xbla

PopCap Games may be best known for their sublime Plants vs. Zombies (on sale for $2.99 this week!), but they actually produce a number of stellar franchises like Peggle and Zuma. We interviewed PopCap about those two series coming to Windows Phone last year, and we’ll continue to ask about them whenever we can. PopCap seems to work on one game for one platform at a time, and they’ve just completed a new Xbox Live Arcade release: Zuma’s Revenge. It just came out yesterday, but I’ve been playing the game for a week now in order to bring you this review.

The original Zuma Deluxe was an XBLA launch title way back in 2006. Basically an enhanced clone of classic arcade game Puzz Loop (aka Magnetica), the Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. It’s sort of like Bubble Town 2 but much, much better and more varied.

Head past the break for our full impressions and more screenshots.

Welcome to an Xbox Live Developer Interview long in the making! Seriously, we’ve been promising this one for a while, and at last it’s ready. Today we chat with Mel Kirk, Jack—of-all-trades at Zen Studios. Zen is hard at work porting their XBLA hit Pinball FX2 to Windows Phone. Thankfully they made the time to tell Windows Phone Central all about their love for pinball, potential licensed tables for the future, and of course, their plans for Microsoft's mobile phone platform.

Head past the break for the full interview, tons of behind the scenes photos, and wonderful Marvel concept art!

Xbox Live Arcade Games: Windows Phone Central's favorites from E3 2012

With so many Xbox Live Arcade games on display at E3 this year, it’s tough narrowing down just which ones are our favorites. We’ve already treated you to footage and interviews of Skulls of the Shogun and Ascend: New Gods, both of which are also coming to Windows Phone with connectivity features. Now it’s time to share a few XBLA games that don’t currently have mobile ports in the works but should definitely be on any console gamer’s radar. We spoke with the developers of all three titles: Double Dragon: Neon, Retro City Rampage, and Pid and came away extremely impressed.

Head past the break for more gameplay footage and our full Double Dragon: Neon producer interview!

One of the biggest highlights of E3 2012 for us has been playing Skulls of the Shogun on Windows Phone and Xbox Live Arcade and meeting two of its creators at 17-BIT. Skulls is an amazingly beautiful and accessible turn-based strategy game in development for XBLA, Windows 8, and Windows Phone. Yesterday we posted our Windows Phone impressions; today we follow up with an interview and in-depth demonstration of the XBLA game in action. (The color shifting in the interview video is due to fancy overhead lights on the show floor.)

Head past the break for more Skulls of the Shogun details and gameplay footage!

Windows Phone Central has eagerly covered SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II ever since its first official announcement. The Windows Phone version is still due out in July, but the console and PC versions have already arrived. As such, here are my impressions of Sonic 4: Episode II on Xbox Live Arcade.

Episode II has a larger budget than the original game and it shows. The game starts out with an actual intro sequence, followed by more story bits later on. Graphically, Sonic and Tails are fully 3D and look great in close-ups like those in the bonus levels. The backgrounds feature more interesting and varied locales than before, such as White Park’s snow-covered theme park. New lighting and show effects impress as well. These graphical improvements extend to the currently-available iPhone version, so expect a similar boost on Windows Phone as well. I wish I could say the music had improved, but it sounds as unimpressive as the last game. Can’t have everything, I guess.

As with Episode I, there are four zones, each with three acts a piece. My favorites are the third and fourth zones, Oil Desert and Sky Fortress. The desert stage involves features unique set pieces like sliding down oil slicks, jumping to avoid sinking into quick sand, and frantically climbing silos as they fill with more death-dealing sand. Sky Fortress starts out with Sonic riding along on Tails’ biplane, just as he did in Sonic 2. After that engaging aerial sequence, look forward to navigating the exterior of an airship, running along walls, and firing Sonic from cannons to reach new areas.

Head past the break for more Xbox 360 impressions and details on the upcoming Windows Phone port!

As part of WPCentral’s ongoing Xbox 360 coverage, we’ll sometimes discuss console titles of interest to our readers. We previous reported on the Arcade Next promotion: a series of five Xbox Live Arcade games coming to Xbox 360 in April and May. Trials Evolution was last week’s XBLA release, and now Bloodforge, the second Arcade Next title has launched today.

Bloodforge is an Xbox 360-exclusive hack-and-slash title from UK developer Climax Studios. The story takes place in a cold, unnamed Scandinavian location, probably somewhere in the 8^th to 11^th century. It revolves around Crom, a warrior who has left behind his raiding days to settle down with a family. When an evil god causes Crom to lose his family, the warrior sets out on a single-minded quest for revenge. Along the way he is aided by a crow goddess and others who seek to shift the balance of godly power.

Head past the break for our full impressions.

Here's a cool little site you'll want to bookmark: www.playxbla.com

The new site is described as "the official voice for Microsoft Studios’ Xbox LIVE Arcade and Windows Phone games" and looks to be a neat little place to get the latest info on gaming as well as interacting with developers and Microsofties. They've been on Twitter for awhile, linking to other gaming sites, but now they have a home of their own.

The site looks nice enough and features exclusive articles on new and upcoming games. And while our own Paul Acevedo often gets the scoop first, it's always nice to see what the official team has got going. Plus, you can probably gripe to them (instead of us) about missing Xbox LIVE games for Windows Phone. We keed, we keed...

So head to their websitexbla and follow 'em on Twitter here @PlayXBLA. (Thanks, TheWeeBear, for the heads up!)

One of the fun benefits of Xbox Live integration on Windows Phone 7 is that users can view and edit their avatars on the go. Some avatar items are free, while many of them cost money.

A quartet of avatar goods are currently on sale for fifty percent off. These must be purchased through a PC or Mac web browser or an Xbox 360 console before equipping them to your avatar.

• Ninjas - Black Horned Samurai Outfit (Male or Female) - 120 Microsoft Points ($1.50) - 50% off
• Star Wars - Chewbacca Wookie Costume (Male or Female) - 160 Microsoft Points ($2) - 50% off
• Fantasy Pets - Minotaur Companion - 120 Microsoft Points ($1.50) - 50% off
• Fierce Moves - Break Dancing - 160 Microsoft Points ($2) - 50% off

Avatar pets are not currently viewable on Windows Phone 7. The Fierce Moves item is actually a break dancing animation for your avatar. We can’t confirm whether premium avatar moves are actually viewable on Microsoft’s mobile platform, but we’ll update if we find out.

The sale runs through April 1st, no fooling. A ton of Xbox Live Arcade games (Xbox 360 only) are on sale during the same time period. Head past the break for the full list.

There are three types of people who visit this site:

1. Those with Xbox, LIVE & want Windows Phone 7
2. Those who are planning to get an Xbox + LIVE for Windows Phone 7
3. Those who never plan on getting an Xbox because you "don't game"

This post is for #1 and #2--we're cool. As for you number three'ers, you're dead to me, feel free to scroll down and read another blog entry.

Anyways, it costs something like $49.99 for the Gold membership, which allows access to all the cool online stuff, gaming, online multiplayer, Netflix, Last.FM, etc. (For those who don't have one, the Xbox is just as much a media center as a gaming machine--my usage for instance is probably 70% media e.g. Netflix/TV torrents, 30% actual gaming, usually Star Wars related.)

While not a bad deal, it's going up on November 1st to $59.99, which seems to be a curious time right when a certain mobile OS launches and Microsoft will see an influx of new customers. Oh and that Kinect thing is launching too.

The good news is that you can renew now for $39.99 to tap in that extra year and save 30%, which we suppose is a good deal (unless you membership just auto-renewed like 2 weeks ago, grrr).

Read up on the details and renew here.

[via WinSuperSite]