Platformer

• After Burner Climax will be delisted from the Xbox Live Marketplace on December 24, 2014. A producer of After Burner Climax, Noriyuki Shimoda, confirms via Twitter the removal of the game from distribution. The PlayStation Network is currently seeing a sale for the title and it is unknown at this time whether or not the Xbox Live Marketplace will see an equivalent sale.
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Special Editions was quietly delisted from the Xbox Live Marketplace while Deep Silver had it listed for its Deal of the Week from December 2-9. While it was sad to see it removed before the sale officially ended, at least the publisher can say the game was put on sale before removal.
• JUJU launches on the Xbox Live Marketplace today, December 10. The game is already available now for $14.99 USD and the download size is 1.75GB. After the jump is a launch trailer for the title. Check it out to see JUJU in action.

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The historical origins of Giana Sisters date back to 1987 with the release of The Great Giana Sisters on the Commodore 64. Fast forward to March 20, 2013, Xbox Live Arcade saw the release of Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams for $15.00 USD. For fans of the XBLA game and curious newcomers alike, Black Forest Games is introducing Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams — Director’s Cut to Xbox One users on December 12, 2014 for 14,99 € and undisclosed USD price.

What is the difference between the Xbox 360 version and Xbox One version?

More everything.

This release encompasses the original Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams as well as the add-on Rise of the Owlverlord. On top of that, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams — Director’s Cut will also contain The Christmas Levels and The Halloween Levels, which will total for 38 action filled levels in 1080p HD graphics at 60 frames per second.

Included after the jump is an early announcement trailer of the festivities coming soon.

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Looking for a family friendly game this season? JUJU is a classic style platformer about a small, brave Panda (Juju) and his adventure to save his father and the …
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Stick It to The Man! was developed and published by Zoink Games. It was released August 28, 2014 on Xbox One and Xbox 360 for $9.99. An Xbox One copy was provided for review purposes.

It has been an awfully long time since the likes of Braid, Limbo and Super Meat Boy first began to demonstrate just how innovative and enjoyable smaller, digitally delivered titles could be. Unbelievably, though, there are still independent studios out there that continue to push the envelope. With Stick it to the Man!, Zoink games have done exactly that, delivering an entertaining, polished and highly amusing puzzle/platform game that oozes originality from every pore.

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Xbox Wire recently posted an interview with Jason “6995” DeGroot, composer for Capybara Games’ highly anticipated downloadable title Super Time Force. DeGroot describes the soundtrack as based “around NES …
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Indie developers Black Forest Games have revealed that Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams has now sold over one million copies. The game was released on XBLA one year ago today …
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Capcom has announced that its 2D “sweep-’em up” title, Dustforce, will be headed to the Xbox 360 this coming January. Developed by Hitbox Team, Dustforce is a platformer in …
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Hitbox Team’s 2D sweep-’em-up platformer, Dustforce, was released to PC and MAC users back in early 2012. Last week, Capcom announced that Xbox 360 gamers will now too get …
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Publisher Sega has confirmed on its blog that Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse will be launching on Xbox Live Arcade on September 4 for 1200 Microsoft Points. This reimagining …
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XBLAFans stopped to chat with Sega Studios Australia’s Omar Woodley, producer on Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse during E3. We discovered that calling the new version of Castle of Illusion a “remake” or “rerelease” doesn’t do it justice. Unlike other modern ports of classic games, such as Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia Classic or Capcom’s soon-to-be-released Ducktales Remastered, Castle of Illusion was described to us by Woodley as “a full reimagining of the game.”

The biggest, most immediately noticeable change beyond updated graphics and sound (which includes a charming voiceover for Mickey during gameplay) is the addition of a hub world. In the original game, Mickey wandered the Castle of Illusion to introduce each new level. Here, the castle is envisioned along the lines of Super Mario 64, as a three-dimensional hub world by which all of the levels are accessed. It’s a fun change that makes the castle feel like an actual place, instead of merely a setpiece for the plot.

According to Woodley, Sega Studios Australia had lots of “creative freedom to redesign the levels… When we played the original and we tried translating that to the new 3D world, some of those levels weren’t as challenging as they were back in the day. They actually played out to be quite long in length to this contemporary feel so we had to compensate for that, and we also just wanted to challenge the player and keep that difficultly setting pretty high to what the classic was. So we added these various components and a few different puzzles and tricks here and there to keep the challenge intact.”

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