Early this morning, VGM posted there latest podcast complete with an interview with Aaron Greenberg, who is the head fo the XBox Live Marketplace. One of the more interesting bits of the interview is when he talks about the possibility of Rare IP coming to XBLA. While he seems to say that Nintendo 64 games, specifically Golden Eye, are a little on the large side and are not currently in the works, he seems to imply that it’s just a matter of time. Greenberg also makes it sound as if we may see some 8 and 16-bit titles first.
R.C. Pro-Am and Battletoads anyone?
Head over and check out the podcast here.

pixelStorm announced on the official xbox forum recently that they had put out a patch for Bankshot Billiards. Here’s the post:

Here are the items we have addressed in the patch:

• -Ranked live games causing a freeze or crash
• -Player match games now show the other players aiming aid level
• -Default time for ranked mode games was changed to 60 seconds
• -When a timer expires in a live game the following player has ball in hand
• -Shot panel now shows the buttons that must be held down to activate the various features (english, spin, power)
• -200 games achievement now given away when 200 games are played instead of won (this is inline with the description now)
• -Single player leaderboards cap the display to hours now instead of a single hour
• -Music tracks would not sync to defaults when a client quit (in certain conditions)
• -3D camera modes (so this is only a 2D game, right?)

The 3D modes are accessed via the D pad during gameplay:

• Up: Reverts to the top view camera
• Down: Static camera (zooms out from location of shot)
• Left: Dynamic camera (follows action)
• Right: Cue ball camera (use the left analog stick to rotate around the cue ball and zoom in / out)

This took a lot longer to release then to assemble, so thanks for hanging in there!

Thrills Killa, over at xbox360news.com, has an interview with Dennis Bourdain, a VP of Business Development, at Load inc.
Head over and check out what the ex UBI employee had to say

Co-founder of Stainless Games Neil Barnden was kind enough to answer a few questions about Crystal Quest, XBLA Development and there next game Novadrome.

So here is the second roundup of rumors around the net about XBLA.
Garage Games next game will be a tribes based game.
Rumor: Before GDC, video clips started surfacing that were being attributed to GG’s next game and how much it looked like an updated tribes universe.
Our Take: As reported at Kotaku.com, while GG did show a video at GDC that looked a lot like it could have been from the tribes world, it was actually just a demo of what there engine (named Torque) could do, and would actually be released to the comunity for consumption.
Road Rash is coming to XBLA.
Rumor: Pictures showed up and then disappeared that were supposed to be from a debug xbox and showed two gamer’s gamer score for serveral unreleased games including Uno, Poker, Cloning Clyde and Road Rash.
Our Take: The initial posting and then removal of these pictures seemed to lend a bit of creditbility to them, solely due to many people claiming NDA. Also, at the time, nothing had been announced about Cloning Clyde and google searches brought up nothing about video games at all. The next day, NinjaBee’s latest game was announced. The second hint, far more than the first leads us to think that this is a case of someone breaking there NDA and letting the cat out of the bag.
If this is just a rumor, then it means that someone who knew the name and had access to NinjaBee’s unreleased game faked up some screenshots to add in road rage. Seems a little bit far fetched to me.
That’s it for this week, and if you hear of any juicy XBLA rumors be sure to send them to rumors@xblarcade.com

According to VGM, they have found out that Street Figher II Hyper Fighting should be out by the end of April. Also, it should be priced at 800-1200 points. Considering the hype for this game, most people will be happy with the price with even at the high point it’s with Bankshot Billiards and MBU.
You can check it out here

So after hinting about it in our interview, Ninja Bee anounced Cloning Clyde, A side-scrolling platformer game. While there is no info as to a release date, the offical game page lists the game features as:
The full game lets you save your progress (including unlocked achievements and gamer pictures), and includes:

• Explore a visually compelling world filled with hilarious action and crazy adventure as you struggle to escape the clutches of the evil company Dupliclone, Inc.
• Play as a variety of mutant Clydes, each with unique abilities, including Chicken-Clyde, Frog-Clyde, Sheep-Clyde and more.
• 2 simultaneous players cooperating on a single console. Up to 4 players battling it out in versus mode on a single console for great parties and family play.
• Solve exciting and addictive puzzles with a variety of resolutions.
• Play not only as one character but also switch between hundreds of clones.
• Hours of fun with 2 distinct game modes including 40 cooperative levels and 6 versus arenas.
• Play online with up to 8 friends.

So head over there now to check out the game and some of the screenshots

Microsoft had it’s media blowout in Tokyo at the Tokyo International Forum Hall yesterday, and tried (yet again) to get Japanese gamers interested in the XBox 360. While this tactic may or may not pay of for MS, we did get some information about a couple of games coming soon.
First off Eastern developers SNK, Konami and Bandai Namco and Yukes will be bringing offers to XBLA. The first of these will be from Bandai Namco and will be Pac-Man followed by Galaga. While it wasn’t released whether these games would be available in the west, it would be a good guess due to the, shall we say slightly larger, user base here.
You can read more about the media briefing at IGN

Hard OCP has a great interview with Mark Frohnmayer, President of GarageGames, where he discusses the possiblity of Map packs, Game type additions, and a bunch of other downloadable content. While no firm answers were given, and it was revealed that the shipped game cannot, without modification, handle extra maps, there were enough positive answers to believe we’ll be seeing something before there next game is out. My personal favorite question/answer was: Multiplayer Ultra map pack? Strong possibility in the near time frame. So head over and read the interview now

Here is the first of the new (hopefully) weekly features, there will be more features coming down the pipe, but all in good time. Anyways, here is this weeks rumor roundup…
Uno to be developed by Silver Creek Entertainment.
Rumor: When the announcement came out that one of the next games to be released came out of the blue, the rumor mill started turning about who the developer could be. Many sites (this one included) figured that it would have to be the only dev to release any card games to date, Silver Creek Entertainment.
Our Take: We were wrong. According to this post here, Silver Creek has nothing to do with Uno, so were still left guessing as to who it’ll be.
No Rare owned properties will be on the Revolution Virtual Console
Rumor: None of Rare’s IP, including Goldeneye and Killer Instinct will be making it’s way to big “N”s virtual console.
Our Take: Did anyone actually think that this would ever happen? The real question is which of them will make there way to XBLA?