It isn’t often that a game comes along and can keep me addicted for well over a year, especially a game as simple as the PSP launch title Lumines. While those that grown accustomed to more complex fare may hard to understand how a simple puzzle game can be so hard to put down, but once you get the chance to play Lumines you will immediately understand why.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi is one of the most talented and creative developers in the video game industry, with critially acclaimed games like REZ, Space Channel 5, Lumines, and the 360 title Ninety-Nine Nights, under his belt.

Music always plays a major role in Mizuguchi’s games, and he always manages to incorporate music in some very unique ways. In the case of Lumines it’s the amazing musical score, consisting of techno and trance tunes, that accompanies the gameplay and dynamically changes based on the player's performance.

At E3 2006, Microsoft annuounced Q Entertainment will be bringing it’s amazing puzzle series to the Xbox Live Arcade in the form of Lumines Live!, which is not a port of the PSP launch title and is instead an entirely new game with new modes such as mission - which tasks players with clearing the screen of within a set number of moves, puzzle - which provides players with a glimpse of a pattern they must recreate using the tiles, and Vs. CPU - which pits players against progressively more difficult AI opponents in multiplayer.

The game also comes along with new features such as custom skins, and - perhaps most exciting of all - the ability to download and play music videos in the background while you play, as well as download or rip new music to add to the dynamic soundtrack.

With all these new modes, online multiplayer, an online score board, and the typically low price of an Xbox Live Acrade title, Lumines Live! should have no problem appealing to those already addicted to the PSP title. That is, unless Q Entertainment and Microsoft follow through on a pricing plan that Tetsuya Mizuguchi brought up in a recent interview with Game Informer magazine, stating that multiplayer may not be available in the base package. Considering multiplayer over Xbox Live would likely be the most attractive element of this new iteration of the franchise, such a pricing plan would likely deter many potential buyers.

The Xbox Live Arcade is starting to get a little crowded this year with all the new games, but Lumines Live! is sure to be a stand out title and one of the best games available for the service this year. Look for Lumines Live! to be ready for download sometime this summer. Lets just hope that download comes with every feature intact.