Once again, my main co-op partner in crime, Richie, and I decided to switch things up from our usual routine and give a completely different game a go for once (we seldom break away from GTA Online or Awesomenauts these days). Since we couldn't decide on what to play, we tried to come to find a game that would satisfy both our likings. After much deliberation, we landed on an old favorite: Perfect Dark HD, mainly because we had the game sitting in our backlog for quite some time. Though I still don't know what happened to my original N64 cartridge of Perfect Dark, we both had downloaded the XBLA version (developed by 4J Studios) for an incredibly low price.

Here's a nice little surprise if you own Perfect Dark HD on Xbox Live Arcade - a Crackdown 2 agent.  How do you get him?  All you need to do is play the final version of Crackdown 2 and upon firing up Perfect Dark HD the game will detect the save file and unlock "Agent 4."

I'm going to enjoy seeing the Twitter responses when this post gets auto-tweeted to the Co-Optimus followers. Most confusing headline ever? May be.

If there’s anything gamers are guilty of, it’s nostalgia blindness. We love to replay the things that we played when we were younger gamers, but just how well do some games hold up to the test of time? We played Perfect Dark HD on the Xbox Live arcade, and put the Nintendo 64 classic to the test.

The Co-Optimus staff doesn't have an overtly reputation for getting too far ahead of ourselves, although on occasion we're known to get excited about something that may have been too good to be true. In this case, we found a video that suggested there would be 8-player co-op in the Perfect Dark Xbox Live Arcade port...it turns out that was the online multiplayer mode. Co-op is still online and offline, but limited to two players in each case.

Microsoft's X10 event is underway, and the first bit of co-op news is confirmed.  Perfect Dark HD will launch this coming March as part of a new promotion called the Xbox LIVE Arcade Block Party.

Rumor has it that the hi-def Perfect Dark port headed to the Xbox Live Arcade is almost ready, and should hit virtual shelves in February. Furthermore, the rumor states that a price of 1200 MS Points ($15 USD) has been set.