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Now that the Zune is officially coming to Canada in mid-June Microsoft is spearheading an initiative to bring games to the Zune. With XNA Game Studio you’ll be able to do that. Now from first hand experience I know for a fact that the games officially suck. Some of them don’t end and some of them can end but it’s literally impossible. The 3 games I have on my first-gen Zune are Galactic Wars 3, Match ‘Em, and Alien Aggressor. In this post I’ll explain how you can get these games onto your Zune. First you’ll download the files, unzip them, open it as a project on Microsoft Visual Studio C# Express Edition which is free, connect your device with XNA Game Studio Device Center, and then deploy it onto your Zune. So first let me give you links to the download site of all three of these games. Focused Games
has all of them now except Alien Aggressors.
Alien Agressor (at the end of the post)
Now you know how to get the games, let’s figure out how to load them onto the Zune. After downloading those files, unzip them all to a favourite location like your Desktop. Now download Microsoft Visual Studio C# and then head over to download XNA Game Studio 3.0.

XNA Game Studio Logo

Now you have all the software you need to put games on your Zune. Once you’ve installed all the software open up XNA Game Studio 3.0 and click the green + button to add your connected Zune to the Studio. Close it after it’s done testing the connection and then open up Visual Studio C#. Once open you right-click the blank space next to the toolbar (file, edit,…) and click XNA Game Studio Management… Now go to the Recent Projects area and click Open Project. Find the location you saved the unzipped games and click open. Once it’s loaded go to Build which is now part of the Menu toolbar and click Deploy (insert game here). After a few minutes the game should be loaded onto your Zune.
Just a few notes though, these games I’ve supplied you with are for first-gen Zunes but can be easily played on the newer ones. There are better games out there for newer Zunes that can’t be played on the first-gen ones. If you have any problems, feel free to contact me or give me advice on rewording this How-To article.

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