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About Andrew Crews

I worked at a warehouse. Then I worked in radio. Now I tweet for a living. I also run a web site at ChainMonster.com and I write reviews for XBLAFans.com. If you like my work and would like to work together on another project, then feel free to email me. I'll look over any offer. Email info can be found on the staff list. Twitter: @twixprintmatic
Latest Posts | By Andrew Crews
Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 4)
11 years ago

Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 4)

Day 4 of our contest is here, and we’re giving out a fan favorite pictured above. But once again, we have applied a few Photoshop filters making it a bit of a challenge to identify this game. Post your best guess in the comment section below for a chance to win. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for even more chances to win. Good luck!

The winner of yesterday’s contest is: Wuvein (@Wuvein) – You have won a copy of Trials Evolution. We will be in touch with you today on Twitter!

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Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 3)
11 years ago

Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 3)

Today we are giving away a copy of Trials Evolution. All you need to do to enter the contest today is post what you think the answer is to the infamous Trials HD riddle. If you need a refresher of what I’m talking about, check out this post here for more info. Can’t wait to see what some of you think of this. Good luck!

The winner of yesterday’s contest is:  Christian Perez (@chrisrosepr) – You have won a copy of Fez. We will be in touch with you today on Twitter!

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Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 2)
11 years ago

Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 2)

On Day 2 of our 12 Days of XBLA, we’re giving away a couple copies of Fez. All you need to do to enter today’s contest is post the answer to the following question in the comments section below:

Question: Aside from a fez, what other cool accessory does Gomez eventually acquire when you complete the game at least once?

The winner of yesterday’s contest is:  Josh (@josh_heroin) – You have won a copy of Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. We will be in touch with you today on Twitter!

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Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 1)
11 years ago

Contest: The 12 Days of XBLA (Day 1)

Welcome to Day 1 of the 12 Days of XBLA! To start things off in the right direction, we are going to give away the game pictured above. The trick is that it has been put through a few Photoshop filters to make it a little bit challenging. Post your best guess in the comments section below for a chance to win. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for even more chances to win. Good luck!

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The 12 Days of XBLA begins!
11 years ago

The 12 Days of XBLA begins!

And the 12 Days of XBLA promotion is finally upon us. For the next 12 days, we will be giving out some of the finest XBLA games that were released in the past year. Each day will hold two chances for you to win one specific game. There will be a chance to win here on the XBLAFans.com website and a chance to win on our Twitter stream. So you better go follow @XBLAFans on Twitter right now if you haven’t done so already. The first day of contests will start in approximately 2 hours!

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Dungeon Defenders releases final DLC installment
11 years ago

Dungeon Defenders releases final DLC installment

By  •  News

The fourth and final game add-on for Dungeon Defenders released a few days ago at a price of 320 MSP. The last installment will take you on a journey …
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Stories of an XBLA addict: Wing Commander Arena, the original party chat
12 years ago

Stories of an XBLA addict: Wing Commander Arena, the original party chat

On July 25th, 2007 Wing Commander Arena released on XBLA. It was never the greatest game in the world, but it’s far from a terrible game. It’s heavy reliance on online multiplayer carrying the torch for any sense of value in the title was ultimately the reason behind its swift downfall for most gamers. Single player was extremely lacking and four players were required for any online games to actually start. Unfortunately, even on release day it was a fairly tall order to find four players in any game modes. But a very niche community of gamers managed to make Wing Commander Arena possess one of the best communities that any XBLA game had seen at that point and make the four player requirement a non-issue.

Where this title lacked was also where the game managed to make its most cherished contribution to XBLA. Wing Commander Arena was the first XBLA title to allow up to 16-player online matches. And with that also came one of the first achievements that brought a wide range of competitive XBLA players together. The achievement was called TCS Tiger’s Claw and all it required was to compete in a 16-player Capital Ship game. Back then achievements like that were fairly unheard of and it took some serious scheduling on the Xbox.com forums to set up the boosting sessions in order to unlock this achievement.

In those 16-player Capital Ship games shined quite possibly the greatest feature to date in any XBLA game. 16-player simultaneous chat sessions were born and the value in that feature alone made Wing Commander Arena boosting sessions one of my favorite memories during my time in XBLA competition. Keep in mind that when this game released, Xbox LIVE was still operating on the Blades dashboard where private chat was the best way to communicate with other gamers. Due to this, most competitive XBLA gamers had split off in to teams of two. There was Lucas & Zerium, Smally & Johnny, Karnage & myself and many more duos present at each boosting session. We all had our partners, but Wing Commander Arena brought those teams together and helped foster a better sense of community among competitive XBLA gamers. Friendships were born.

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Sales & Specials: bullets everywhere!
12 years ago

Sales & Specials: bullets everywhere!

By  •  News

More Sales and Specials for all you schmup lovers.
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Sales & Specials: time to take flight
12 years ago

Sales & Specials: time to take flight

By  •  News

More sales, you just gotta know where to look.
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