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Speedball 2 Tournament hits Steam this November
The folks at Valve and Kylotonn Entertainment have sent word (actually, they sent multiple words annoyingly assembled into sentences, which made things difficult for us) that futuristic sports brawler Speedball 2 Tournament will be digitally distributed via Steam at the end of November. Those wary of siphoning data from the internets will also be able to find the game in stores, though the disc will still require authentication from Steam upon installation.Once you've gotten that out of the way, you'll be able to take part in the PC "revival" of The Bitmap Brothers' Amiga classic, complete with worldwide rankings, online matchmaking and "state-of-the-art-technology." The Speedball series was most recently revisited with Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe on Xbox Live Arcade.
Speedball II in development for XBLA
Since we will almost certainly never get our HD remake of American Gladiators on Xbox Live Arcade, we continue to look to other sources to get our fix of games based on fake sports. Imagine our relief then when we heard that Speedball II: Brutal Deluxe was in development for XBLA by Empire Interactive. The pseudo sports game was originally released for the Genesis and a slew of other systems.For the uninitiated, Speedball is a bit like handball, except crossed with ice hockey. Oh, and the ball's made out of steel. So yeah, awesome. This new version will feature HD graphics (naturally), more teams and online multiplayer. The official release date? Not soon enough. (CVG says August -- for 800 Microsoft points.)
Rumor: Double Dragon on XBLA next week
The "enhanced version" of arcade classic Double Dragon is making its way to Xbox Live Arcade next week according to publisher Empire Interactive. Reported on back in January, this Botoxed version (seen above right), was expected in March, hopefully the extra time went into making this classic two-player game's online co-op work perfectly. According to the release, dug up by GamingTalkHQ.com, Clive Kabatznik, CEO of Silverstar Holdings says, "This is another example of Empire updating a classic IP and bringing it to a brand new audience. Double Dragon will launch next Wednesday, and will be our first foray onto Xbox LIVE Arcade. Our announcement of Speedball 2 demonstrates our continued intention to bring high quality classic titles to a broader market."The same release announced that Empire Interactive is also working on Speedball II for XBLA. We wonder how long it'll be before the classic library is exhausted and we start having random titles show up. Maybe we'll finally get that update of Hunt the Wumpus.[Thanks Alex]
