While everyone has been hoping and waiting for an announcement regarding Sin and Punishment on the Virtual Console, Microsoft has gone ahead and demanded you give them money. Xbox Live Arcade is going to get not only Ikaruga, but an updated, HD ready version of Rez.
That’s right. Two of the darlings of the gaming underground are getting another chance, and for reasonable prices! The only way not to be excited about this announcement is if your a smarmy collector who realizes their first print copies of these games are going to be worth a lot less.
Small price to pay to get a new version Rez for modern televisions. And I haven’t even played the damn game yet!
Many links for the news, so I’ll send you to everyone’s favorite videolamer troll to spill the beans.
I’m a little worried with Rez. Although the game was released on a CD for the PS2, I can’t imagine it not going over the size limit for XBLA, which is either 150 or 250MB, I don’t remember exactly. But still, with all that music, and with HD textures, it’s probably more than that. It makes me think this is going to turn into another Lumines Live! situation, where the game is broken up into chunks, and to get the full game you need to buy more add-ons. Ikaruga might be the same thing, but I fear more for Rez, as that game is the shit.
Even though I worry a lot, I will still be an idiot and pay for it all. I’m a sucker, what can I say.
I’m pretty sure 250MB is the new SOFT limit, so special consideration can still be given from Microsoft for titles larger than that.
Wasn’t a game called Braid announced recently as coming soon to live arcade as well? Is it the same indy PC game I heard people going on about a few months back?
I really wonder though if they just decide to up the size limit. They just might have to after a while.
Ikaruga can prob. fit under 250 megs easily.
I’ve heard that DC Rez took around 300 megs to store. This means that it is possible to cram it in there perhaps if they, say, compress the audio into WMA format. Considering how important the music is to the game, that sounds like a bad idea.
Going over size limits reminds me of that Eternity’s Child game.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/10/eternitys-child-too-big-for-xbla-gets-wii-instead/
That article, as well as the entry on wikipedia, states the size limit for XBLA games is 150MB. This is indeed troubling news. Something tells me Rez is going to be minced apart.
Crap. 150 certainly is more ominous. I don’t know that even Ikaruga could squeeze by with that.
How many games (besides Luminous) have been sold in pieces? Is it really common enough practice to be worried about?
I could have sworn they said it would eventually grow to 250
I mean how the hell did they get Castlevania on there?
An HD version of Rez?
Damn. If they don’t butcher it, I may have to get a 360.
And an HDTV.
Maybe I’ll just hook my dreamcast back up when I get home.
OK, so I compared the sizes of all the add-on packs for Lumines Live!. While the original ones stayed below 50MB, the new ones that were released a few months ago have actually exceeded the 150MB limit, with one of them at 213MB. Either Msoft is giving special privileges to certain developers, or someone screwed up the Press Release. And wow, SOTN is at 95MB. That’s insane. They must have an insane compression algorithm, because they have both the old sprites and the HD-enabled ones. Damn.
So, with this in mind, Rez could make the unofficial 250MB limit. Lumines Live! has a hefty number of songs, when Rez has only about 10. So it could be possible.
As for other games doing this, I believe Lumines Live! was the only one with the add-on problem, seeing as how it was working with a 50MB limit.
And incidentally, the company that made Rez also made Lumines. So if they (Q Entertainment) got permission to go over 150MB, then they probably have permission with Rez.