Double Dragon and Speedball 2 vanish from XBLA

You may have missed the news, but a few months ago Empire Interactive became victims of the  global recession and went into administration. Surreptitiously their two releases on the Xbox Live Arcade, Double Dragon and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe, have vanished. This is no doubt down to the licensing rights returning to the original holders.

If you downloaded the titles then you’d best hang on to them since there’s a very real possibility that they won’t be coming back after all this time – especially since Metacritic’s aggregate scores aren’t that high and both struggled to get over five out of ten, meaning they weren’t particularly well received to justify someone going to the effort (and financial expense ) of re-licensing them right now.

With their removal it’s unsure if Microsoft’s policy of still being able to get them again from your download history still applies.