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

It was a busy week for two of 2012’s biggest XBLA games: The Walking Dead and Minecraft. Minecraft saw its The End content delayed out of its next title update to some unknown future point. Meanwhile, we learned that The Walking Dead has sold a lot of episodes, that it may allow players to carry over saves to the next season and that gamers who bought a faulty Xbox 360 retail version of season one will be given a free XBLA copy. If you’re still looking for more XBLA coverage, be sure to keep an eye on the site every weeknight this week as we detail the biggest games coming to Xbox Live Arcade in 2013. What games are you looking forward to this year? Let us know in the comments below.

Here’s our week in review:

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Telltale Games are to offer a free copy of The Walking Dead XBLA version to players suffering severe hitching and freezing with the Xbox 360 disc version. After collecting reports from players, …
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NeocoreGames, the developers behind upcoming action-RPG The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, have announced a special contest for fans to become a character in the game. The winner, who …
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Zombie Studios have recently announced that Special Forces: Team X will be heading to XBLA February 6, 2013. The game is …
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Devolver Digital and Mastertronic, have announced that Serious Sam Double D XXL will launch February 20, 2013 on Xbox LIVE Arcade. …
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The story of Skullgirls‘ development, release and post-release support just may have more twists to it than its top-heavy characters have curves on their pixelated bodies. It started with two men, each with a skill, a passion and an idea. In 2009, longtime fighting game fan and tournament player Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont began programming a fighting game of his own. Elsewhere, unbeknownst to Zaimont at the time, artist Alex “o_8” Ahad was drawing a new fighting game universe of his own into existence, complete with characters to populate it. Eventually the two were introduced and merged their pet projects together at Reverge Labs into the game that released on XBLA and PSN in April of last year as Skullgirls.

Critics generally gave the game a favorable reception, with its combined XBLA and PSN score averaging 80% on Metacritic. Gamers gave it a fairly warm reception, too. The developer was excited when Skullgirls sold 50,000 copies in its first 10 days on the market. Although the development team informed XBLAFans on Thursday that Skullgirls has failed to turn a profit to date, we were also informed that the game has performed well enough that publisher Autumn Games is interested in green-lighting a sequel if it can successfully dodge the sticks and stones City National Bank has thrown its way.

With a PC version, DLC characters and multiple sequels in the plans, things were looking up for Zaimont, Ahad and the rest of the crew at Reverge. Then everything went quiet. Months went by without a single update on the port, downloadable content or the sequel. It was eventually revealed that the Skullgirls team had been let go by Reverge Labs in June of 2012 after developer and publisher allowed their contract to expire without agreeing upon a new one. More sticks. More stones.

Whether it was the entire team that was let go or some fraction of it has been a matter that was up for some debate. Reverge blogged that it was some of the team, while the displaced developers once said it was “the entire” team. When questioned repeatedly by XBLAFans over the past couple of months, neither of those factions nor Autumn has been willing to go on record to clear the air. The one thing that has been abundantly clear, though, is that the contract expiration effectively brought about a game over screen for future Skullgirls content and its would-be creators.

Or did it?

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It’s been a long time coming. After years of waiting and numerous delays building up our anticipation, it’s almost here. Developer 17-Bit announced today that …
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A release may finally be imminent for one of XBLA’s most-anticipated games. 17-bit studio head Jake Kazdal informed XBLAFans today that its turn-based strategy title, Skulls of the …
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Furthermore, share with us your longest gaming session and for what game!

That Telltale Games plans to follow-up the wildly successful Walking Dead adventure game with a second season is no secret. What form that will take has been a bit less clear; primary among the questions still to be answered is whether it will be a direct sequel to the first season or if it would follow an entirely new cast of characters.
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