Thursday 21 May 2009

Gamespotting 021 - The Days of The ZX Spectrum Happening Once Again


Now; over the last few days; I have been paying on the then dust ridden Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and looking on their respective game marketplaces. Now even though I prefer my Playstation 3 as it doesn't break down every few months or so; I love Xbox Live. Mainly for three reasons

Number One: The content you get on Xbox Live is so much better; has so many classic games on there ranging from Sonic The Hedgehog and Streets of Rage to Ikaruga and Castlevainia: Synthany of The Night (and soon Marvel vs Capcom as well.)

Number Two: You can get the Fallout 3 DLC packs on there which I have enjoyed a lot (Broken Steel being my favourite) but this will soon change when the PS3 versions are released and I can upgrade my completed character)

But the main reason I like this is that it has a dedicated page called Community Games which allows gamers to download XNA built titles created by small game dev teams for not many credits (400 being the standard price) and play them on your console. Now this is not the first time this has happened as Sony have done it with their Net Yaroze add on for the original playstation and also allowing games like Flow, Flower and Riff: Everyday Shooter to be allowed on the Playstation Network which were all created by one person teams.

I love these games; my favourite at the moment is Weapon of Choice on Xbox Live which is like a combination of Contra and the Top Down Sections of Bionic Commando: Rearmed and is only 400 points which is around the £3 pound mark which I say is very good value for a game of this calibur.

But I hope this trend can continue as this is now The Bedroom Programming boom of the early 80s started with computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64; and lead to the creation of famous British Games Developers such as one of my Idols Matthew Smith who created Jet Set Willy and Manic Minor and British gaming legends; The Bitmap Brothers.

The Bedroom Coder is back; only this time we have the Xbox 360, XNA and the Internet to make the gaming millions and hopefully; it wont stop here.

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