Yes, I’m ill and it won’t let go. I’ve been taking a break over the weekend but it really isn’t helping that much. Perhaps some meds will do the trick, we’ll see soon.

Live Arcade Review will be back 100% tomorrow or the day after, anyway. We’ve got reviews on Root Beer Tapper and Heavy Weapon coming up, along with lots of other stuff as usual. Thanks for your patience!

Don’t miss Root Beer Tapper, it’s out today you know. Here’s some bits and pieces while we get our house in order.

• Age rating organization ESRB have approved Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts for Xbox 360, which most likely means that the 16-bit Capcom classic is due for Live Arcade pretty soon.
• Is Jetpac: Refueled the upcoming Rare release for Live Arcade? Xbox 360 Fanboy seems to think so.
• Worms developer on downloadable content and more, over at Gamertag Radio, or transcript at Xboxic.
• The digest for games magazine PTD 302 is available for download.

There might be some craziness here at Live Arcade Review the coming days. We’re gonna update WordPress and try some stuff out. Once we’ve got that out of the way, we’ll get back to our regular pace of news, and a hightened one for reviewing the Live Arcade games. Thanks for bearing with us.

Let’s hope they roll it out worldwide… continue reading…

continue reading…

This from the latest issue of Edge magazine, via CVG:

Microsoft-owned UK developer Rare is working on an Xbox Live Arcade game to be released this year, reports the latest Issue of Edge magazine.

According to the mag, Rare’s first download title is a totally original game being worked on by Kameo and Starfox Adventures developer Nick Burton, along with a team of ten others.

Something 3D-adventury with puzzles then?

If the Official Xbox Magazine’s March issue is to be believed, the upcoming Worms game for Live Arcade have been chopped down, possibly to leave room for downloadable content. While the concept isn’t new, it sure is a bit worrying. I came across this reading about the “evolving” demo disc that is said to come with Official Xbox Magazine in 2007, so it’s a sidenote really.

Also worth noting – some new Xbox Live Arcade reviews in the March 2007 issue were for unreleased XBLA games, including Worms getting 7.5, with the slightly worrying comment: “Was it purposely truncated to allow downloadable content?”, since it’s missing stalwart weapons including the Holy Hand Grenade, Root Beer Tapper getting 6.0 with “good time-killer”, and the Big Huge Games-developed Catan being “A truly unique Live experience”, and getting 8.0.

Fingers crossed… If your curious about the new demo disc, by all means check out the GameSetWatch post, although there aren’t that many hard facts yet.

The “classic” Root Beer Tapper is up next for Live Arcade review, from Midway via Digital Eclipse. This isn’t a game I’ve ever played, so I have no idea if it’s one of those timeless classics that can live forever, or just a barely re-vitalized corpse from the arcade cemetery…

Game Features

Authentic to the original game, “Root Beer Tapper” on Xbox Live Arcade brings you a classic favorite.

Take on a bar full of thirsty folks in “Root Beer Tapper” and see if you can keep their mugs full.

Grab the empty mugs before they slide off the bar.

Earn extra points by collecting tips.

Locate and open the one can that has not been shaken up and serve it up to waiting patrons in the bonus rounds.

Enjoy high-definition support for detailed graphics.

Play either locally or over Xbox Live* in co-op or versus modes.

Have your scores posted on the Xbox Live Leaderboard. High scores are tracked for the current week and also for all-time arcade, co-op and versus game modes.

Earn up to 12 Achievements and 200 gamerscore points.

It’s out tomorrow, that’s Wednesday, at a cost of 400 Microsoft points.

Zen Studios (of Nintendo DS game Flipper Critters fame) have recently launched the Pinball FX site, Pinball FX being an upcoming Live Arcade game of course. This looks like a real treat for me, I’m a real sucker for pinball games and have been enjoying them since way back, starting at Pinball for the NES and then a long love affair with Digital Illusions’ wonderful Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions.

So whenever I see a new pinball game I get that warm, nostalgic feeling. Even if it’s nothing fancy, like Pure Pinball (available for PC and Xbox), I still play it inside out and love every second of it. A Live Arcade pinball release, which has been hinted on before, is music to my ears.

Pinball FX then, how does it look and what will it pack? continue reading…

Jeff Minter’s psychedelic Xbox Live Arcade shooter is apparently going alpha on Wednesday, which will make or break the project!

We’re going for an alpha release to MS on Wednesday, then as soon as possible after to our alpha team, at which point I’ll get a lot more feedback which I am looking forward to. The release to MS is a little bit scary because we effectively get the go/no go for the whole thing on this submission, but damn me if it doesn’t look gorgeous and I think it plays really nicely so I would be very surprised if we have any problems there. Sure we probably aren’t going to hit every TCR with alpha but we’re not going for full cert yet, this is just show and tell so I think we should be ok .

Exciting, and that screenshot that Jeff released on his blog is sweet as well, although a bit hard to comprehend perhaps.

You know the drill, what was hot on Xbox Live Arcade last week?
Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
1 Heavy Weapon
2 Hexic HD
3 UNO
4 LUMINES LIVE!
5 Geometry Wars Evolved
6 Texas Hold ‘em
7 Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting
8 Bankshot Billiards 2
9 Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
10 Assault Heroes

Head over to Major Nelson for more lists on full games and stuff as usual.