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During E3 week, I had the opportunity to speak in great depth with Michel Gagne about the upcoming title Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet as well as pilot the demo for myself. The result was an entirely original experience from anything I have ever seen or played before. It was impossible to not be impressed.

The full story of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet starts nearly five years ago when Joe Olson, head of Fuelcell Games approached Michel about bringing feature quality animation to video games. Known for his unique style of animation Michel was a well-respected figure in the movie industry working on titles such as Prelude to Eden, The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, and Ratatouille. At the time, Michel was hesitant citing his lack of knowledge of the game industry. Michel informed me that before he started work on Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (ITSP) he did not know simple video game concepts like what a boss was. Joe was persistent and thankfully persuasive and eventually got Michel onboard under one condition. They would not make a game, but a work of art.

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Upon booting up Trenched, it’s quickly clear that this is a Double Fine game, as behind the quirky, machismo humor lies a title with some serious character. Trenched scraps the traditional formula and instead recycles the leftovers to create something entirely different and completely reinvigorating. Gone are the days when leaving a tower defense match in the middle to make a sandwich was acceptable. There will be no time to reach for the jar of mayo, as players will find themselves constantly engaged by the battles surrounding them.

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The simple answer is that it is an acronym that stands for Xbox Live Arcade. But that answer in itself just brings the inevitable question of what is Xbox Live Arcade? I’ve always known that XBLA was a niche sector of the games market, and numerous friends and family members had never heard of it until we started this site just over a year ago. The constant prodding by our team to our friends asking them to like us on facebook, brought an abundance of questions and a hunger to learn more we couldn’t satiate fast enough. And it was for them I initially intended to write this post. However, believe it or not over the past week while at E3, numerous industry professionals have asked me these same two questions. They too are unaware of the hundreds of quality titles under the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) platform.

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Have you always wanted to talk with your friends in a virtual environment using Avatars? Well in July, you’ll begin to with the use of Avatar Kinect. It lets …
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At the Microsoft E3 Press Conference on Monday, they showed off some new features for the upcoming Dashboard update. The screenshots look very similar to how Windows 7 on phones looks and what to expect from the upcoming Windows 8. It showcases all the new upcoming features like Live TV, Bing search, and a lot of squares and rectangles. Keep a lookout for the update later this fall.
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Microsoft announced brand new streaming TV content coming to Xbox 360 at its E3 press conference. It will conduct Bing searches to find content from Hulu Plus, Netflix or …
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Microsoft sent out a press release today detailing in graph-form how well the Xbox 360 is selling. It has sold over 55 million consoles and 10 million Kinect sensors …
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As anyone who plays XBLA games knows, Summer of Arcade is a big deal. It’s a spotlight of some of the season’s most promising games. Summer of …
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An extremely trusted source has leaked to us that the upcoming Alan Wake: Night Springs will be an Xbox Live Arcade title and not a retail release. We have …
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So this past weekend we had a blast playing Section 8 Prejudice with the XBLA community. We met a lot of awesome guys online and had a blast playing with TimeGate Studios. Huge thanks to Microsoft and TimeGate Studios for allowing us to participate in the event. We’ve submitted your questions, including a few we gleaned from the event itself to TimeGate.

As most of you know, we ran a contest leading up to the event and we were pleased with the responses we got, especially from our fans on Twitter. You guys kicked butt helping promote this event. Facebook fans, we hope you take this as a challenge to step it up next time!

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