Coin Opps

Gauntlet

What? A straight-up coin-op port, minus major enhancements? You betcha. Gauntlet graced XBLA early on, and like Smash TV, it fit the 360 perfectly with Live support allowing online multiplayer you just couldn’t get in the good ol’ arcade. Up to four players battling through 100 dungeons is still surprisingly fun, as you face hordes of ghosts and wizards and work together to navigate tricky labyrinths (all while offering bad impressions of the announcer intoning, “Warrior needs food, badly!”). If you’e got a buddy or three with an itch for old-time hack-and-slash, it’s a $5 beauty.

Jewel Quest

Dink-dink-dink-dink — bloop! Oh, how we love the magical sounds of this matching-shapes puzzler, another very early XBLA game. Similar to Bejeweled but more hectic, Jewel Quest hits you with screen after screen of gem-pairing mania, daring you to keep your cool as the clock ticks down. Charmingly, the game’s music and backstory embrace its Mayan theme, making the whole package an archaeological wonder worth exploring.

Mutant Storm Empire

There’s no shortage of shooters that ape Geometry Wars’ twin-stick mechanic, and this second Mutant Storm definitely does it well. But where it really delivers is in sheer variety and visual interest. The whole game isn’t set in a fixed space; instead, finishing a stage scrolls you into a new, different playfield where you’ll battle new and weirder monstrosities, including mammoth slugs, giant cannons, UFOs, and other ruthless beasties. With five difficulty levels, there’s challenge for all, and playing in co-op mode is intense.

Outpost Kaloki X

Think Halo Wars is accessible? This über-cute strategy/tycoon game has it beat with pared-down play that’s amazingly easy to learn but deceptively deep. As the manager of a fictional space station, you’ll build new stores (bars, video arcades) to please visiting voyagers, while maintaining power plants and other key facilities — and even fending off incoming meteors and invaders! Catchy music and goofy plotlines are a definite bonus, and if you enjoy the main game, you’ll love its DLC missions, too.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipise of Darkness, Episode One

Point-and-click adventures are not dead! Witness this old-style entry featuring Gabe and Tycho from the popular webcomic. The first installment in this episodic series is super-well-written (by Tycho), with all kinds of hilarious gags and dialogue-tree conversations that revolve around your hunt for a fruit-loving 50-foot-tall robot (and let’s just say it’s a carnal love, and the game is rated M). The gameworld is crammed full of clickable objects, and even the RPG-style combat is engaging. Hey — did that clown flip us off before he died?

Roogoo

Remember Perfection, that board game where you had to match triangles, squares, and other shapes to corresponding holes? Roogoo translates it into a uniquely captivating XBLA experience, where you try to guide shapes from the top of the screen to the bottom while pesky alien Meemoo (hey, it’s always somebody) try to block your path. Simple controls and a great premise mean big fun, and for added kicks, you can join pals for Party Play. Either way, it’s awfully hard to put down.

Schizoid

In many ways, Schizoid does exactly what XBLA should do: showcase nifty new ideas, nimbly executed, at a budget price. The game asks one player to control a red ship, while the other (A.I. or human) controls a blue ship; touching enemy ships of your color destroys them, while hitting opposite-colored ships destroys you. It’s a simple concept put to marvelous use, as you frantically dodge and dart through enemy-filled mazes. Bonus: an adorably insane ÜberSchizoid mode where a single player controls both ships at once — one per thumbstick!

Switchball

You’ve already played games where you roll a marble through 3D mazes, but Switchball is no Marble Madness or even Marble Blast Ultra. It’s much more puzzle-based. Navigating tricky (and gorgeously rendered) levels, you’ll use a metal ball to nudge crates; shift to a helium ball to fl oat up to a platform; and become a giant ball to roll down a ramp. It’s light and fanciful, while tapping your grey matter in all the right ways as you solve clever conundrums and avoid electrical shocks and other dangers. Roll on.

Soltrio Solitaire

This one’s purely for solitaire fanatics, but if that includes you — and hey, there’s no shame if it does — you’re going to be stoked. No more Freecell on your PC; these 18 variants will keep you busy for a millennium, bolstered by a quest mode that rewards you by letting you customize the card design. Breaking the very nature of the game, Soltrio offers some interesting multiplayer, too, with both competitive bouts (solve your stack first) and a cooperative mode where you work together. We’ve been playing this game for ages.

Wits & Wagers

Some of us were skeptical at first glance: the presentation and production values are modest, to say the least, and you’ll either love or hate the big flowers, animals, and people-costumes that frame your onscreen photo. We found them amusing; what we really love is the gameplay, which hits you with trivia questions about movies, geography, and such — and after everyone makes their guess, you all wager on the accuracy of each other’s answers. It’s a brilliant mix of trivia and gambling, and against human opponents (rather than shifty A.I. foes), it’s a LOL-rich riot.

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