Retro Re-release Roundup, week of January 4, 2024
Another Nichibutsu barrel-scraper from Hamster.
To anyone disappointed by this week's predicably meagre New Year's update, I submit to you this: it introduced you to the name MIGHTY GUY, and I think we can all agree that our lives can only be enriched by the presence of such a divine title.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
Mighty Guy
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Nichibutsu
What's this? A vertically-scrolling overhead run-and-gun with a loose American comics aesthetic, originally developed and distributed in Japanese arcades by Nichibutsu in 1986; players are tasked with thwarting the schemes of the evil supercomputer ZELDA via a combinations of punches, sliding kicks, beam shots and a mysterious "psycho gun" trailing energy attack that forces the player to remain stationary but can be manually guided around the screen.
Why should I care? You want a game that challenges you to optimally use one really gimmicky weapon, or you just want to hear the most US shareware-esque game music ever produced by a Japanese arcade dev.
Useless fact: This game was largely produced using recycled donor boards from Nichibutsu's previous action game COP 01 and is said to be the reason that game was so scarce, but I'd say ol' Mighty Guy is only marginally less uncommon, so who knows how many copies of either game are actually out there.
HACKS, MODS & FAN TRANSLATIONS
Daggerfall Unity 1.0.0 release by interkarma & co.
After nine long years of work, this painstaking recreation of the second Elder Scrolls for Unity is finally considered release-worthy; you'll need a copy of the original files in order to run this version, but they've been free online for years and the installation guide not only runs down the installation process for the common versions out there but also provides links to recommended packages to download, should you need them. The above footage is from the popular D.R.E.A.M. visual overhaul mod; you can find a list of the most common and heavily-recommended enhancement mods here.)
Dracula X. Nocturne in the Moonlight Ultimate (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) Sega Saturn restoration/enhancement patch by Meduza Team
The Japan-only Saturn port of Symphony of the Night has long been coveted by those who haven't played it for its smattering of original and exclusive content, and long lamented by anyone who has played it for being a half-baked conversion that paints the Saturn in an extremely poor light, but no longer: in addition to implementing the '00s-era English localisation from Dracula X Chronicles/Castlevania Requiem, this mod address the loading times, corrects many of the incorrectly-streched/resolution-corrected sprites, implements true transparency effects, further optimises and corrects the map, allows for cutscene/dialogue skipping, offers support for the 4MB RAM expansion for better performance and more.
LIMITED-EDITION PHYSICAL PRINT RUNS
Kyukyoku Tiger Heli (PS4/Switch) release via Limited Run Games
- Price: $49.99 (standard) / $99.99 (collectors set with teacup)
- Availability: from January 5, 10AM Eastern to February 4, 23:59
For the first time in a long while, an M2 ShotTriggers release is getting an official global release: Kyukyoku Tiger Heli, the first of their subseries of reissues from the catalog of legendary arcade developer Toaplan, and a collection containing the arcade versions of their popular helicopter shooting games Tiger Heli, Kyukyoku Tiger and the overseas version Twin Cobra, as well as the side-scrolling action game Guardian / Get Star and a menagerie of different console conversions of the aforementioned arcade games, totalling to 13 different versions. (The Japanese version also threw in a Toaplan puzzle game called Teki Paki, distributed as a separate download, but there's no word on whether that's coming over, too.)
Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis) cartridge reissue via Limited Run Games
- Price: $64.99 (SNES) / $69.99 (Genesis)
- Availability: from January 5, 10AM Eastern to February 4, 23:59
Before Shadow the Hedgehog came Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, the standalone adventure of the ever-slightly-so-edgy rival to Sunsoft USA's would be mascot superstar, Aero the Acro-Bat. It's not awful! Gotta wonder where ol' Aero got to, though... (No big collectors' package for this one, just a straight repro.)
