Check out the sights and sounds of DoDonPachi Maximum [Xbox Live]

As we mentioned last week, Japanese developer Cave’s new shoot-em-up DoDonPachi Maximum comes to Xbox Live this Wednesday. To help promote it, Cave has opened up the game's official site. It's packed with new screens, details, and even a soundtrack sampler video.

As the teaser video hinted, Maximum is supposed to be a virtual reality simulator within the DoDonPachi universe. We had already anticipated that it would be a best-of remix of classic series stages and enemies – and indeed this version is based on DoDonPachi Blissful Death and DoDonPachi Resurrection, both of which debuted in arcades before transitioning to iOS. The music from those games has been remixed by WaSi303 and sounds great.

The graphics will take some getting used to, though. Backgrounds seem to consist of simple wireframes while enemies are rendered in GameBoy-esque dot matrix patterns. Previous games featured much more detailed visuals, making this look like a budget title in comparison. Still, gameplay is what counts and that’s one area in which Cave always delivers.

DoDonPachi Maximum arrives on Wednesday, March 7 and will cost $4.99.

Paul Acevedo

Paul Acevedo is the Games Editor at Windows Central. A lifelong gamer, he has written about videogames for over 15 years and reviewed over 350 games for our site. Follow him on Twitter @PaulRAcevedo. Don’t hate. Appreciate!