Marble Blast Races out of the Garage onto Xbox Live Arcade
The first Torque Game debuts on Xbox Live Arcade. GarageGames today announced that Marble Blast is available for download on Xbox® Live Arcade (XBLA), a new social experience that brings popular retro classics and broad appeal games directly to your Xbox® video game system over the Xbox Live™ service.
Eugene, OR (PRWEB) May 10, 2005 -- GarageGames today announced that Marble
Blast is available for download on Xbox® Live Arcade (XBLA), a new social
experience that brings popular retro classics and broad appeal games directly to
your Xbox® video game system over the Xbox Live™ service.
In Marble
Blast, a fast-paced arcade-style action game, players race against time as they
navigate marbles through moving platforms and dangerous hazards, collecting
treasure along the way.
For the Xbox version, GarageGames has cranked up
the cartoon look to the max drenching the visually rich landscape by fully
exploiting bump mapping, specular lighting and stencil shadows. Optimized to
work on the Xbox controller there are nine challenging new levels, 12 craftily
hidden Easter eggs, along with Xbox Live Arcade leader board high scores that
take full advantage of the all new scoring system with ever elusive gold
times.
“Getting to leverage the graphics capabilities of Xbox lets us
demonstrate some of the power of Torque on a console,” says Pat Wilson,
GarageGames Lead Programmer on XBLA Marble Blast. “Torque is an extremely solid
platform to develop on, so we could focus on fine-tuning the fun of Marble Blast
on Xbox Live Arcade.”
“Players looking for a quick action hit are
definitely going to find it with this next-gen marble racing game, and they can
easily download it directly on Xbox Live Arcade,” says Jay Moore, Evangelist for
GarageGames. “Beginning with ‘Learning to Roll’ all the way to ‘Schadenfreude,’
the only level with a difficulty rating of 11, Marble Blast provides a serious
challenge to any gamer’s skills.“
The Xbox Live Arcade disc is free
($4.99 U.S./$7.99 Canadian for shipping and handling.) Microsoft will send the
disc to enable your Xbox console to play free trials of the games, including
Marble Blast. The full version of Marble Blast is available by download for only
$19.99. More information about Xbox Live Arcade can be found at http://www.xbox.com/livearcade.
About Marble
Blast:
Marble Blast is an arcade action game with simple yet addictive
gameplay, suitable for players of any age. In the rich cartoon landscape of
Marble Blast, players will race their marbles through moving platforms,
dangerous hazards, sparkling treasures and power up enhancements in an effort to
complete each course in record time. The hazards players will face in Marble
Blast include powerful fans, whirling tornados, land mines, pinball-style
bumpers, narrow catwalks, moving pistons, dizzying chasms, and
more.
About Xbox Live
Now in its third generation of transforming and
uniting Xbox game communities, with more than 300 games planned by end of
holiday 2005 and now with presence in 24 countries worldwide, Xbox Live has set
the bar for online games entertainment. As the first global, unified online
console games service, Xbox Live continues to take online gameplay and
entertainment to unprecedented heights. With a rapidly growing global community,
Xbox Live offers best-in-class games, intelligent matchmaking, tournaments,
unique programming and integration with Xbox.com — there is simply nothing else
like it. The service continues to provide more and more ways for members to
meet, interact and stay engaged with each other.
About Torque Game
Engine:
The Torque Game Engine is a cross platform commercial quality AAA
game engine with seamless indoor / outdoor rendering engine, state of the art
skeletal animation, drag and drop GUI creation and a built-in world editor. TGE
also features the latest in scripting, geometry, particle effects, exhaustive
documentation and award-winning multiplayer networking code. TGE started life as
the technology behind Dynamix's Tribes series and is currently being used by
thousands of developers around the world to make innovative games such as Marble
Blast, Orbz and ThinkTanks.
About GarageGame:
GarageGames mission is
to change the way games are made and played. GarageGames provides the
technology, community and market to empower game makers to build commercial
quality multiplatform games. Known for bringing the Torque Game Engine to
independent developers for $100, GarageGames is located in Eugene, Oregon and on
the web at www.garagegames.com and is the annual presenter of
IndieGamesCon (Oct. 7-9, 2005).
©2005 GarageGames.com, Inc. Marble Blast,
Torque and Torque Game Engine are the trademarks of GarageGames.com Inc. The
names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of
their respective owners. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox Live, the Live Logo, and the Xbox
logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp.
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