When the Paul Morley of games journalism is banging on about indie games on some Channel 4 countdown show in 25 years time, he'll probably briefly mention XBLIG. XBLIG stands for Xbox Live Indie Games, an uncharacteristically lovely initiative that let indie developers release games on the Xbox 360, without having to court and badger Microsoft first. Microsoft then characteristically buried the service on their ad-ridden Xbox Live Marketplace, and now they're planning to shut it down (opens in new tab).
Mommy's Best Games was one of the best developers releasing games on XBLIG, and I'm not saying that just because 95% of everything on there was guff. Rather than going down with the ship, Mommy's Best has instead ported four of its games to PC, collecting them as Mommy's Best Action Pack (opens in new tab).
The pack contains Weapon of Choice (opens in new tab), a sidescrolling, Contra-ish shooter; Explosionade (opens in new tab), a game about stomping alien guts; Shoot 1UP (opens in new tab), a vertical shmup featuring a giant woman with guns for norks; and Game Type (opens in new tab), a satirical shooter about the state of the Xbox Live Marketplace. You can buy them all individually for chump change, while the pack will set you back £5.59.
If the name sounds familiar, that's probably because Mommy's Best Games made Serious Sam Double D XXL (opens in new tab).
