#xblig

Streets of Fury EX

To properly explain the surprising level of quality in Streets of Fury EX, it becomes necessary to describe a few factual statements about the game. The game itself is a highly enhanced remake of a game previously seen on XBOX Live Indie Games, a service that typically featured small, shareware-esque games, often made by a singular person. The characters on screen are digitized actors with varying levels of martial arts training, many of whom are likely friends and family of the developers. The divisive internet personality The Nostalgia Critic is an unlockable playable character. All these factors should result in a game that should be awful, and yet by some total cosmic fluke, it all results in a surprisingly solid, even deep brawler. 

Following me beating Not For Broadcast last time on where I used to log these, I wanted to look into more FMV games, at least the less known ones. Enter me finding a notably well-received indie game at a lowly 75 cents and one half-hour playthrough later and here we are! I'm, really not sure what I was expecting.

Tempura of the Dead (Xbox 360)

Developed/Published by: 8bits Fanatics Released: 09/11/2010 Completed: 22/05/2021 Completion: Finished it! Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Wayhey! Here’s a good one, an Xbox Live Indies game that you actually can’t get anymore so maybe reading a review of it in 2021 or later isn’t that helpful, but I mentioned this a while back on the Insert Credit podcast and it made me go back and finish it, because I’ll be frank, as much as I love all the weird Xbox indies they were definitely the kind of thing where you downloaded it for a buck, played it for a while, went “that was a laugh” then didn’t actually stick it through.

Tempura of the Dead comes from 8bits fanatics, who released this and then Aban Hawkins and the 1001 Spikes on Xbox Live Indies and then made the sad mistake of partnering with the bad bad no good publisher Nicalis who went on to release 1001 Spikes on a few other things while claiming the credit and (likely) ripping them off. They did go on to create Steel Sword Story which is up on Steam, but like a lot of indies on Steam it seems to have gone totally overlooked, unfortunately (I’ll be honest, I’m literally only aware it came out while researching to write this up.)

Anyway. It’s a bit of a shame this has gone forgotten, because while it’s definitely not, like, a top-top tier retro-inspired title, it’s a cute shooty-platform-me-do that’s got a neat juggle mechanic and a silly story that definitely worked a lot better on release than it does now--maybe that’s why they haven’t been arsed to revisit it. Plus I assume not making any money from 1001 Spikes or Steel Sword Story.

If there’s a serious issue, it’s that input is a bit sluggish (really annoying to fall off a platform because you can’t quite push left and jump at the same time…) and that there’s not a ton of variety, but man… I played a few levels of this at a time, enjoyed the challenge, enjoyed levelling up Obama Thompson and Sujimoto, and then beat it. It’s like… a really good example of a classic indie, to be honest. A wee twist on a classic formula, doesn’t outstay its welcome. Shame you can’t buy it!

Will I ever play it again? Would be really cool if this had multiplayer, actually, and if it got re-released with some tweaks, sure, I could play it again. I should check out Steel Sword Story, honestly.

Final Thought: I also took the opportunity to play Bloody Checkers, which I may (or may not?) write up soon because I’ve finished the main story but am completely at a loss how to get any further. I found only one (incomplete) solution online, but I think it's actually been deleted! Anyone want to write one? Or play online with me so I can turn all these useless diamonds and stuff into actual money, if that's what that does, because otherwise I'm stuck grinding against enemies and hoping they'll walk into traps that make me a profit over the cost of the traps, the mechanics of which are... ach this can wait for the write-up.

Explosionade was one of the many indie titles available on the XBLIG service for Xbox 360. Now that the service has closed you can still purchase it on Steam. This is very much an old school single screen arcade game mixed in with modern run and gun twin stick gameplay. Think Bubble Bobble meets Contra/Metal Slug and you have a good idea of what Explosionade is all about, only with with added mechs.

So our XBLIG feature is in the progress of being updated, currently we are slowly adding, what other platforms these games are available on now. Not every game is available on another system and some are now gone for good.

Hopefully, however, this will act as a guide to where you can still pick up some of these great games. It’s also been added to the Features Article List so you can easily find it.

If you missed out on the service before it closed be sure to checkout our three part video series on the subject: