In a move that is a first for Xbox Live Arcade, Bizarre Creations has released online leaderboards for both Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and Boom Boom Rocket. It will be interesting to see if more titles will be able to take this approach or if the resources required to do such a feat will be only available to bigger studios like Bizarre.

[Via Evil Avatar]

EA has announced that available starting right now the promised Boom Boom Rocket update is available along with five new songs available free until December 16th (250 MS points after that time).

• Eine Kleine Rochtmusik
• Cannon in D
• Sugar High
• Sting of the Bumble Bee
• Explode to Joy

It's great to see the continued, free updates for this title.

[Update] According to the BBR forums there has been a mix up and the tracks will be available soon.

[Update 2] They appear to be online and ready for download. It is called the Boom Boom Rocket Guitar Pack.

[Via 1up]

Sick of Guitar Hero 3 and still waiting on Rock Band to be released? You may want to go back and hit up the good ol' Boom Boom Rocket as it has received a signficant title update. The update hasn't been released just yet, so don't go running to your Xbox 360. The latest Bizarre Creations update mentioned that the title update has passed certification and is awaiting a release slot. Ok, so what exactly is in this title update?

• Guitar and dancemat peripheral support (oh yes!)
  
• Japanese and Korean language support
  
• Tweaked scoring system to make grade awarded more fair (now purely based on accuracy)
  
• The huge loud "noise" which popped up occasionally on endurance mode is now gone
  
• Occurrences of scores getting overwritten with a lower score when playing with 2 profiles signed in is now fixed.
  
• Display updates when viewing the game through a VGA cable.
  
• Friends leaderboard now shows extra information such as grade, accuracy, etc.
  
• Multiplayer endurance mode fix for player colours swapping sporadically.
  
• Slightly bigger and better explosions (updates to firework rendering)

Faithful readers, will this bring you back to Boom Boom Rocket after all of these months away?

[Via Gaming Bits]

Just missing a perfect opportunity for firework promotion during the July 4th celebrations comes word of DLC for Boom Boom Rocket. The package will include 5 new songs and will touch on new styles of music. What those new styles will be, and when this pack will arrive is anyone's guess.

Bizarre Creation's Ben Ward does hint that the new songs will be an extra challenge. "...they do seem to be a level above and beyond what we're all used to. That can only be a good thing for all the hardcore, blindfolded, multi-fingered BBR experts out there," he said.

One of the complaints about Boom Boom Rocket when it first arrived was the small song list. Anyone out there willing to shell out more money to fill out the game more? And if so, how much would you pay for 5 songs? 800 MSP?

[via IGN, thanks Blue_Falcon]

In what may be the least about of lead time Microsoft has given for announcing a release, we have just found out that EA's Boom Boom Rocket will be released in a little more than five hours. This title is quite important in that not only is it EA's first steps into the world of XBLA, but it's also Bizarre's first title for the service since Geometry Wars.

Personally, after just getting into Elite Beat Agents for the DS, I'm very curious as to how this title will shape up.

From the press release:

[quote]

“Boom Boom Rocket” Brings Rhythm to the Night on Xbox Live Arcade

A new original title rockets onto Xbox Live Arcade from Bizarre Creations (the creators of the critically acclaimed “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved”) and publisher Electronic Arts. “Boom Boom Rocket” will be available for download on Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 beginning Wednesday, Apr. 11, at 0900 GMT (2:00 a.m. PDT).

The addictive and original “Boom Boom Rocket” is the first music-rhythm game to appear on Xbox Live Arcade. Players trigger rockets to the beat of the music while traveling through a 3D cityscape. The better the player times the explosions, the more spectacular the fireworks effect. The fireworks are choreographed to 10 original tracks created by Ian Livingstone, who recently scored “Batman Returns” and “Project Gotham Racing 2.”

X360A.org have gotten their hands on Boom Boom Rocket's achievements list. If you recall BBR will be released very soon - possibly next week. The achievements themselves are based mainly around getting various skill ratings on the songs as has been common with other rythmn games released for the 360.

CVG has been informed by Bizarre Creations that Boom Boom Rocket will be landing in mid-April. Keep in mind that next week Wednesday will be the 11th and the 18th is after that, which puts a release date at probably this upcoming Wednesday or the one after that. Keep your eyes peeled to XBLArcade.com on Monday as that is the normal day that the arcade releases are announced.

EA has launched a new dedicated official EA Xbox Live Arcade website with information about their games and forums. Currently, the website has four slots for upcoming games with two of them being filled by Wing Commander Arena and Boom Boom Rocket and another two blank. This makes me wonder if either 1) EA has two other titles that are currently well into development or 2) the designers felt the need to reserve that space for future use. Only time will tell how soon the third and fourth titles from EA will be revealed.

[Via Wing Commander CIC]

IGN has a new interview about Boom Boom Rocket with Ben Ward of Bizarre Creations. The interview itself is fairly standard stuff that was already known about Boom Boom Rocket, but I thought an interesting part of the interview was a discussion of what was left on the cutting room floor.[quote]Did you ever look at the possibility of people creating their own custom soundtracks?
We did try it but it just didn't work out. The levels need to be very specifically designed to ensure that the gameplay matches the music. It's tough to balance the entire thing so that it doesn't suck. Automatically generating actions just didn't give the results we needed. That said, we've got 10 tracks at three difficulty levels, with XBL leaderboards and split-screen multiplayer in there, so I'm not really worried about lack of variety.[/quote]That would be a great feature as it is something a lot of people have wanted from the likes of Guitar Hero for a while now, but it is easy to see why that would be a hard problem to solve.

Update: The video included with the preview is embedded below.

1up has [url=http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3157391]an interview with part of the Boom Boom Rocket team[/url]. According to the interview, the main developer behind Geometry Wars is also lending his hand as one of the developers of Boom Boom Rocket. Due to this fact, they are looking to making the game look somewhat similiar to Geometry Wars in the way that the explosions will appear all over your screen in a frantic display of color.