Retro Re-release Roundup, week of November 7, 2024

Stay angry, folks.

ARCADE ARCHIVES

Vs. The Quest of Ki (Ki no Bouken)

What's this? The Nintendo Vs. System conversion of Namco and Game Studio's Famicom platformer The Quest of Ki, originally released in Japan in 1988, remade for feature phones in the mid-'00s and recently reissued as part of the Japan-only Namcot Collection for Nintendo Switch. Set before the events of The Tower of Druaga, the player controls soon-to-be-kidnapped heroine Ki on a quest to retrieve the powerful Blue Crystal Rod, which ultimately entails retrieving a key, avoiding enemies, opening chests to acquire helpul temporary powerups and traversing to the exit of each stage; the player's movements are limited to an extremely floaty jump that can be augmented with the dash button, and so mastering the many peculiarities of Ki's granular, inertia-laden jump is key to success.

Why should I care? You have a general fondness to uncompromisingly difficult jumping games, or you watched this game completely destroy Arino across multiple sessions of Game Center CX and want to experience some of that pain for yourself. It's also worth emphasizing that this game is heavily derivative of the on-foot section's of Atari's vector-graphics arcade game Major Havoc, to the extent that the developers directly credited that game in the staff roll, so you might be curious to sample a more digital and far harsher Japanese take on an American classic.

Helpful tip: The Vs. System version of The Quest of Ki differs from the Famicom original in several ways: it gives the players immediate, per-stage access to the "special" stages that comprise the latter half of the game and throws in an additional 20 stages to boot; it changes the destination of most of the special-stage warps and it immediately forgets your progress and dumps you back to the title screen if you don't immediately start a new credit during the game-over screen.

EGG CONSOLE

Xak II (PC-8801mkIISR)

What's this? The first sequel to Microcabin's popular Ys-esque action game Xak, originally published in 1990 and subsequently ported to PC-98, MSX2, FM Towns and Sharp X68000, and later adapted by Teletet for the PC Engine CD as part of a two-pack with the original Xak; aside from a pronounced visual upgrade, Xak II's biggest advancement from the original can be seen in the combat and general moment-to-moment action, which no longer revolves around bump combat and now offers a dedicated attack button and more immediate and regular use of ranged magic, as well as a jump button for more involved traversal.

Why should I care? Xak the first got away with being such a Falcom imitator through sheer force of polish, and while Xak II's action-button combat suffers from the same maladies as most early bump-to-button converts (extremely unreliable short-range hit detection, basically), they've broadly maintained all of the touches that made the original such a breezy experience, and the occational moments of parallax really accentuate the signature faux-3D angled-perspective visuals. They even kept the late-game genre swerve!

Language barrier? Many of the crucial menu/HUD options are in English, but certain dialog menu options and the large amount of character dialogue are in Japanese, so you're likely to hit at least a few hurdles if you try to bluff your way through.

OTHER

Goat Simulator Remastered

What's this? A tenth-anniversary remaster of one of the landmarks of ironically-broken physics sandbox games, originally released for PC and gradually ported and expanded for iOS, Android, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch; on top of retouched visuals and the inclusion of all DLC, this version also integrates select content previously exclusive to the mobile versions and promises both inconspicuous bug fixes and the retention of most other, very conspicuous bugs.

Why should I care? Let's turn this question on its head: in the extremely unlikely event that any of you are young enough to have played this game during your formative ages, I'd love for you to argue for this game being anything more than an early footnote in the turn towards low-hanging virality bait that hasn't materially evolved in a decade.

Helpful tip: The original game's still available most everywhere, and it still goes for virtually nothing.

Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle Remastered

What's this? The latest in a succession of ports of Nippon Ichi's 2004 gridless tactics RPG Phantom Brave, originally released for the PlayStation 2 and given distinct expanded ports to both Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Portable, with an attempted all-in-one port produced for PC in 2016 and brought forward to Switch as part of the first NIS Classics two-pack in 2021; info's scarce on this version but as far as I can tell, it's directly based on the PC/Switch version but with improved filter options and 120FPS support.

Why should I care? All I've heard about the various versions of this game that have been kicking around for the last seven or eight years is that they're majorly broken, and my understanding is that most of the "new" filter options being offered on PS5 are options they originally promised for the other versions (or are presented in the options menu but simply do not function as they should), so at the very least, one might hope that this latest ports represents a final, we-actually-fixed-it-this-time build, especially given that they're pledging to patch the PC version into parity with this one. As for whether it's any fun, I could not begin to discern a good NIS RPG from a bad one, so you tell me.

Useless fact: They're porting this game again now because they recently announced a long-awaited but entirely unexpected sequel, which is due out on PS?Switch/PC in January.

UPDATES & DLC

Atari 50: The First Console War (DLC, $7.99 or equivalent)

The second and final content update for Digital Eclipse's Atari 50 anthology centers on the rivalry between Atari's 2600 console and Mattel's fledgling Intellivision, with documentary content from multiple Atari and Intellivision alum, new virtual timelines outlining the history of the Intellivision and 19 additional games (list), including several Mattel M Network games for Atari 2600 and a small handful of unpublished and/or unseen prototypes. One might have hoped for some direct Intellivision games, but I suppose they'll be getting their own Gold Master collection in due time...

Halo 2 E3 2003 Demo mod coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection (November 9, PC via Steam Workshop)

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Microsoft and Bungie's era-defining Xbox FPS Halo 2, series custodians 343 Industries have collaborated with the "Digsite", an assembly of dedicated modders and community members, to salvage, reverse-engineer and recreate the game's notorious E3 2003, which was essentially created out of thin air for the sake of the trade show and bore little resemblance to the game that would eventually be released under that title. (The current lack of provisions for Master Chief Collection on Xbox mean that this free update is exclusive to the PC version, but given that they spent two years piecing this demo back together, one would have to imagine they're devising some way to bring it to the console version as well.)

IMMINENT DELISTINGS

DoDonPachi Resurrection/Daifukkatsu and Espgaluda II (Nintendo Switch), available until December 2

Following the recent delisting of Live Wire's port of the arcade shooting game Mushihimesama, they've just announced that their remaining Cave ports will also be unavailable for digital purchase from December 2 due to an expiration of their publishing license. As they stand, DoDonPachi Resurrection is currently available on Steam and iOS and will remain available for the foreseeable future, but Espgaluda II's previous ports (a Japan-only Xbox 360 port and an iOS port) are long unavailable, meaning there are no current commercial alternatives to the Switch version. Do note that both games have received separate physical runs in North America, Japan and, very recentl, Europe, so you may want to look into those while the prices are still somewhat reasonable.

Sega Classics delistings on December 12 (PC, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox)

Sega's just announced plans to delist a substantial number of vintage ports and reissues — check the FAQ for the full list, but the quick breakdown is that they're going to be removing the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Classics compilation, their series of Dreamcast ports (which includes NiGHTS, despite it never being a Dreamcast game, but does not include Shenmue I+II), and certain standalone ports/reissues still available on Xbox via backwards compatibility, including the M2-produced Sega Vintage Collection reissues and Model 2 ports like Virtua Fighter 2 and Sonic the Fighters. Now, Sega's recent delistings of various classic Sonic games were done in the service of replacing them with newer (nut not necessarily better) reissues, so they may have immediate plans to offer new versions of some or all of these games... but they may also be simply cleaning house and removing games that they can no longer maintain, who knows. Whatever the case, one should note that the Genesis library on Steam, which is presented with an implicit invitation for owners to directly extract the ROMs to use however they see fit, is perhaps the most permissive ROM-based initiative of any major catalog owner, and I'd hate to think they might be walking that back in favor of something unnecessarily restrictive.