The LoadDown -- 09/22/2011

I'm trying to get back on schedule with at least a few of my regular items here.  Here, on Thursday per usual, is the latest in downloadable console gaming news...

WiiWare -- One new game, Aya and the Cubes of Light, which sounds like some kind of New Age band but is actually a game.  I hope the look is meant to be intentionally retro, because it looks like nothing so much as a Nintendo 64 game, with low-polygon models and sparse texturing.

Wii Virtual Console -- Nothing here this week, either.

DSiWare -- Two games: Break Tactics is a military tactics game with anime styling and non-hex-based maps; the E10+ rating's "suggestive themes" are provided by the midriff-baring female mage character.  Escape Trick: Ninja Castle is an adventure/puzzle game with stylus-based action puzzles; it awkwardly involves the DSi's camera by allowing the player to post pictures to its internal Memo screen, though this does not seem to be part of the gameplay.

3DS eShop -- One worthy new title, in addition to the DSiWare games above -- Konami's Famicom port of the arcade cute-'em-up finally arrives in the US as 3D Classics: Twinbee, with new 3-D graphics.  It's still a standard NES design, with the background layer pushed into the depths and all of the action in the foreground plane, and the graphics are simplified quite a bit compared to the original coin-op.  Still a fun little scrolling shooter if you've never played it.

XBox Live Arcade -- Two new games here.  Burnout Crash! (see PS3 section below) and Rotastic, a very cartoony 2-D platformer.

PS3 on PSN -- Three new titles here this week.  Altered Beast (which I thought had arrived last week) actually shows up this week.  Cubixx HD is a high-def remake of the PSP Mini puzzle game; while the name sounds like one of the myriad unlicensed Q*Bert ripoffs of the 1980s, the game actually rips off Taito's Qix.  Burnout Crash! is a fascinating drug rehab simulation!  No, actually it's a motorcycle racing game, the latest in EA's Burnout series that began in 2001.

PSOne Classics -- Quiet again here this week, after a surprising recent revival.