Well, it’s not a blockbuster announcement, but at least it is 5 games including 2 retails and 3 Xbox Live Arcades.  Tweets can be found here and here.  Hopefully this is a trend in the sense that we are getting more retail titles and a little less arcade titles.  Not that I want them to stop releasing the arcade titles, but a little slowdown is inevitable. Let’s see what we got here.

Left 4 Dead – should be an easy sub $10 at used markets for the retail disc (maybe $15 if you opt for the GOTY package with the DLC). (online will cost you $20 for the game only, there hasn’t been a digital sale since mid 2014).  Achievements are not a walk in the park and you can spend a fair amount of time (40-50 hours) to get everything.

Portal 2 – another one probably worth buying the retail disc (about $15 used) over the digital copy ($20, sale was only about seven months ago though).  Achievements are much easier for this one (as long as you don’t mind your head spinning around and around) and it will take about 15-20 hours to complete it.

Flashback – a remake of the 92 Sega Genesis/SNES (and a few other platforms) game, is a $10 digital game, hasn’t seen a sale since July of 2014.  Achievements are pretty difficult and if you are good a completion can be seen in about 15-20 hours.  I didn’t even know this existed (the remake) until I read the tweet, so I could see myself buying this one if it got a sale.

Babel Rising – This was a tower defense game, I would love to tell you more about it but it was delisted in early 2016.  So pretty much if you have it, GREAT!  If you don’t…move on.

Brain Challenge – our last one, is a $5 digital title and like the namesake, a true pain in the ass to complete.  It’s not even very fun supposedly.  So feel free to give it a try, but don’t come back complaining to me if you put it down after 10 minutes.

The only question I have after the first two announcements especially is where the heck is Orange Box?  My guess with 5 bundled games it is going to take sometime, but I am confident that we will eventually see it.  Enjoy kiddoes.

Welp, E3 was yesterday, and while Microsoft had what most would categorize as a great show, I wasn’t exactly on board (except for the customized controller thing, We Happy Few and Scalebound) because of the complete lack of BC announcements.  I know, focus on new, don’t mention old.  But when its something you have been pushing for months, it seems foolish to just forget about it at such a big event.  Anyway, that wasn’t even the major disappointment as Skyrim will be getting a re-mastered version rather than be made backwards compatible.  All for mod support and a little of that extra green.  That crushed me, and there was no announcement that maybe Fallout: New Vegas or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion might be made backwards compatible to make up for any of it.  So I didn’t even report that two games would be made free this week which I will detail below.

The official sale list is not out yet so it was up to me to find somebody else who was nice enough to post it.  There are only a few BC sales but it’s structured in such a way that makes me think that just maybe we will get a few announcements of BC for some of these very soon (Crysis 2,3 Kingdoms of Amalur, Skate 3).  We can only hope.  Enjoy your E3 week, kiddoes.

11:00am Edit – For those who need an official link.

Backwards Compatible Sales

SSX – $4.99

Free Games

Limbo (X1 only)

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (360/X1)

Welp, two announcements this week, color me a little surprised since E3 is next week and I figured any announcements be saved for then.  X-Com: Enemy Within made perfect sense after Unknown came out a few weeks ago, but I knew a long time ago not to rely on things making sense and Microsoft in the same sentence :).  I kid, I kid.  Now, if we can just get the X-Com Bureau game (yes I am serious), we can have all three XCom games on BC.

Foul Play, Monopoly Plus and Sega Bass Fishing are all what I call “interesting” additions.  Foul Play was recently put back on available Xbox list about a month ago after being delisted for a while.  It only makes sense that they would go ahead and make it BC.  At $10, it will require some thought.  Monopoly Plus was a decent and quick Monopoly game that is normally a $10 game but was a $5 sale game to those who picked it up in mid-March of this year.  Sega Bass Fishing is actually a Dreamcast port, a $5 game (received a price reduction in 2013) and good fishing fun….even though I’m not sure what that term actually means if it isn’t already grilled and on a plate in front of me.

X-Com: Enemy Within is BC, I am very happy! 🙂

It’s nice to see three games released in a day (the first in a little while), but honestly I have heard of none of them. 

Aqua is a $5 Naval based shoot em up, tough achievements but for fans of the genre might be worth a quick Lincoln.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a $10 strategy title, achievements look reasonable, but it hasn’t had a sale in about 4 years.

Lazy Raiders is probably the most interesting of the bunch, $10 puzzler, achievements look very doable but be prepared to pay full price.

Let’s hope there are some big announcements come next week and E3.  These XBLA announcements aren’t going to hold over anybody.  Enjoy.

There is unfortunately not much to see here this week unless you are really into sports on the Xbox One.  Honestly, I might consider a purchase of NHL Legacy on the 360 but only if they made it BC in the same week.  But honestly, it’s a bad week for sales all around.  On the upside, E3 is in a week (there should be some good BC announcements) and I’m working on my review to Dangerous Golf.  If things go well, I should have it up sometime early next week.  Have a great week.

I am happy to report that I won a #FreeCodeFriday from Major Nelson which means six brand new digital games which I can turn around and produce some quality reviews for this site. Now how long will this take me? Probably about 2 months or one every week and a half.  It’s an exciting time and should help out this site a lot :). Here are the six games:

Dangerous Golf

Fragments of Him

Turn On

Among the Sleep

Anima: Gate of Memories

Hard Reset Redux

Have a good weekend!

Welp, Mr. Nelson has not posted the deals as of yet, so we will have to settle for the watchful eyes of Mr. Reddit instead.    And there is absolutely nothing out there for us BC fans which is kinda depressing in its own way.  I guess they blew out the door last week.  Or something.  Anyway, hopefully we’ll have an official update later in the day.  Enjoy (or not :)).

10:00am Edit – Here is the official list, nothing really changed though.

This one really isn’t much of an announcement but I suppose a few will be happy about it. It’s probably because it was a previous Amazon type leak anyway. But it is there, and more retail games (rather than Arcade releases) are always a plus.  Enjoy!

Hot off the heels of the Games with Gold announcement comes a smattering of six games added to backwards compatibility.  Tweets can be here and here.  X-Com comes home earlier than the 16th which is nice news for those like me who already own it.  I actually own Duck Tales: Remastered and probably one of the few who have it on disc rather than digital. Hexic 2, I don’t want to play Hexic again, but I know a lot of people will be happy with the choice, same with Magic 2012.  I actually looked up the Domino game after it was announced, it’s only $5 but has some really hard achievements.  Reviews aren’t very positive either.  Finally there is Unbound Saga which is a poor man’s Final Fight/Double Dragon fighting game.  All I need to know is that X-Com and Duck Tales are BC.  My only question after this post is when do we get XCOM: Enemy Within to go BC.  Make it happen, enjoy kids!