Go And Save The City!

A little late to the party on this announcement but the Konami arcade classic X-Men after 18 years is finally coming to home consoles on X-Box Live and the Playstation Network! A big thank to Pixel Enemy for the above video. No pricing or release date info has been given at this time...but I'll gladly take the Dazzler slot for online play!

Box Art Wednesday.

Click the pics to Embiggen Intellivision style!

Doing a little research shows the Pole Position port to the Intellivision was originally going to be done by Atari programmers but little work was completed on it and eventually INTV Corp released their own programmed version.

The Congo Bongo port for the Intellivision was the only home title that included all 4 levels from the arcade version, the 2600 was limited by its hardware and possessed only the first and fourth levels of the arcade title.

Boxing was released in 1981 and allowed players to choose from six different boxers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses with the sixth's skills being chosen by the system itself. The player or players were then put in the ring for 15 rounds until a Knockout was delivered or in the case both boxers are still standing it would go to the judges and points would decided the victor. The title sounds a little ahead of its time to me, you can see for yourself if you have an X-Box Live account because it is now available in the Game Room for purchase.

By the way, nothing to do with video games but all to do with being awesome, the Evil Dead debuted on BluRay yesterday. I picked up a copy at my local store this afternoon and plan to spend the early hours of the morning trapped with Ash in that cabin in the woods again.

To The Sky - Owl City (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole soundtrack)

Lara Croft: The Arcade Game?

Sort of but not really. This is an X-Box 360 custom made arcade cabinet to celebrate the arrive of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light on X-Box Live and it seems that Major Nelson himself is tweeting that they are giving it away. I would not mind winning that for myself!

Oh yeah...the new Iron Maiden came out today...I need to pick that bad boy up on the way home I reckon.

Thanks to Kotaku for the heads up.

The Man Who Would Be King - Iron Maiden

Jail Break.

It's been a little too busy here at the Victory Pellet Vault the last couple of weeks but yesterday I was able to put in a couple of hours playing X-Box Live. I decided to check out Game Room on Live and was very happy to see that they had updated the arcade with quite a few new title choices as well as a ton of Activision Atari 2600 titles.

The game that I spent the most time playing yesterday was a little gem released by Konami in 1985 called Jail Break. The premise of the game is that a mass riot has broken out in a Federal prison, the inmates have captured the Warden and are holding him hostage, while they also roam the streets terrorizing its citizens and killing any law official they happen to see.

Jail Break is a side-scrolling game where you are in control of a lone police officer called in to deal with the riot, starting off with merely your service revolver you can obtain two more weapons (a bazooka and tear gas launcher) by saving the civilians you come across, I was stuck with the revolver most of the time as my run and gun method unfortunately didn't lend itself to civilian safety.

This is a pretty tough game as the inmates do not just merely walk towards you, they swarm you while at the same time throwing Molotov cocktails at you and using their own firearms to try to kill you. I wasn't able to get very far in the game during my limited play time but I definitely had a blast playing it. You have to be pretty careful on how fast you advance on the screen as more often than not you'll end up walking into an oncoming bullet.

At one point I shot a barrel with my bazooka and a shirtless Batman appeared...smiled at me and then disappeared. I'm not sure what that was all about but at least it gave me a pretty hardy chuckle.

A little research shows that this game was inspired by John Carpenter's Escape From New York and that there is an Easter egg of sorts...a type that I've not heard of before...if you use your tear gas gun on the first sniper in the window it will reveal a brief glimpse of a pixelated topless female. I am going out on a limb here and saying that Microsoft made sure that was removed before it was released on X-Box live.

Thanks to the Twin Galaxies scoreboard, the high-score holder for Jail Break is Martin Deem with 265,450 points, recorded by referee on February 21st, 1985.

Universal Theme - Nigel Godrich (Scott Pilgrim Original Score)

One Shall Stand...

...Many Shall Fall.

Over the weekend I was able to find an hour free to myself that didn't require my rushing back to work to settle issues here at the Vault. During that time I found myself playing the multiplayer demo for Transformers: War For Cybertron on X-Box Live. It was an hour that I enjoyed immensely.

While what the player is offered is a neutered version of the game that will be released on the 22nd of this month there was enough there to see in the demo that I feel confident saying it will be a very popular game online.

The hour that I was able to dedicate to the game had me filling the large metal shoes of an Autobot soldier class. An EMP shotgun toting, missile launching master of destruction, who when things get up close and personal (The best way) happens to pull out an Energon axe to swing into the head of any unfortunate Decepticreep that gets in his way. Of course I can also fall back on my alt mode of a futuristic tank if my weapons suddenly run dry...which I did...and the joy of running from a Decepticon soldier, turning the corner, and transforming into a tank before blasting him into eternity was quite priceless.

The next round I found myself with a Decepticon allegiance, it seems in the demo that you have no control of what side you will aligning yourself with, and once again I chose the soldier class but this time I picked a new set of weapons to see the difference in how they work. Now I need to add that the demo leaves out the Leader class as well as the Scientist class so the game will be a very different field of battle come the 22nd.

Hopefully tonight I might find some time to go back to the war torn surface of Cybertron and try out the Scout class, my bot was taken offline more than a few times by the Scout's ability to cloak and put a sword through the back of my head.

If any of you readers want to give me a yell on X-Box Live look for my gamertag: Unicron2005. A big thanks to IGN.com for the above pics.

Short Change Hero - The Heavy