Twisted Pixel are fast becoming the rebels of the Live Arcade scene. They produce really fun and intriguing games, which manage to redeem that most fun of features, immaturity. This showing of childish carnage culminated last year with the truly awesome ‘Splosion Man. They’ve followed it up with what has to be one of the biggest Arcade titles this year, both in anticipation and size (1.92GB? That’s just under a third of the size of Modern Warfare 2, for those that wanted to know).

Comic Jumper follows Captain Smiley and his chest mounted sidekick Star, as they battle through 11 levels of side scrolling platform shooting action in their attempt to make enough money to relaunch their flailing comic book franchise, which everyone hates. Well, this is what it is for the fair majority of proceedings. There are other genres mixed in for good measure, as well as a couple of polite nods to software classics gone by. In amongst the Midnight Resistance style gameplay you will find look backs to such classics as Mega Man and Panzer Dragoon, along with the occasional movie parody, just to make things interesting (the Superman one is of particular mention). There is a blend of animation quality graphics with some toilet grade humour, occasionally bordering on “How can they get away with that?” when the Origami Kid comes along, for example.

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