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Castle Crashers dev's third game closer to unveiling
The Behemoth, developer of Xbox Live Arcade favorites Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers is preparing to reveal its third -- as of yet unnamed -- title. The dev has been teasing "Game #3" on its blog and Twitter feed for some time, updating the latter today with, "Trailer for game #3 is complete!"Given that the 2009 Game Developers Conference kicks off in San Francisco in only two weeks' time, we'd say the odds are good that Game #3 will get a proper unveiling -- and title -- during the event. Predictions? Let's hear 'em in comments.[Via Primotech]
Virtually tour Behemoth and get a peek at new project
OK, so maybe the tour video of indie dev The Behemoth's new San Diego office isn't exactly newsworthy. In fact, the video we've posted after the break is basically just Dan Paladin pretending that he's different people from the staff before (in most cases) admitting that he doesn't really know what they do.But we thought you might be interested to see the sculptures of animal orbs at this same link, which is supposedly from a "secret project." Animal Orbs Pinball? We can only hope.
The creation of Castle Crashers' chilly Frost King
The crew behind Castle Crashers, artist to the stars Dan Paladin and programmer elite Tom Fulp, just willingly pulled the curtain back from their super secret design process. With the curtain removed, we get an insider's look into the creation process and how the evil Frost King came to be. As you can see per the art above, Mr. Paladin puts a heavy coat of "artistic magic" over the placeholder designs which sort of remind us of some sort of third grade school art project. View the creation of the Frost King in the 650% normal speed video that's embedded after the break. That Paladin has talent!
World at War and Castle Crashers top Live charts
New Xbox Live activity figures for the week of January 12th have just made their way online thanks to one Major Nelson and claiming the number one spot is Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War. That zombified weekend must have helped. Halo 3, CoD4, Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead round out the top five. As far as Xbox Live Arcade games go, Castle Crashers sits on top, partly due to the fact that new DLC just released. Full list of Live rankings for retail, XBLA and Community Games is viewable after the jump.
Castle Crashers King Pack available now
The bad news: There is no new Xbox Live Arcade release this week (we do get something next week, though). The good news: There is new downloadable content for Castle Crashers and it's only 160 Microsoft Points. The description for the content in Marketplace is shamefully sparse but, thankfully, The Behemoth has already detailed exactly what the pack contains. So without further ado, the King Pack includes the following: 2 new playable characters: The King (duh) and the Open Faced Gray Knight (not to be confused with an open faced club sandwich) New Pelter animal orb (which appears to be a seal, cute) 3 new weapons: NG Lollipop, NG Gold Sword and the King's Mace You can see some of the new content in our super secret spy pic above. The King is a special character, as his magic actually heals himself and the other players, which is unique among the various magics in the game. He also only has three teeth, which also makes him special.Download the King Pack from Xbox Live Marketplace
This Wednesday: Castle Crashers DLC hitting XBLA
We've got new Castle Crashers DLC coming to Xbox Live Arcade this week for 160 ($2), according to Major Major Major Major (Nelson). As of this writing, no other details were available on his site nor on the Behemoth's blog, but we suspect it's probably the new characters and weapons we heard about in September. Sure, it's not technically a new title, but we'll let them slide this time. After all, it could be worse. As for the week after, you've got The Maw.
Castle Crashers 'King Pack' DLC releasing this Wed [update]
Update: GSB informs us that the DLC will contain two new characters (Open Faced Grey Knight and The King), a new seal animal orb named Pelter, three new weapons including the Gold Sword, and a King's Heal potion that heals your entire party.Thanks to one helpful Major Nelson, we've just been informed that Castle Crashers' firstest downloadable content will be releasing to the Xbox Live Marketplace this Wednesday and will be priced at 160 Microsoft points. The King Pack is the DLC's name and if the name is any indication of what'll be included in the paid content, we'd say there'd be a king involved in it somewhere. Now that we think about it, the new content will probably look something like this. We've contacted The Behemoth regarding this Castle Crashers DLC and are patiently awaiting concrete details.
Major Nelson reveals top 20 Xbox Live games and arcade downloads
Well, that was entirely unexpected. How, in a year chock-full of incredible Xbox Live-enabled releases, did Yaris manage to not only be the most downloaded XBLA title of 2008, but also place first on the annual Xbox Live activity charts? We could have sworn that those accomplishments would have gone to Castle Crashers and Halo 3, respectively! What's that? They did, but we thought we'd distort the truth because we haven't made a Yaris joke in a while? Oh, thank God.Yes, Major Nelson recently released the final Xbox Live statistics for 2008 -- Halo 3 dominated the overall Xbox Live activity chart (followed by CoD 4 and GTA IV), and Castle Crashers was the top downloaded XBLA title of the year (in front of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 and Braid). We've got both of the totally unsurprising lists posted after the jump, as well as the top Live titles from the original Xbox, the winner of which will straight-up blow your mind.
FanPoll'08: Most Disappointing Game or Issue
While 2008 certainly brought us new and exciting titles, we did encounter our fair share of disappointments. Surprisingly, some of our biggest disappointments came from titles we actually loved due to issues that drove us mad! Online problems and game ending glitches broke pieces of our favorite titles. Bugs may just be bugs but sometimes they destroy an entire experience, for example the broken online play and subsequent four-month-long wait for a patch kept one of our favorite XBLA titles -- Castle Crashers -- off our XBLA Game of the Year list. That in mind along with other titles we were really hoping would be fantastic or bug free in spots, here are our nominees for Most Disappointing Game or Issue of 2008.Read more about these five nominees:Castle Crashers Online ProblemsGears of War 2 Matchmaking IssuesMercenaries 2: World in FlamesMirror's EdgeFable II Game Ending BugsVoting closes at 12:01am on December 30, 2008. Results will be revealed on December 30, 2008. <a href ="http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1226535/" >FanPoll'08: Most Disappointing Game / Issue</a> <br/> <span style="font-size:9px;"> (<a href ="http://www.polldaddy.com"> polls</a>)</span>
Castle Crashers Title Update now available ... finally!
Can it really be? Are our eyes deceiving us? Even when The Behemoth said last night that the long-long-awaited Castle Crashers Title Update would launch today, we didn't believe it -- but sure enough, the patch is live. We don't know the exact size, but the update took mere seconds to install. We just tried a four-player online match and it ran flawlessly. No official patch notes are out yet, but let us know if your castle crashing issues have been resolved.Update: Partial list of patch notes here.
No joke, Castle Crashers patch has released! [update]
Update: The Castle Crashers patch has now been released. Original post below.It's so very true! The long awaited, long demanded and long delayed online co-op fixing Castle Crashers patch is but a few hours away from being released. Developer The Behemoth just informed the masses via their official forums that the Castle Crashers patch has passed Microsoft certification and will release as a title update later this morning at 5:00AM eastern (2:00AM pacific). We're speechless! After chatting with The Behemoth a few weeks back, we were told that the patch was still being worked on and not through Microsoft cert. So, their recent announcement about its release has sort of caught us by surprise. No matter, Castle Crashers patch countdown is GO! Pinch us, we must be dreaming.[Thanks, to everyone who sent this in]
The Behemoth still tinkering with that Castle Crashers patch
The fact The Behemoth's fun, but undeniably broken Castle Crashers hasn't yet been patched boggles the mind. More than two years after the game's initial reveal, what players are left with is a crippled 1200 icon on their dashboard and months of promises for something better down the road. Not good enough guys, not even close.Our sister site, Xbox 360 Fanboy, stepped up and asked The Behemoth point blank what's the hold up, to which they were treated to the same sort of non-information we've been reading for months. Yes, a patch is coming, and the devs say they are working to "get the title update out as quickly as we can." Also, the patch is "definitely reaching the end of the process," though a release date remains unknown. We've reached out to The Behemoth to see if we can find out more, but come on guys. Some things bend your line of credulity. Others, like this fiasco, just break it right in two.
The Behemoth: Release of Castle Crashers patching nearing 'end of the process'
Ever since its release, Castle Crashers has suffered from wonky Xbox Live co-op gameplay, a problem developer The Behemoth has addressed and promised a prompt fix for. Now, after over 3 months of patient waiting and hearing word that the game fixing patch entered Microsoft certification, we still have no Castle Crashers patch. So, we reached out to the crew over at The Behemoth to learn what's taking so darn long and were told: "We're working with Microsoft to get the title update out as quickly as we can. Sadly, we can't get into details about the certification process, but we've resolved the game's issues with data loss and networking in addition to other bugs. We can't really comment on the release yet as we're not allowed to talk about it because of Microsoft, but the update's release is definitely reaching the end of the process.We've received great support from our fans on our forums in identifying issues. That feedback has helped out a lot and we're really honored to have such an awesome group of fans in the community."So, The Behemoth is keeping mum, but still plans on releasing the patch as soon as possible. Hopefully sooner than later, because our XBLA focus has moved on over these past few months. That said, The Behemoth could lure us back with some new DLC ...
Fan made Castle Crashers arcadestick makes us jealous
Now, this is what friends are for. Creative tipster SodaPopinski shot us an image of this Castle Crashers themed arcadestick which he custom built for a friend. Made from spare parts from his other creations, SodaPopinski has quickly shot his way to our annual "friend of the year" award -- if we had one, that is. Now if someone could convince Microsoft to release a standard arcade style stick for XBLA and fighting game fans, we'd be happy campers.
Castle Crashers patch ready to enter MS cert
The long overdue, much anticipated and highly demanded patch for The Behemoth's Castle Crashers is done. You know, the patch that's supposed to fix the game's online issues. Like we said, it's done, just don't rejoice yet. See, it still has to travel on over to Microsoft certification where (GASP!) it could be rejected for some reason. And we don't have to tell you what a rejection from Microsoft will do to the patch's potential release. We shudder to think. Keep those fingers crossed for a patch release in a month's time, that is, if you still care.
Castle Crashers patch readied for certification
We finally have some news on the long-awaited patch for Castle Crashers. According to a post on developer Behemoth's site, the problems (including connectivity issues) have been "knocked out" and the team is currently verifying the updates before sending it off to Microsoft for certification. In perhaps one of the biggest understatements, the post states, "we are aware that many of you are unhappy about the wait" but explains that they had to fix all known issues at once, as opposed to release incremental updates. Certification can take a few weeks, so don't hold out hope for seeing the patch before Halloween. There should be more than enough titles to keep your attention in the interim.
Gamer cosplay takes over NY Anime Festival
Click to embiggen It's official. Gaming-related cosplay has crashed the anime party. You'd think a bastion such as the New York Anime Festival would be sacred ground for pure Naruto costume play, but it certainly was not this weekend. With the three-day event at the Manhattan Jacob Javitz Center wrapping up today, we've seen hundreds of gamers strut their stuff amongst the common 'Misa Misas' and 'Sasukes.' Who did we see at the show? Well for starters, the cool kids from The World Ends With You showed us just how awesome it is to be a Shibuya wallflower. Then, we greased up and wrestled with El Blaze from Virtua Fighter 5 -- he was tough by the way. The Persona 3 crew refrained from shooting themselves in the head to take a picture for us, which was a nice gesture. In honor of the festival's guest of honor, Yoshitaka Amano, several people dressed up as Amano-inspired Final Fantasy characters. Evermore intriguing, people also dressed up as characters from games that are not even out yet. Oh, and almost forgot, Pyramid Head; you can't have a convention without one of those. Anyway, there's more in the gallery below (including a spot of anime cosplay). Can you name all the characters and what games they belong to? %Gallery-32897%
'Summer of Arcade' behind XBLA's best month yet
Newly released figures show that the "Summer of Arcade" wasn't just a windfall for gamers; it made Microsoft some serious scratch. MS reports that it saw a 58% increase in Arcade title purchases during the five-week "event," amounting to a 67% increase in revenue generated by XBLA in August – a new monthly record for the service. The company itself acknowledges that the quality of the titles was crucial to the gains. "The reason for all of this success? The games were really good," it said in a press release. Xbox Live general manager, Marc Whitten, promises that, "The focus on quality games doesn't stop with the Summer of Arcade." So ... we're due for a "Fall and Winter of Arcade," then? Whitten called out upcoming XBLA releases such as Portal: Still Alive, South Park, and R-Type Dimensions as examples of a new wave of potential Arcade hits. "We have plenty more great titles coming out in the next few months and beyond that we think will continue to fuel this incredible momentum," he said. Wait, back up ... did he mean the R-Type Dimensions that hasn't been officially announced yet?
Castle Crashers remains top played XBLA title
For the third consecutive week The Behemoth's latest release, Castle Crashers, has remained the most played Xbox Live Arcade release. Still reeling from its online play hiccups, Castle Crashers has been singled out as one of the most successful releases to ever hit the service. Released nearly two years since it was announced, Castle Crashers was at the forefront of a price listing controversy that pegged the beat-em-up as the first 1800MS point Arcade release but was then confirmed at a slightly lower price of 1400MS 1200MS points.After stealing the top slot for the third time we wonder, are any upcoming releases tempting enough to take over? If you said Feeding Frenzy 2 congratulations. You're so wrong.Update: We need coffee, price of Castle Crashers is and always has been 1200MS points.%Gallery-27824%
Castle Crashers seizes 250,000 players
Speaking to Gamasutra, indie developer The Behemoth has revealed that 250,000 players have now experienced the joys of barging into throne rooms and slaughtering evil, fish-wielding bear ... things. Castle Crashers' lead artist, Dan Paladin, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by the game's success. "I was optimistic and hopeful for Castle Crashers but I wasn't prepared for the reception it got." Of course, neither was the game's online capabilities, with Paladin re-re-re-re-iterating that work on a soothing patch continues unabated. "You fix, you test, you verify in as many situations as possible, you fix again if you need to, you submit the update to Microsoft, they verify the fix, etcetera," he explained, unable to confirm a precise release date. While people are waiting for error-free online romps, they've apparently been returning to The Behemoth's other XBLA darling, Alien Hominid. Compared to this time last year, nearly five times as many people are playing it and, if our memory serves, dying a lot.
