Upcoming Xbox 360 Live Arcade games is one of my favorite topics, and handy indie site TIGSource has compiled a bunch of them about Small Arms, the Gastronaut Studios-developed game which is "kind of a cross between Metal Slug and Super Smash Bros., which is a pretty good idea."

He links to some YouTube-hosted video of the game from E3, the only movie I've seen of the game in action, which actually references an important point for me - who's doing effective PR for independent XBLA titles? One of the things we're noticing is that there's not much info about a lot of the titles (videos, screenshots, press releases) before they go live, which is a shame, because then people don't get to know about them. Microsoft, appoint someone just to do that, immediately!

Even more interesting, an XBLArcade.com news story reveals, via an MTV News story: "Small Arms will have an Achievement that it’s director calls “Six Degrees of ‘Small Arms.’ ”... The way it works is that the four people who work at Gastronaut Studios will initially be the only ones with the Achievement, as soon as someone plays with any of the four, they will also get the achievement." Oh yes - best idea ever!