Are you one of the many gamers who have fallen in love with Castlevania music over the years? If so, you’ll want to check out Jake “virt” Kaufman’s score for Wayforward’s new downloadable title Bloodrayne: Betrayal.

It’s no coincidence how much the music has in common with Castlevania as Kaufman reveals that early versions of the game used tracks from Symphony of the Night as a placeholder. Three months later, Kaufman finished his original score based on this inspiration combined with his own flavor. Then he made an 8-bit version as a bonus (unlockable after finishing the game). Why not? Everybody knows NES music is the coolest.

But rather than run it through a filter, all the music was painstakingly recreated in FamiTracker for the 8-bit version. This retro conversion process has created some sort of crazy neo-nostalgia that will no doubt threaten the space-time continuum.

Until that fateful moment when reality collapses in on itself, you can get both versions of the soundrack (that’s 30 tracks!) for the low, low price of free. Of course, if you are the kindhearted type and would like to reward an artist for the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the album, you can pay any price you want via Bandcamp.

Buy the Album: Bandcamp

You know that moment in gaming where you’re no longer making conscious decisions and instead find yourself relying on pure, razor fast instinct? This is how I felt for almost the entirety of the time I spent with SkyDrift. Much like the fantastic Split/Second, SkyDrift‘s brand of racing puts you on the verge of death constantly, and everytime you manage to narrowly escape certain doom at the hands of the track’s terrain or your opponent’s weapons it feels like a miracle.

It’s amazing how much the concept of flight changes how a racing game plays. The added verticality of racing in an airplane instead of a car allows for a sense of freedom that really makes every race play out differently. This is also helped by some really superb track design. There aren’t a ton of tracks, but the ones that are there are filled to the brim with branching pathways, a ton of variety, and plenty of extra dangerous obstacles that reward players willing to take risks.

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Hot off the heels of their Back to the Future game, Telltale is back with another license close to the heart of my youth: Jurassic Park. It takes risks, leaving behind the traditional point and click interface of their past games for something a little different.

The first of the two demos I played was exclusively an action scene. Several of the game’s protagonists were stuck on a roller coaster and I had to prevent them from being eaten by a pack of dinosaurs. The solution? Successfully complete a lot of quick time events including button presses and quick flips of the analogue stick. You could sum up the entire action demo simply by saying “Space Ace”.

But there was a weird layer of detachment added to this scene. The character whose actions were affected by my inputs constantly changed. This made me feel less involved with what was happening on screen since no singular character represented the player. Occasionally I’d fail and watch a death scene before snapping back to the last checkpoint. I watched my cart go on the wrong track into a pack of dinosaurs, a young girl falling out of the car to her death and more, all while my death counter rose.

If this was all the game was, I’d be pretty sad. Thankfully the second demo I played was far more interesting, though still different than Telltale’s previous games.

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How many airplane racing games can you think of off the top of your head? Any? Without resorting to Google, all I could come up with was one third of Diddy Kong Racing. This is exactly why I was instantly fascinated by Digital Reality’s SkyDrift. It’s in a sub-genre that’s rarely explored.

You could call it “Mario Kart in the sky”, but that really isn’t fair to the game. SkyDrift may be a weapons-based racer, but it’s far more deliberate and skill-based than any racing I’ve ever done in the Mushroom Kingdom. The fact that you need a second analogue stick to control your plane’s knife position is proof enough that the game is deeper than some of its contemporaries.

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As a fan of the genre, I’ve seen my fair share of modern scrolling shooters or “shmups” as they’re often called. Yet, after the magnificent Gradius V back in 2004, I haven’t seen very many that actually look modern. Even some from this year tend to look like something you might’ve seen in the arcade as much as a decade ago.

That’s the first of many ways in which Sine Mora sets itself apart. The game is gorgeous. There’s a real sense of depth to the environments that manage to strike an effective balance of being attractive without being distracting. Colors are often vibrant, environments are varied, and giant bosses are real spectacles to behold thanks to art direction from Grasshopper.

And yet, as great as the visuals were, it was the unique mechanics developer Digital Reality put into the game that kept me coming back for another try. Sine Mora is not about one hit kills or traditional health systems. Sine Mora is about time (in more ways than one). While you’re playing, the clock always counts down. Killing enemies will send the clock backward a bit, while getting hit drastically reduces your time. When the clock strikes “00″, you die.

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to combine a fighting game with a SHMUP? Thanks to Japanese indie game publisher, Rockin’ Android, you can find out for yourself. After bringing us the Gundemonium Collection, Crescent Pale Mist, and Qlione, the doujin publisher returns with Acceleration of SUGURI X-Edition on the PlayStation Network.

The competitive shooter let’s you choose one of seven characters as you battle one-on-one with the computer or a friend through 11 environments and 6 modes of play. Acceleration of SUGURI X-Edition is available now on the PlayStation Network for $5.99. (more…)

If you listen to the Barrel Roll! podcast, then you know I’m the type to knock down a cinematic, goppy, story-driven, fully orchestrated game in favor of a simple, arcade-style, jump-on-in style game. So it might surprise you to learn that, well… I’ve never much cared for Space Invaders! And this is true for the vast majority of shoot-em-ups.

I’ve just never had the interest and patience to develop skill in them, and outside of a handful of very simple shmups like B-Wings and Volley Fire, I’ve hardly given them the time of day. Of course, Space Invaders is the simplest of all shmups, but it’s so primordial. Being born in 1983, I am not a true child of the arcades – I got into gaming at the tail-end of the NES era. To really get into Space Invaders, I would need it to evolve.

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Retro/Grade is out to do something new with not one, but two genres. It tells the tale of Rick Rocket, “Space Pilot Guy” who just blew up the big baddie at the end of the game. However, the massive explosion has caused a rift in space/time and now he is traveling backwards through his previous battles.

On the surface, Retro/Grade looks like a  Shmup (shoot-em-up) in the style of Gradius or R-Type, but it quickly becomes apparent that you are playing a rhythm game with the flavor of a flashy shooter.

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Scott Pilgrim is having a bit of a media explosion at the moment. It’s gone from an independent comic (started in 2004) that I had only heard about in passing, to a franchise that the entire internet seems to be talking about (both positively and negatively) with a movie and a videogame released last week.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is an old-school brawler through and through. You and up to three local friends (sorry, no online multiplayer) play as either Scott, Ramona, Kim, or Stills and get to punching and kicking your way through each of the game’s stages.

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I really enjoy playing old games. This will come as no surprise to readers that keep up with our Friday Old Games series. But when I do get in the retro mood, I almost always do it on the real console. ROMs, collections, and downloadable releases just don’t feel the same as hooking up an NES (or whatever other system) and playing the game with the setup it was intended for, controller and all.

Lately, this has got me thinking. 20 years from now, will we still be able to experience this current generation of games? And if so, to what capacity?

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