The wife and I got a second controller for Christmas, and two Xbox Marketplace cards, but are finding nothing fun for two players on Xbox Live.

We need a puzzle game or strategy game or RPG or racing game that works well with two players and is either for the Xbox 360 or is Xbox backward compatible. No first person shooters or fighting games or sports games. Any ideas?

Trade it in and get a Wii?

Have you checked out Live Arcade? Lots of small, cheap, fun games on there, some old school and some new. Most have two-player components that are lots of fun. Try Marble Blast Ultra. Two-player is a lot of fun, and single-player is GREAT. Zuma, Hexic, Lumines and Bewjewled are all good puzzle games; not sure about two-player modes, though. Some racing smashup just came out, too. Don't recall its name.

Most downloads are between $5 and $10. Quite a bargain, as the games are pretty good. All have free trial versions, so you can try them out first.

You missed something in my original post - we found no luck on Xbox Live Arcade. It's possible that many of the games have two player elements that are locked out of trial mode. We never even thought to try Marble Blast Ultra - good idea! That may be the killer app for us.

Anyone know if any of the others above have two player modes?

I'll have to check out the most recent racing game.

As far as single player games - we love Jewel Quest and Bejeweled. Zuma is just too damn hard to play compared to the PC version and Lumines is expensive!

Marble Blast's two-player is a lot of fun. That game is VERY much worth the money. I don't regret getting it at all. The single player boards are fun and challenging.

Cloning Clyde is a very funny puzzle platformer. It has a two-player mode (not sure if it works split-screen) that is a lot of fun.

Novedrome is the smashemup racer I was thinking of. Try out the trial.

And here's the crazy suggestion: Those Burger King games.

Honestly.

Swear to god, the pocket racing game and bumper car games are actually pretty good. I play them with my son and they're a blast. For $4 or so, if you can find them in your local BK, get them. Really!

Oh, and I wasn't being snarky with the Wii comment. I have a friend that has both the 360 and the Wii and he raves about how much fun the Wii is to play.

Yeah, if all else fails I could trade it all in and get a Wii probably with an extra controller free. Then, I'd have Wii Sports.

In the meantime - those Burger King games sound tempting. Time to make a trip!

I play Lumines 1 and 2 on the PSP against my gf all the time and we love it. Is the XBL version 2 player? If so, I'd say get it, no matter how expensive it is. After all, it couldn't be more expensive than buying two copies of the game for handhelds. That's how they getcha!

Just checked - Novadrome has no offline multiplayer. Lame.

The girlfriend's kid got the Burger King Sneak King game from one of his buddies for Christmas. I haven't played it but he says it's fun, in a slightly disturbing sort of way.

Yep, Lumines has a head to head mode, I believe! My wife is better than I am, so this might be fun...

I have XBox (not 360), but the Wii is the big hit right now with the family.

Steve, in our family we have a blast with the Arcade Classics disk, usually only 19.95. I've got all of them (Midway 1 and 2, Namco, and Capcom). You get tons of the arcade classics, and you'd be surprised how many of those games are exactly the type of fun you are talking about -- the graphics engines weren't as powerful, so they had to come up with an actual fun game to keep people plugging in the quarters.

By the way, apparently Midway bought out the catalog of Atari arcade games, because you get all of those on the Midway disks.

Think Sprint, Marble Madness, Paperboy, 720 (skateboard), Road Blasters, Bionic Commando, Forgotten Worlds, Section Z. If you can remember it, it's almost certainly on there. KLAX is on there somewhere. It was like a Tetris thing.

Almost none of the compilation discs are backward compatible with the 360. Shame, since I have the first two Midway ones. Still waiting for them to add X-Men Legends I and II to the list, too. Those seem like no-brainers, but nooo....

It appears that Marble Blast only has Live multiplayer and no local splitscreen. Is this true?

What a whiff. This can't be for technology reasons.

Second idea: the other hit in our family is the wave of "party games." We have some of the Mario Party and Monkeyball games, and I read good things about Raymon's Raving Rabbids.

Those are Nintendo titles. Any substitutes from the Xbox world might be fun.

I'd have to fire it up and see, but it may be true. Sadly, split-screen is dying. Games for Microsoft and Sony platforms support it less and less because they want everyone playing online.

Which totally misses half the fun of a console.

If she plays sports, Top Spin is simple to play and a good deal of fun. You can do that two players on one TV. Sega GT 2002 is an original Xbox game that is backwards compatible. It features good split screen play. Also, LEGO STAR WARS. Those games are a hoot and are LOTS of fun with two people.

Ted's right on the money, though. For good family entertainment with more than one person the Wii is easily the system of choice now.

Hacker Releases Tool to Add Third Party HDD to Xbox 360
A new tool allows WD hard drives to be used Microsoft's console

Marcus Yam (Blog) - January 26, 2007 1:21 PM
http://www.dailytech.com/Hacker+Release ... le5875.htm

Microsoft’s advice to those with their Xbox 360 consoles filled to the brim with demos and videos is simply to just buy another hard drive. That solution may not be cheap, as the official 20GB drive retails for $99.99. The Xbox 360 modding community, however, has discovered a solution that could prove to be much more economical.

A hacker who goes by the handle “TheSpecialist,” has released a tool that allows any Western Digital BEVS SATA hard drive to be used on the Xbox 360. A quick price search for WD hard drives find that twice the drive can be had for half the price – the lowest-end 40GB WD Scorpio drive for $50 – a cost effective, but adventurous alternative.

The software tool works as described in the documentation: “x360 HDD's contain information on sector 16 about the HDD: the HDD serial number, the model, the firmware version and the size in sectors is stored here. The x360 asks the HDD to identify itself, by sending an 'IDENTIFY DEVICE' ATA to the HDD. It will compare the returned information to the info that is stored on sector 16. This information on sector 16 is signed and thus can not be changed. This tool will mod the FW from the WD HDD to comply with the information on sector 16, so that the 'identify' information will match the information on sector 16 and your x360 will accept the HDD as valid.”

A current limitation to this hack is that the source information from the original drive will dictate the useable space on the new destination drive. This means that sectors copied from a 20GB will leave a 40GB drive with only 20GB of storage on the Xbox 360. The process, thankfully, is completely reversible through the HDDHacker software.

The hack found today could be a gamer’s best solution until Microsoft either reduces the price of its 20GB hard drive add-on, or releases bigger hard drives. A larger hard drive for the Xbox 360 has been spied and rumored several times, though Microsoft denies that it is exploring the possibility of a larger drive, with Bill Gates saying that 20GB should remain plenty.

TheSpecialist was also one of the first hackers to modify the Xbox 360 DVD drive firmware to play backup games.

I have the greatest wife in the world.

Got home today to an early father's Day present. The wife got me an X-Box 360.

Since we've had the kids I've been on a no video game diet -2 generations ago.

So now, I need to know the essential games.

Cool stuff, Kevin. Guess we won't be seeing you for awhile. Heh.

Super Break Out

Theres always while I'm at work. But I figure me and the boys can play before bed-time, which after I put them to bed is usually when I catch up here. But we'll see

wOOt! Very nice. Mine was a birthday gift from the Mrs. My Mrs., that is.

Essential games are difficult to suggest without knowing what you like. As far as I'm concerned, Oblivion should be your very first purchase. You can get dozens and dozens and dozens of hours out of that game, Multiple storylines, total freedom, and lots of downloadable addons.

And of course, for the comic geek in all of us, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which is loads of fun.

Tomb Raider: Legend was amazingly fun platforming. I didn't like the earlier games in the series, but this was AMAZING.

On Xbox Live Arcade, buy Geometry Wars for some kickass fun in the old school style.

What types of games do you/did you tend to like?