Coming up for the XBLA

There's been a slew of titles announced that are coming to the Xbox Live Arcade recently. Although we're still waiting for Street Fighter II and Texas Hold 'em, I can't help but get excited for the newly announced titles in production.

The first up is UNO, yeah that's right UNO. That crazy (8) card game enjoyed by families and post-apocalyptic totalitarian dictators alike. The game's going to have multiple modes and Xbox Live support, so you know it'll be quite the attraction to the supposed "family" demographic.

Next Midway's announced a whole bunch of titles they're working on. Mortal Kombat 3 being the headliner they've also got Paperboy, Defender, Cyberball and "Root"beer Tapper in the works. Unfortunately no release dates have been given yet, but having seen their previous success on the XBLA my guess is it won't be long.

Namco's counter to this is the announcement at the GDC of both Pac-Man and Galaga making appearances, both featuring Live support in the form of multiplayer games and leaderboards.

Lastly Microsoft's constant quest for indie content has brought quite a few interesting ideas to the table. I posted about Cloning Clyde earlier, NinjaBee's crazy platformer/puzzle/comedy game. But a new racing title called MadTracks by Load Inc. is in development and is to play omething more akin to MarioKart. Novadrome by Stainless Games is also in development. The zany 3-on-3 basketball game HoopWorld by Streamline studios and the Unreal 3 enginized RoboBlitz by Naked Sky Entertainment are recieving their finishing touches.

With all these games being released before the end of this summer you'd think that'd be plenty of licensing for the Microsoft marketing guys, but SEGA has recently gone into partnership with the XBLA team and will be offering the same games that will appear on Nintendo's virtual console. But even that seems not enough as rumour (take it as you will) has it MS has started working deals to incorperate a legal version of M.A.M.E. to the dashboard.

I can't wait to find out if that M.A.M.E. rumour is ture, but regardless, I think I'm going to need some more MS points.