Spectra

Having recently won the award for best music of 2015 at XBLA Fans’ Game of the Year awards, Spectra has been delisted from the Xbox Live Marketplace. Although the reason …
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After its first full calendar year of existence was dominated by ports, re-releases and remasters, ID@Xbox came into its own in 2015. Yes, as we looked back on this second …
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When Microsoft first announced the ID@Xbox program, Spectra was one of the many games that briefly showed up in the announcement trailer. I thought to myself, ‘Wow this game looks pretty cool; I can’t wait to try it.’ Having now played it, though, it was not like what I expected. Spectra may as well be an endless runner since the player has no control over the acceleration of the ship. Not only that, there is no finish line that would be typical for a normal racing game. Success occurs in a level if the player manages to survive the timer, but the goal was initially unclear, and my first experiences simply devolved down to, ‘Here is a level, have fun.’ Fun can be had, but one question begs to be asked when playing this title: Have you ever wondered what it’s like to drive through gridlock traffic at breakneck speeds? I haven’t before but now we have Spectra: 8 Bit Racing to fill that void.

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Don’t drop till the music stops.
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At Microsoft’s E3 press conference on Monday morning, there was a video montage of many games that are coming to Xbox One through the ID@Xbox program. Over the next few days, XBLA Fans is bringing you a slightly longer glimpse of those titles than what the montage trailer allowed for. Our coverage of these titles will be in alphabetical order. Following is a look at the fifth set of those games.

Spectra

Spectra, by Gateway Interactive, is something akin to a cross between F-Zero and Audiosurf. The composer behind Super Hexagon, Chipzel, returns with a driving chiptune soundtrack that should make fans of speed feel right at home with this challenging procedural racer.

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