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Cave shooters denied XBLA release by Microsoft
Recently Xbox Live Arcade has shown considerable potential as a home for shoot 'em ups, from the Forgotten Worlds-channeling Omega Five to monochrome shooter Ikaruga's looming release. However, to hear talk from 5pb, the devs charged with bringing Cave's nefarious DoDonPachi series as well as its latest shooter Ketsui to XBLA's digital frontier, the platform still has a few nagging hang ups keeping it from becoming a beacon for shmups.Echoing N+ developer Metanet's recent comments concerning what does and does not make it to the service, 5pb spoke out about similar frustrations in the latest issue of Famitsu, revealing that both of its ports of DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou Black Label X and Ketsui X had been summarily rejected for release over XBLA, with Microsoft claiming that it's "going to cut down on faithful arcade ports." Only faithful ones?We agree that there is certainly a glut of arcade nonsense on XBLA, but this is equivalent to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 5pb and Cave are reportedly now working to bring both games to market through traditional retail channels in a defiant effort to show Microsoft "that their decision was wrong." Now all we need is a publisher with an eye for niche Japanese releases to pick the games up for release outside of Japan. Altus, are you listening?[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
Hudson: Omega Five blasting Jan. 9 onto XBLA
Omega Five is back on the radar, receiving a Jan. 9 release date from Hudson Entertainment for Xbox Live Arcade. The game will cost 800 MS points ($10), but since this isn't the official Microsoft announcement, the date could still shift – we've already seen a major release change once before. The last time we heard anything about Omega Five, a quirky side-scrolling shmup, it was expected in November.We have no idea what the game is like now, but we fiddled around with an early build last June. Although, not seeing an XBLA game for over six months is like not seeing a regular game for years.[Via Press Release]%Gallery-3982%
Omega Five shmups XBLA in November
Hudson announced today that side-scrolling shooter Omega Five will bring the action to Xbox Live in November. Omega Five first leaked on the scene in June and appeared to be your classic "shoot everything on the screen" exercise, but designed for a modern audience. We picked up on the 3D graphics and some other fancy things during our hands-on time with an early build (we're perceptive like that). Omega Five will also support local co-op for a friend.Who knows, Omega Five could be a holiday season XBLA cult hit.[Via Press Release]%Gallery-3982%
Rez, Ikaruga, Exit confirmed for Xbox Live Arcade
If you missed out on our liveblog of Microsoft's pre-TGS conference in Japan (it does, after all, require an excessive and strenuous amount of scrolling to access), you may appreciate and respond with delirious joy to some of the pertinent news to emerge from it. You should also appreciate the amount of effort that went into the preceding and vaguely professional sentence -- we really just wanted to blurt out that REZ ON XBLA YAY. Ahem. Microsoft confirmed that Tetsuya Mizuguchi's melodic shooter will soon make you hear everything you see and see everything you hear on Xbox Live Arcade. Other things you'll see are waves of hypnotic bullets (Ikaruga), saviors adorned with fine hats (EXIT), pulsating geometric shapes (Every Extend Extra Extreme), flying robots (Omega Five) and... er, some sort of Japanese car (Triggerheart Exelica)? No release dates have been announced for any of the games, though we suspect none of them are likely to come soon enough.
Joystiq impressions: Omega Five (XBLA)
As recently leaked, Omega Five is Hudson's next XBLA game to ship after July's Bomberman Live. At a blogger event today, Hudson briefly showed this chaotic Natsume-developed title, and I got a chance to helm a floating ninja-like character in this side-scrolling shoot-'em-up world.What?Yes. Not the first shooter to star human characters, Omega Five sure has a lot of "strange" going for it. But that could be a good thing.%Gallery-3982%
Omega Five, not another Harvest Moon
A French website dug up information on Omega Five, a Hudson Entertainment game being developed for Xbox Live Arcade. This would be the second time in recent memory a French website got a hold of Hudson information early. In March a French site published a video for Bomberman Live (the video wasn't even released publicly until this week) and that video was released four days before the game was officially announced. This time, Xbox Gazette reports that Natsume, best known for the Harvest Moon series, is working on a side-scrolling shooter for XBLA called Omega Five.The game will allegedly be a standard shooter with the exception of enemies coming out of 3D backgrounds. Details are still very sketchy and for some bizarre reason the French site says the game will cost 800 MS points, which sounds reasonable, but is probably a total shot in the dark. Now that the info is out, just like the Bomberman Live stuff, it probably won't take too long to get a basic statement acknowledging the games existence -- you know, unless Hudson and their PR pull a Beautiful Katamari stunt.[Via XBLArcade]
