Chances are it’s heating up where you live, making a little gaming time in air-conditioned comfort all the more attractive. While Microsoft has yet to announce 2011‘s ‘Summer of Arcade” slate, the Xbox LIVE Arcade game release schedule is starting to fill up already. The next few months boast a mix of updated classics and anticipated new titles. Try out these upcoming XBLA releases to fill up your gaming afternoons this summer.
10. Retro City Rampage: It seems like it’s been forever since this game was first announced, but this summer we’ll finally get to enter its open 8-bit world. Retro City Rampage borrows from sandbox games like GTA, but the game goes back way further than the top-down early GTA games for its style, mining all the classic tropes, characters, and icons of retro gaming to fill the pixelated streets of Theftropolis City. Recalling carefree summer vacation gaming memories of our youth and boasting tons of content for a downloadable title, Retro City Rampage looks to be a perfect title for the season.
9. Guardian Heroes: This updated port got some initial bad press for a questionable graphical filter, but with Sega confirming that you can play it in all its old-school original glory, there’s still good reason to be excited about this one. Guardian Heroes is a genuine bit of niche gaming history, coming both from the rarely-revisited Saturn console and fan favorite developer Treasure. The side-scrolling RPG/beat ‘em up hybrid features co-op and a variety of branching paths through the level to keep you hunting down all of its secrets (including a Gunstar Heroes cameo) for hours to come.
8. Rock of Ages: This Atlus-published, Ace Team-developed take on tower defense keeps jumping around the release schedule, but with luck it will make its current summer release window. Ace previously brought us the visually intriguing, but rather flat gameplay of Zeno Clash, but Rock of Ages’ weird take on tower defense should balance out the equation this time. The ‘rock’ of the title is a huge boulder with a face that you control to take out your opponent’s defensive structures. As for the ‘ages’ part? That’s in the game’s often Monty Python-esque art style, in which each level borrows from different ages of art history ranging from Ancient Greek to Romanticism.
This feature top 10 list continues on the next page, please click Page 2 below to continue with our Top 10 XBLA games for Summer 2011.
