Hey, excellent! Everybody's favorite choggling SHMUP sprite protagonists are headed to Live Arcade! Contra, along with Time Pilot, Frogger, and Scramble (but depressingly not Fast Freddy) are coming to Live courtesy of Konami. Filling out the retro delectability? Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Defender (Midway). Galaga and Pac-Man (Namco).

Microsoft actually may be able to compete with the Nintendo Wii's virtual console service like this. Simply license up emulated ports and sell them for a buck or two a pop. There's certainly no hardware functionality outside the controller that Nintendo has that Microsoft doesn't. It's nice to see that the current generation of consoles are the ones that finally embrace emulation, as opposed to spurning it as something criminal.

E3 2006: Live Arcade Line-up Part 2 [IGN]