Xbox 360 Fanboy

XBLA in Brief returns this week with a two-for-one look at both Bliss Island and Brain Challenge. Bliss Island is a strange collection of boring mini-games that clocks in at 400 MS points. Brain Challenge is a pretty good knockoff of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. One of them is actually entertaining. That game is not Bliss Island. We'll give you one guess as to which game was halfway decent. Watch the video above and rejoice in the fact that you will never have to play Bliss Island.

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Update: There was some confusion, but Bliss Island is in fact 400 Microsoft points.

Gather the siblings, kids and parents, it's Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday and we have two brand new releases! Both Gameloft's 800 point, mind straining Brain Challenge and Codemasters' 800 point 400 point old-school Bliss Island are available for download right now and we're sure both games are eagerly awaiting your purchase. And to help with your downloading decisions, we've ever so kindly uploaded a few screenshots into their respective galleries below. Personally, we're committing to a Brain Challenge trial download, because we're curious to see how much of our noggin those virtual doctors think we use. Here's to hoping we obtain the genius stamp of approval!

This Wednesday, March 12th both the mind hurting Brain Challenge and puzzling lands of Bliss Island will be available for download off the Xbox Live Arcade.

Brain Challenge features numerous questions that'll test your cognitive abilities, online and offline multiplayer and all kinds of progressive charts all for 800 Microsoft points. PomPom Games' Bliss Island is an interesting puzzle game which comes packed with over 25 challenges, nine levels, online multiplayer and can be downloaded for 400 points. Remember, both games will be available this Wednesday and if you can't remember that ... well, then we recommend you give Brain Challenge a purchase. Yah dig?

Bliss Island is a PC and PSP game developed by PomPom, the same developers that did Mutant Storm's Empire and Reloaded. The PC game is being brought to XBLA with little fanfare, as prior to this we only had info about the game from the infamous ESRB leak-a-thon. So with such limited information out there, it's a bit strange for the entire xbox.com site to just pop up out of nowhere, especially with the full set of achievements and no release date.

The game itself revolves around moving into objects into position using blasts of air. The gameplay has been described as a 3D, puzzle-inspired, kiddy version of billiards, with a dash of WarioWare thrown in. As fun as the game could (or could not) be, the news is still a bit strange when comparing the XBLA feature list to that of the previous releases on PSP and PC. The XBLA version has around 25 challenges across 9 levels and with single player and online multiplayer. Whereas the PC version has 90 challenges via 5 levels and two single player modes. Do we smell quick cash-in attempt?

Achievements listed after the break.

Update: Peggle has now been confirmed for a Q2 2008 XBLA release. More details here.

Today, being the little detectives we like to think we are, we decided to go search crazy on the ESRB ratings board website and we struck XBLA gold! We came across Xbox 360 listings for three new and unannounced XBLA games including PopCap's addictive Peggle, Codemasters' Bliss Island and Majesco's Ultra Bust-A-Move which, in all honestly, could be an Xbox Original seeing that it originally released to the black box a few years back. Since we found all these games listed on the ESRB we have absolutely no other details pertaining to release dates or pricing, but we're sure we'll be seeing one, two or all of them making headlines later this year. So, who is up for some XBLA Peggle?