I mentioned I’d been enjoying the Xbox Live Arcade game Castle Crashers in an earlier post. It’s an old-school scrolling beat-em-up in the tradition of the Konami-era arcade classics like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men and The Simpsons. If you own an Xbox and have a Live account, you can download the game for about $15 USD.

The game was created by the tiny design studio The Behemoth, whose first game was Alien Hominid, a retro run-and-gun (think the original Contra for NES) that became a runaway hit on multiple platforms. I found AH to be a little too difficult to be fun (my thumbs ached at the end of every play session), but Castle Crashers hits just the right balance between being challenging and a blast to play. (more…)