The chances of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, originally released for the Xbox in 2005, making it onto XBLA have just dramatically increased. An HD remake of the game was previously released on PC as part of the Oddboxx anthology and a PlayStation Network port is also on the way. The team at Just Add Water also wanted to bring the HD remake over to the 360, but had previously gotten hung up on a technical issue.
Microsoft requires that all XBLA games come in at 2 GB or less. Stranger’s Wrath was over the limit and Just Add Water had found the task of trimming it down to be incredibly difficult. There’s good news for Oddworld fans, though. A member of the development team recently spoke with MS Xbox World and informed them that they have found a way to bypass the problem. Stewart Gilroy of Just Add Water informed the site that they have implemented modern codecs which allowed them to get the game down to a lean 1.95 gigs. Specifically, the codecs chopped the audio from 650 to 465 megs while simultaneously improving the quality of the recordings.
Unfortunately, the CGI movies have had to take a bit of a hit in order to get their cumulative file size down to 175 megs. Additional changes are also being made to the characters and environments. Gilroy did not detail what exactly these changes entitled. On the bright side, he confirmed that the 360 version will still look identical to the PS3 version.
The title still has one final step to take before making it onto XBLA: acquiring a publisher. MS Xbox World believes that Just Add Water may actually be exploring publishing the game on their own. Whatever the case, the Stranger’s Wrath HD remake is much closer to making an appearance on the 360 than it was before.
[Sources: XBLA Fans and MS Xbox World]
[Image courtesy of That Video Game Blog.]
