Japanese developer Cave have announced on their blog that they want fans to help them decide which one of their older titles should get a XBLA release. This is something of a turnaround given that Cave stated last year that they’d pitched versions of DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou Black Label X and Ketsui X to Microsoft for the Live Arcade, but the corporate giant wasn’t all that interested.
Whatever the reason for this change (we’d suggest the success of their recent 360 retail titles like DeathSmiles might have something to do with it) Cave have earned a hefty cult following outside of Japan, so this will be good news for some. It still remains to be seen if the XBLA would be any different to the traditional retail model, meaning there’s no guarantee that whatever game is actually selected, will see a Western release.
If you’d like to take part and show your love for a particular title, the requirements for making your suggestion seem quite strict. It must be emailed to Cave by 28th August, the message header needs to be simply `XBLA` and the body needs to be just the name of the game you’d like to see . Check out the link to the their blog above where you can find the email address.
We’d also suggest that if you plan on voting, it would be a good idea to use the traditional Japanese name rather than the translation.
Hmm, Interesting. I haven’t actually tried their games, but I remember hearing all about them being rejected from XBLA because the XBLA team thought retro titles sucked, even though it was only because of games like Defender or Yie Ar Kung Fu that sucked. Also, this is the first place I have heard of this. Hopefully others hear as well.