal featured in GameCube and Xbox hit, Cel Damage. Drive around big open arenas, pick up weapons, unleash all insanity and manner of projectile and melee destruction on your opponents and hope you come out on top; these are things Cel Damage loves to do and does well. This demolition derby is one to take lightly, as it’s even more hectic than some of the most random of kart racers, especially when all four players are tearing up the couch together.

Cel Damage is all about destruction, demolition and chaos. Players compete across a few different modes including a flag capturing mode where a certain amount of flags must be delivered to a point to score, a gate-based race mode, and the infinitely replayable “smack attack” mode where players beat the chassis out of each other to score points. Each character has their own vehicle with its own statistics and feel to it as well as a special weapon.

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We still have a two more XBLA’s Most Wanted features waiting in the wings for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, but we thought we’d take a minute and ask you, the everyday gamer, what your number one XBLA game wish is. Remember to be realistic–we aren’t going to see any Super Mario games on XBLA–but have fun with it. Who knows, you just might have your favorite game featured in a future Most Wanted column, and if you do you’ll have all of your wildest dreams come true.

If you need a refresher, hit the jump to take a look at all of the games we’ve featured this year. If a game seems interesting to you, be sure to comment on it. We can’t guarantee it’ll come to XBLA, but we do know that developers and publishers frequent forums and journalistic sites looking for what the fans want.

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Ahhh Unreal Tournament. The Quake killer. The time sinker. The first worthwhile shooter that didn’t have some over-the-top story. It was just you, a gun, and an agenda. There were no worlds to save, no personal vendetta, just the tournament–the Unreal Tournament. And 1999’s success story was followed up multiple sequels and even a console spinoff, the Unreal Championship series. To most the culmination of UT hit with Unreal Tournament 2004. Sure, 2007’s Unreal Tournament 3 was great, but it went up against the likes of Halo and Call of Duty. It’s not surprising it didn’t float.

That’s why today we set our hopes on a digital UT2004. Xbox Live Arcade is a unique beast; a game can be successful on gameplay alone. It’s a place where flashy graphics are nice, but not necessary. And more importantly, it’s digital. That means people won’t be trading the game in as soon as they get bored. They’ll put it aside for a bit and come back to it once a week or so. And that, my friends, means a persistent community.

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So many of us still mourn the delisting of Marble Blast Ultra. It was one of the classic greats of Xbox Live Arcade, and still has no equal in its genre. Those who missed out may never know the joy of the marble genre. There’s something about feeling the weight of the marble in your thumbstick while trying to navigate stupidly hard (read: extremely hard) levels.

The Super Monkey Ball series is a different spin on the same idea. Instead of controlling the marble (in this case a monkey inside a clear ball) players have control of the game world. The left thumbstick tilts the world in a given direction, then gravity does the rest. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe added several fun minigames such as soccer and bowling. Super Monkey Ball Arcade would take all of those ideas and…well, roll with them.

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Culture is everywhere, it’s in the government propaganda, in the abrasive security details, in the greyness and ubiquity of society… oh, wait, no it’s not. That is, until DJ Professor K and Jet Set Radio bring back the funk in a rude way. Strap on your roller blades and attack Japan, strike back at the oppressive government, fight the monotony, tag over the propaganda and bring back freedom and love to society in Jet Set Radio Future.

That is, if you have the original Xbox. In fact, if you do, you probably have this game or did at one point (maybe you got it combined with Sega GT 2002) as it was one of its very early releases and to this day one of the most unique. Players take on the streets of Japan with their crew of oppression-fighting freestyle rollerbladers, defeating area security, tagging the town, and dissolving violent gangs from the dark corners of Japan in an effort to bring back the freedom of expression. With plenty of different levels, challenges, hidden collectibles and a decent multiplayer Jet Set Radio Future (JSRF) was a robust title considering its rather niche gameplay style.

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The real-time strategy genre is a category that has always eluded consoles. Every once in a while a developer will try to make an RTS game work with a controller. From time to time, it does work. Halo Wars for the Xbox 360 and Pikmin for the GameCube come to mind. But for some reason, real-time strategy games just haven’t been refined enough on consoles and the genre hasn’t taken off. Barriers such as the transition from mouse and keyboard to controller are often cited as the reason why.

Blizzard Entertainment is one of the few developers in the world, who never misses a beat. Every single thing they release is pure gold. They take care of their franchises, and they take their time to make sure that they release the best games possible. That is why I’m calling on Blizzard to be the ones to finally break open the real-time strategy market for consoles, by releasing the original StarCraft on Xbox Live Arcade.

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The Need for Speed series seems to be taking a different direction than the one many of us are used to. It’s grittier, more realistic–a far cry from the arcade goodness of games like Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted. While a lot of people have bought in on this it’s still a direction that just as many folks aren’t happy about. Look on forums, in YouTube comments, etc. People are clamoring for the pre-ProStreet games to make a comeback.

That’s why we’ve come up with a synergistic solution: a new title that utilizes older game assets: Need for Speed: Challenge. It’s been done with Need for Speed: World, a MMO racing game that’s exclusive to the PC. It merges the cities from Most Wanted and Carbon together and provides an open-world, role playing-racing experience. Challenge would be something similar: all of the Micheal Bay story elements stripped out. Yep, it’s just raw, adrenaline fueled racing. The difference is that Challenge wouldn’t be an MMO. Rather than a persistent-world game, it would be a single player free roam racer with multiplayer race events.

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Call us nostalgic if you want, but we want yet another Quake game to come to Xbox Live Arcade. We’ve got Quake Arena Arcade, which is an enhanced version of Quake III Arena. We’ve got Quake IV via retail, and we’ve already petitioned id Software for the original Quake on XBLA. Now it’s Quake II‘s turn.

Here’s the thing: it’s already been released on the Xbox 360 once before, in a manner of speaking. It came as a bonus feature with Quake IV. It had the entire game, system link, and four player splitscreen. While it didn’t feature any graphical improvements or Xbox Live support, it was a proper port (read: not emulated) and so gets the ball rolling for an XBLA release.

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