Remember all of the doofy fun you had with Earthworm Jim back on the ye olde Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo? Have you ever said to yourself: “Man, I’d love to go back and play that again, but I don’t wanna drag out my Genesis/SNES…” Well folks, Xbox Live Arcade has got your back.

Earthworm Jim HD will be heading to XBLA as a timed exclusive later this year, with a PSN release to follow. In addition to a full high-def overhaul, the game will also receive new levels and 4-player co-op shenanigans. If that isn’t enough to excite you, consider this: Keyboard Cat makes an appearance. Seriously.

Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, an Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network game, is a great example of a tactical RPG, or may be described more accurately as a platform turn based strategy RPG. This game reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics how you can move your characters from one box to another. You are to use these characters you are given against a pre-determined amount of “baddies” on that particular level. In the training exercises that they have you do at the beginning of the game, you are Tobias, a young boy, who is, you guessed it, just learning about the ways of the sword, the bow, and magic. This does not mean that you are restricted to controlling only one character, you control everyone on the battle field unless there is a special character that assists you in that specific battle.

The game play aspect started out a little clunky and slow but once the game got going it really felt like you could get sucked in and keep playing this game for hours at a time. You are able to use different types of physical attacks such as a regular sword slashing attack and a long range attack that you can switch to, like a bow or another long range weapon and target your enemies from afar. There are also magic attacks like a regular damage attack used to hurt enemies directly, hexes that can slow down or hurt enemies over time like a snare or poison; your magic can also be used to help your characters like the heal spell that gives an ally of your choosing his/her health back, or cure that can take off poisons or snares. Even the technical aspect of this game is exceptional; for example, some regular attacks that you do can actually hurt allies standing next to you if you swing a huge weapon around. The same thing goes with magic, if a magic spell that you use has an area of effect damage to it, you will hurt any allies in the area. So be careful when you choose to unleash a huge magic spell around your allies, because your enemies may die but your allies probably will as well.

The graphics in this game were decent as far as the reactions to attacks and the magic spells that are cast for an arcade game. But as far as the surroundings you can tell that there wasn’t that much put into it and that they were more focused on the game play aspect instead of how the game looked. There were no problems with any of the sounds while attacks were being made, but the surrounding ambiance sounds were very plain.

This game is rated teen for blood, fantasy violence, and mild language. When playing the game, the blood was squirts of red bubbles coming up from a character or enemy that had been attacked, and a prolonged squirt when that character or enemy dies. As far as fantasy violence goes, the above fight sequences is as much violence that you are going to get from this game. If there is any language it is unnoticeable and not overly vulgar.

This relatively new XBLA/PSN game is developed by Hijinx Studios LLC (previously known as PhoenixSoft) and published by Konami Digital Entertainment Inc.

According to the keyboard-clacking monkeys at Kotaku, the Dreamcast classic Sonic Adventure may be coming to Xbox Live Arcade in the near future. A port of the game that some consider to be the last decent Sonic title popped up on the gaming press incarnation of XBL on PartnerNet, but was promptly removed when word began to spread. Sega remains silent on the issue.

What say you? I’m not afraid to drag out my Dreamcast and fire up Sonic Adventure whenever I’m in the mood, so this news doesn’t light any fires in my mind. You readers, however, might be jumping for joy at this news for all I know. If so, looks like Microsoft and Sega are about to hook you up. If not, well, there’s always Modern Warfare 2 to keep you busy.

Take a look at the Blue Bomber kickin’ it old-school in the latest Mega Man sequel, courtesy of Evil Avatar and le Youtube.

It’s not much, but it’s something to tide you crazy MM fans over until the game’s release. When is that, you ask? March 2010, my friends.

LucasArts sent out a press release today announcing Lucidity, a new game from the team behind the re-imagined The Secret of Monkey Island and chronicles “a trip into the imagination of Sofi, a young girl who is filled with a persistent desire to explore new worlds and overcome all obstacles in her way.”

The press release also states: “In this challenging puzzle platform game, players are tasked with keeping Sofi safe as she drifts deeper into the strange new world of her dreams. Through quick reaction and placement of randomly generated puzzle pieces, players must create a path through beautifully detailed dreamscapes to keep Sofi in perpetual motion and deliver her to safety.”

Lucidity is scheduled for release on October 7th with a release on both XBLA and PC.

OK, I’m just going to get to the point. Shadow Complex rocks! Seriously, get your Microsoft Points, run to your console and buy this game now. Don’t play the trial first—you know it rocks. Don’t wait a few days—you’ll be playing Batman in a few days. Get this game now!

For the uninitiated, Shadow Complex is Chair Entertainment’s new exploration based, side-scrolling, shooter built ground up for Xbox Live Arcade. The game borrows heavily from all the great Metroid and Castlevania (Symphony of the Night and its successors) games. In this style of game, players move in a single plain but traverse a sprawling over-world aided by a fantastically well-designed and easy to read map.

The game begins with our hero, Jason Fleming (Voiced by the up and coming Brad Pitt of Video games: Nolan North, who played Nate in Uncharted) and his girlfriend, Clair. The two are out on a date to go hiking through some caves Clair explored as a child. Within moments however, Clair goes missing and ends up kidnapped by a shadowy government organization whose base just happens to be located within these caves. Armed with only your trusty flashlight, players must explore the base and gather all the weapons and tools they’ll need to save Clair. (more…)

Dude, this game totally bummed me out. Turns out the rad, tubular, turtle-rific Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time I played in the Town Center Mall’s arcade many moons ago wasn’t so good after all. I guess nostalgia stuck rose-tinted glasses on my head because my memories of the game are positive, but nothing about its Xbox Live Arcade high-def remake, Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled, strikes me as especially memorable.

Re-Shelled only remakes the graphics, ditching the cartoony sprites of the arcade original for bland HD textures. The core game is the same—warts and all. Combat consists of mashing buttons to destroy endless waves of nearly identical Foot Clan dingbats, and then taking on a no-frills boss. Repeat ad nauseum for a few levels and you’re done. Sure, that also describes hundreds of other classic arcade beat-em-ups (well, all but the Foot Clan part), but many of those games hold up okay today. Turtles in Time: not so much, and it painfully shows in Re-Shelled. (more…)

Battlefield 1943 just hit the Xbox Live Marketplace today for the rather high price of 1200 Microsoft Points. I’d love to tell you that the game is fun and worth price, but I haven’t been able to play much—and neither has anyone else, for that matter.

Reports are popping up over at EA Games’ forums and elsewhere online that the Battlefield 1943 servers are totally janked. I can say from first-hand experience that this is quite true. I tried unsuccessfully for several minutes to get into a quick match, and was only able to do so once. I couldn’t get a friends match going at all.

So before you folks drop 1200 points for Battlefield 1943, be aware you might run into similar problems. To be fair, this is the release day, so of course the servers will be swamped, but you’d think EA would have planned for this. Hopefully, the servers will clear out a bit in the coming days.

UPDATE: Looks like the servers are at full capacity, meaning new players can’t join a match until others drop out. Also, the servers are experience date packet loss. DICE hopes to get new servers up and running with minimal packet loss by the end of the day.

Hey there, Battlefield fans. DICE would like you to know that Battlefield 1943 will be making its way to the Xbox Live Arcade next week on July 8th, and on the PlayStation Network on July 9th. The cost will be 1200 MS points, or $15. The game will feature 3 maps supporting up to 24 players to start, with a fourth map, Coral Sea, being unlocked once players worldwide have collectively made 43 million kills. Good hunting!

By the way, the PC version will be out around September, and will likely feature support for more players, along with tweaked gameplay to appeal to the more hardcore PC crowd.

Major Nelson let us know (via Twitter) that the original Perfect Dark will be coming to XBLA in glorious 1080p this winter. It’s the classic, folks. Forget that lousy launch title, I’m talking about the old school Perfect Dark many of us played on the N64 back when Rare was still dropping hits. Hopefully the frame-rate has improved and all the bizarre simulator opponents (dark sim, perfect sim, peaceful sim) will be included.

A free theme is also available on Xbox Live today to celebrate.