Fans of Castle Crashers may not be too familiar with The Behemoth’s first console outing Alien Hominid HD, but now is as good a chance as any, for it’s …
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There’s nothing more enticing than that tease, that pinch, that itch you get from a fantastic trailer. With retail games, so many of them get these bloated budgets and the trailers get absolutely insane, but XBLA has to rely on their creativity! Their imagination! Their sense of wonder!… And yes, money also. However, not every trailer is amazing, but the best ones combine with some great games and catchy trailer ideas to really entice you. This week’s Friday Top Five will be about these beautiful, and often evil, displays of awesome, wallet-attacking footage. We were looking for that marriage of gameplay, story, presentation and shameless plugging, and we’ve found the best examples of it.

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This summer will mark four years since The Behemoth-developed beat ’em up Castle Crashers made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade and quickly became the go-to cooperative game for seemingly every XBLA gamer with three people on their friends list. The tiny studio behind the game hasn’t rested on its laurels since achieving well-deserved success by capturing gamers’ hearts with Crashers — its followup to Alien Hominid — though. The team, which now boasts a whopping two full-time artists, has been slaving away at Battleblock Theater for more than three years now.

This past weekend the team dragged its stellar co-op platformer out to PAX East for the second year in a row, but you won’t hear anyone complaining, especially not yours truly, about once again playing the game at the annual Boston convention. Unless of course, they’re begroaning the fact that the title is still only playable in custom-made arcade cabinets at cons and not in the homes of Xbox owners everwhere. The impatience is understandable to some degree; Battleblock looks and plays wonderfully, so gamers want it for themselves. Now. Despite appearing to be quite far along in development, however, the game is still sporting a non-specific TBA 2012 release date.

Although the wait might be getting unbearable for some fans, it looks like all of us will be rewarded for holding on when this one finally comes out. Jumping and punching through the stages of the world’s first reality theater performance was even more fun the second time around. And accidentally intentionally tossing your co-op partner to his death? Yeah, that hasn’t gotten any less enjoyable.

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Parties are one of the oldest institutions of humankind, from the time fire was discovered to the latest significant party somebody everyone cares about attended. Perhaps something involving Tony Stark. Whether pre-historic or in fantasy land, parties always need something fun going on. Gaming, as it so happens, is pretty darn fun. However, recently the retail video game industry has decided partying with people within smelling distance means no gaming, and we here at XBLA Fans think that’s mighty stinky of them. In light of that, we’ve made this week’s Friday Top Five about XBLA games that dominate parties in one way or another.

5. Fruit Ninja Kinect 

Not every party has a Kinect, and not every party needs one, but those parties which have one should definitely be slicing fruit with as little regard for fruit-kind or remorse for the millenniums of fruitocide which they have suffered through as possible. FNK is the absolute funkay (get it?) fun time when it comes to arm flailing, personal space invading, or reputation undermining (sometimes all at once)! While this game isn’t four player inclusive like the other games on this list, it’s very fun to play and is a great ice breaker. Since Fruit Ninja Kinect takes advantage of abilities most people acquired and mastered at age three or four (the waving of the arms) there’s really nobody that can’t play this game.

There’s not a lot of depth to Fruit Ninja Kinect unfortunately, and when the party gets over the gameplay, there’s not much chance they’ll get back to it. However, one person can play or two people can play competitively and there will be enough for players to rotate and get their dose of being silly and enthusiastic before everyone’s guilt for the countless fruit deaths starts to take its toll.

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Analyst firm Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment (FADE) has released a new report that shows XBLA revenue increased 18 percent last year to $144 million. From Dust, created by Eric Chahi (Another World) and developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, and The Behemoth’s popular game Castle Crashers earned the most money with $4.6 million each in revenue off 308,000 and 335,000 units sold respectively. Microsoft Games Studio’s Full House Poker moved the most units with 375,000 units sold but was fourth overall in revenue with $3.6 million.

From Dust was part of Microsoft’s “Summer of Arcade” promotion and joins Bastion, Toy Soldiers: Cold War, and  Fruit Ninja Kinect among the top grossing XBLA games of 2011. In total, the Summer of Arcade games listed in the top ten sold over 1.1 million units and grossed $15 million in revenue. Hit the jump for the full list issued by FADE (ordered by units sold):

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Back in 2006, The Behemoth’s wildly popular XBLA game Castle Crashers was neither celebrated nor an Xbox 360 game; it was the rough and bumpy shell of itself seen in the footage above. The guys behind what was then a GameCube game weren’t satisfied with it, and so they went “back to the drawing board.”

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Just in time for the holidays, The Behemoth releases another prisoner video for Battleblock Theater. The shuffle block was one of the first blocks ever made for the game, …
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Hey guys, we’re bringing you a new feature that’s simple and helpful in nature, the XBLAFans Monthly Roundup! This as well as other features will be seen a lot more should all things go accordingly, and we’ll even have some new ones on the way, so stay tuned because there’s a lot of awesome in the works here at XBLAFans.

If it wasn’t obvious by the title, this post will be your one-stop-shop to anything that happened this month with links to all our posts and excerpts where applicable. That means news, reviews, guides, features, interviews, podcasts, and even a recount of releases and sales data. Hit the jump for so many links you’ll never not know something about XBLA current events again! Read More

The Behemoth has decided to make our Friday even sweeter by releasing footage of two new characters from their upcoming platformer Battleblock Theater. The footage marks the debut of …
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The Behemoth has released new footage of their upcoming platformer Battleblock Theater, showing off an entire level of co-op play. The video showcases Prisoners #10312 and #10329 who combine …
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