Retro Re-release Roundup, week of September 5, 2024

...yeah, Aero 2 certainly has A Look, don't it?

ARCADE ARCHIVES

Lead Angle (Dead Angle)

What's this? A mobster-themed crosshair shooting game, originally developed by Seibu Kaihatsu and distributed in arcades by Tecmo in Japan and Fabtek elsewhere in 1988 (with alternate regional titles that include Dead Angle and Gang Hunter), with a Sega-published Master System port released in 1990; unlike the usual crosshair shooter as exemplified by Taito's popular Operation Wolf, this game is played in a third-person perspective with a transparent outline of the player-character that changes colors when in range of being shot by an enemy, and boasts extremely wide scenes that the player must freely survey by moving the crosshair.

Why should I care? You want to try one of the lesser-distributed games in this specific subgenre, or one that presented more complexity than straightforward aiming and shooting, or you're a fan of Seibu's earlier mobster-themed crosshair shooter Empire City 1931 and weren't aware that it received a spiritual successor (or that Seibu's later Dynamite Duke had a predecessor).

Useless hint: That's "lead" as in Mega Man 2's Bubble Lead, by the by.

EGG CONSOLE

Hydlide (MSX)

What's this? EGG Console's first repeat customer: a reissue of the MSX port of the influential early action-RPG Hydlide, released shortly after the original PC-88 version (and debut EGG Console title) in Japan in early 1985, and eventually released officially in Europe, including as a hardware pack-in in select countries. Explore a small interconnected world, defeat enemies with bump-action combat and solve "puzzles" to reclaim the world from an evil demon, y'all know the drill.

Why should I care? If you're not somebody who grew up with this specific conversion, you probably shouldn't: the sole programmer tasked with this port did an admirable job fitting the majority of the game within the MSX's smaller memory and was able to add some little enhancements like flip-scrolling, but the consequence of producing such a good port means that the differences from the PC-88 original are ultimately minor.

Language barrier? What little text is present is entirely in English.

G-MODE ARCHIVES+

Bokujou Monogatari Mobile Life & Love

What's this?  A mobile-exclusive entry in the long-running slow-life farming series once known globally as Harvest Moon and currently known as Story of Seasons, developed by Liveware and originally released exclusively for Japanese feature phones by Marvelous in 2007; this game hearkens from the era when Marvelous was pushing separate gender-specific "boy" and "girl" versions of thier games, and this reissue includes both versions.

Why should I care? While this game borrows a lot of visual assets from the GBA/DS games of the time, it's a wholly original game that, to my understanding, marries a lot of the more contemporary game systems and approaches to character relationships and writing trends to the more focused and restrained format of the Game Boy/Color entries in the series.

Helpful tip: This thread may be useful to anybody who wants to try to play this game without reading the text (which, as with all G-MODE Archives releases, is raw and untranslated).

OTHER

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

What's this? Adouble-pack containing remasters of the two Ace Attorney legal mystery drama spinoffs starring rival prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, which were originally developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo DS in 2009 and 2011, respectively, and ported to smartphones in the late '00s; in addition to providing the first ever global release and localization of Ace Attorney Investigations 2. this collection presents both games with the ability to flip between the original pixel graphics (or more accurate, the smartphone interpolations of those pixel graphics, hence the uneven pixels) and newly-drawn HD animations by series art director Tatsuro Iwamoto, new multi-language localisations and dubs, a gallery full of character, art, music and dev documents and several convenient features like a "Story Mode" toggle that'll auto-solve puzzles, the ability to skip anywhere in any case from moment one and the ability to review old dialog, among other functionality. (The physical version is Switch-only.)

Why should I care? Due to various circumstances which included general series fatigue, the original Ace Attorney Investigations received a lukewarm reception outside of Japan, to such a degree that Capcom elected not to localize the second game in favor of localizing another Shu Takumi adventure game named Ghost Trick, as well as the handheld Okami spinoff, Okamiden — I believe they made the right call for the time, but as luck would have it, the second AAI was lauded as one of the very best and most consistently well-written entries in the entire series in Japan, and so this collection realises the requests and players going back over ten years and finally closes the loop on one of Capcom's most-requested Japan-only titles.

Helpful tip: With the release of this collection, the only Ace Attorney game not in current circulation is the 3DS crossover game Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. and given both the crossover nature of the game and its collaborative development between Level-5 and Capcom, as well as international publishing rights, it seems likely that it may never be ported. (Then again, Level-5 could use a win right now, so perhaps they're willing to do whatever it takes to bring it back.)

Aero the Acro-Bat 2

What's this? An emulated reissue of the second of Sunsoft and Iguana Entertainment's mascot platformers, originally published for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and presented here in SNES form; all of Ratalaika's usual enhancements are present, including save states, rewind/fast-forward, various cheat mode toggles, screen settings, button configs and a small gallery of art and development images.

Why should I care? I have no idea if Stuart's actually planning to review this one but my presumption is that he has a stash of Aero reviews on deck at all times, so I'd kindly ask you to keep an eye out for his opinions, which I'm sure will be far more favorable than my own. 

Useless fact: The chronology of this series absolutely does not matter but for the curious, I believe the spinoff game Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, which is also due to be reissued, takes place between Aero and Aero 2.

Sunsoft is Back! Retro Game Selection

What's this? An emulated three-pack of Famicom games from the Sunsoft catalog, produced as part of a successful crowdfunding campaign to resurrect and re-establish the Sunsoft brand and released earlier this year in Japan, as well as globally via a Steam release that, as of this writing, remains entirely in Japanese. The global Switch release of this collection includes both the original Japanese versions and newly-localized versions of the 1988 adventure game Ripple Island, the 1986 side-scroller Firework Thrower Kantaro’s 53 Stations of the Tokaido and the 1986 sidescrolling action-RPG The Wing of Madoola and boasts save states and rewind, button mapping, screen settings and wallpaper options, 3D reproductions of the original cartridges and galleries for each game that include scans of the manuals, design documents, advertisements and other promotional art.

Why should I care? Sunsoft being "back" is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and this release seeks to introduce the world to a particular side and era of Sunsoft's software output that was specific to Japan, and to the tastes of designer/illustrator Moriken, that was in many ways a world apart from the games and market trends that defined Sunsoft's imageduring various points in the 1990s — there was more to 'em than DPCM basslines and Batman, believe it or not.

Useless fact: It's not a classic game nor a game by Sunsoft proper, but Sunsoft is back in another way this week via Gimmick 2, a brand new sequel to the cult late-era NES game Gimmick by the folks at Swedish studio Bitwave Games.

STREAMING SERVICE ROLLOUT

Anstream Arcade, now available on PlayStation

PlayStation owners who've watched with envy as PC, smartphone and Xbox players used absurd bandwidth to cloud-stream tiny games and experience them at potato-quality resolution with nine hundred frames of input delay, rejoice: for a monthly fee, you can now join them in gamer valhalla.

PRINT MEDIA

The NES Era Vol. 1 (Hardcover) from Limited Run Games

As part of a series of commemorations of the 40th anniversary of the NES, Retronauts don Jeremy Parish has supplemented their long-running NES Works series with a new coffee table book detailing the early domestic Japanese home console ecosystem and the conception and release of the Famicom, which includes breakdowns of almost a dozen pre-Famicom systems and over 60 Famicom games released in Japan before and during the leadup to the release of the NES in North America. Most of LRG's books are quite widely available, and I imagine a cheaper format version of this particular book is probably in the cards, but do note that this particular hardcover version is a limited-time product, with orders closing on October 13.