
Alongside the press release for
Contra hitting XBLA, Microsoft sent another press release outlining a slew of Atari classics heading to Live Arcade next year. The six Atari games to be released are:
- Centipede/Millipede
- Battlezone
- Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe
- Missile Command
- Tempest
- Warlords
All of the games will feature both original and "evolved" versions. The evolved versions, similar to Konami's offerings, will feature revamped graphics and sound. All games will have leaderboards and achievements, and multiplayer games will have Live support. Surprisingly, many of these games are receiving some pretty impressive new features, including Live Vision support for
Battlezone and
Warlords. It looks like many of the games will receive three dimensional upgrades instead of simply using high definition sprites, too. Finally, and this is not a joke,
Centipede evolved has motion blur. Motion. Blur. In
Centipede. If that's not worth $5, we don't know what is.
Also worth mentioning, the press release confirmed that the following titles should hit the Arcade before the end of 2006:
- Small Arms
- Assault Heroes
- Novadrome (?)
- Heavy Weapon
- Defender
It should be noted that this isn't necessarily
all the titles we'll be seeing by year's end (we're looking at you
RoboBlitz). Full press release after the break.