Guacamelee!

The lucha-themed Metroid-vania adventure Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition will make its debut on Xbox One and Xbox 360 soon. No official date has been given to the new revision of Guacamelee!, but there are some details on how it differs from last year’s Playstation and PC releases. Super Turbo Championship Edition boasts all of the DLC previously released on other platforms as well as additional story content, new areas, a brand new boss called The Trio of Death, and a new INTENSO combat mode among other tweaks. Drinkbox Studios has released the trailer below showcasing what to expect in Guacamelee! STCE.
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Last week, you may have caught our five-part feature looking ahead at as many XBLA games and their Xbox One brethren as we could possibly cram into one week’s worth of articles. If you missed it, go ahead and check it out right now. Start here.

All done with that? Great. Now you know what’s coming. What you may not know, however, is which of those games you should be looking forward to the most. Don’t worry — XBLA Fans has you covered. Read on to find out what upcoming XBLA and Xbox One games select members of our team are most looking forward to getting their hands on. Once you’re done, let us know which ones you’re most excited for in the comments section. We’re asking you to read through our many thoughts on the big releases ahead, so we figure the least we can do in return is to read yours as well.

Strider

Ryan Thompson, Contributor — When Capcom first announced that it was releasing a modern Strider title, my first thought was to listen to a track by game composer Jake Kaufman entitled “Dracula Man X2 Alpha Turbo.” Kaufman was clearly having fun when he created the track, giving one potential answer to what the Castlevania franchise’s music would sound like if Capcom had developed it instead of Konami. With the imminent release of Strider on the 18th of February, Capcom is poised to give something of an official answer to the same question Kaufman must have asked himself — what would Castlevania be like if Capcom released it instead?

First of all, it would have the same level of polish as the best of Capcom’s 2D games, with controls that never fail, leaving players without excuses for failure in the tradition of both the original Strider for NES and the more famous Mega Man games. Second, it appears that, judging by the trailer, there would be more emphasis on combat and slightly less on exploration, though that might be just the frantic flow of activity in a short video speaking. Finally, as Kaufman hints in his tribute, this game would come with a soundtrack worthy of the rest of Capcom’s 2D oeuvre.

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We’re late, and it seems that’s become somewhat of a trend for us lately. Our Game of the Year awards weren’t doled out until January, and now our look forward at the XBLA and Xbox One XBLA-type games of 2014 is just making its way to you in February. You were on your own when it came to planning out January’s releases, but now it’s time for our annual look ahead at the top downloadable games likely to arrive on an Xbox platform during the (remainder of) the year ahead. Read on to find out what you can expect out of Xbox over the next (not quite) 365.

Developer: International Games

Set aboard a doomed space station in which the flow of time has stopped, Constant C has you playing as a rescue robot navigating the paused wreckage to save the station and its survivors. Constant C is a 2D-platformer boasting gorgeous soft blues and reds on a jet-black background. As the rescue robot, you will manipulate time and space to overcome the puzzles and challenges you’re pitted against. The time manipulation is based on your touch; whatever you touch returns the object to the flow of time, such as blocks paused in mid-fall. The gravity manipulation consists of tilting the 2D screen in 90-degree rotations. Both abilities will be crucial to traversing the 100+ mind-blowing stages. Met with favorable reviews on PC, Constant C is now on its way to XBLA this spring.

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Much has been made over the last seven years about the high cost of publishing, promoting and patching on Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Arcade platform. Last week, G.Rev president Hiroyuki Maruyama (Strania: The Stellar Machine, Under Defeat HD) shared his own thoughts on the platform.

XBLA?DLC?????????????????????????????????????????????????80?????????????????????????????????????????????

— ???? ???? (@hiro_maruyama) January 18, 2013

“A strong yen and a weak dollar is very damaging to us because XBLA and DLC are ‘export products.’ That’s why Japanese developers avoid making games for Xbox 360. When we released Strania on XBLA, the rate was 80 yen per dollar. (wry smile) If Japanese people buy our game in MSP, we receive in dollars!”

The dollar has strengthened since then, but the yen still has it beat, with the exchange rate currently sitting at 88.62 yen per dollar. Put in Xbox LIVE terms, 1600MSP ($19.99 US) retails at a rate of ¥2,240 ($24.94 when converted). When the percentage of the sales owed to content creators on a 1600 msp game is disbursed, Microsoft calculates based on $19.99 per copy (the US cost of the points), regardless of how much a consumer paid for the 1600MSP that enabled the purchase.

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Were you stuck at home this while your gamer friends partied at PAX this weekend? Well dry those eyes, for Gamespot have compiled a neat video showcasing five of …
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