Retro Re-release Roundup, week of January 16, 2025
Donkey Kong Country Returns for the third time.
Allow me to use this intro as a pre-emptive "all is forgiven" for anyone who might not bother reading this week's roundup due to a sudden preoccupation with the tiny bit of info that Nintendo finally let slip on their Switch successor. I've yet to check in, so I'd ask you not to spoil me on anything Kuru Kuru Kururin-related, if you can help it.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Konami
What's this? A wacky single-screen athletic racing game with a multiplayer focus, originally developed and distributed in Japanese and select non-Japanese arcades by Konami in 1991 and never ported or reissued until now. Players are tasked with mashing the run button in order to complete three laps of each track in front of the other players, including the black-clad CPU "champion"; the coins collected during each race can be spent on upgrades between races, and the player may eventually qualify to play a side-scrolling BMX stage in order to earn extra coins. (This reissue includes both the Japanese two-player verson and the global four-player version.)
Why should I care? You're looking at a rare example of a game that attempted to fuse Japanese comedic sensibilities with unmistakably western-style game design — which, in this instance, meant they nakedly copied Super Off-Road's homework — and one that, in autofire-equipped home form, won't destroy your hands before the fun wears off.
Useless fact: Those goofy little running men were drawn by Hiroshi Iuchi, future creator of Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga.
EGG CONSOLE
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Nihon Falcom
What's this? The first in Xtalsoft's three-part series of console-esque turn-based RPGs, originally developed and published for PC-88 in Japan in 1987 and ported to Sharp X1 and MSX2 soon thereafter. Players embark on a quest to avenge the death of their father by the evil demon lord Crimson, which entails all the usual malarkey — visiting towns and talking to NPCs, buying equipment, traversing an overworld, entering dungeons, acquiring party members and engaging in turn-based combat — but with a few little unique wrinkles, like the fact that the overworld is completely free of random battles.
Why should I care? Crimson has a reputation among Japanese fanatics for liberally borrowing its broader system and specific progression/story beats from Dragon Quest II; I have not played enough of this game to say just how frequently and brazenly it does or does not take from DQ, but I can say that its dual combat innovations ("physical attacks do wildly varying amounts of damage" and "attacks are both prone to missing and easily dodged") make for a significantly more frustrating first impression than anything Yuji Horii's ever worked on. (You can sidestep all this frustration by leaning on magic attacks, and I imagine just knowing this from the jump will allow you to enjoy the game to a far greater level than I ever could.)
Language barrier? Virtually all the text is written in hiragana/katakana, and you will need to be able to read it to progress.
OTHER
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $59.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Nintendo
What's this? A high-definition remaster of Retro Studio's 2010 revival of the Donkey Kong Country side-scroller series, originally published by Nintendo for the Wii in 2010 and ported to the Nintendo 3DS by Monster Games in 2013; this remaster, produced by Forever Entertainment of Panzer Dragoon, House of the Dead and Front Mission remake infamy, this version offers a fairly straightfoward reproduction of the original game, now augmented with higher-resolution textures and higher-detail character models, a resolution bump to 1080p docked/720p handheld and the addition of the extras from the 3DS port, which include more forgiving health options, a modest selection of additional stages and the ability to play with conventional button-based controls, rather than the forced motion gestures from the original Wii version.
Why should I care? Given Forever's usual MO of artlessly remaking beloved games for the worse, one should be impressed, or at least relieved, to see that this remaster is overwhelmingly faithful to the original and, for the most part, runs and plays as it should. Now, some might be inclined to claim that this remaster, positioned between the years -old and arguably more refined DKC Tropical Freeze and the recent cavalcade of classic DKC drops on NSO, might take some of the luster from a game that was perhaps more significant as an example of Retro broadening their output and of the resurrection of a beloved series than as a wholly enjoyable game on its own merits, but I'd posit that the game's unadorned challenge still has its appeal and that many people might find the shorter-form structure more appealing that the marathons often presented by Tropical Freeze.
Useless fact: This remaster was produced in Unity, and while it's not the first Nintendo-published game to use Unity (or Unreal, for that matter), it still strikes me as... not peculiar, necessarily, but worth acknowledging all the same.
DreadOut Remastered Collection
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Soft Source Publishing / Digital Happiness
What's this? A two-pack containing first-ever console ports of Digital Happiness' cult 2013 crowdfunded survival horror title DreadOut and its 2016 side-game, subtitled Keepers of the Dark; these versions are being marketed as remasters but neither publisher nor developer has bothered to outline or mention any particular changes beyond a basic resolution bump and nebulous "tweaks".
Why should I care? DreadOut was both a welcome slice of Fatal Frame-esque camera-framed horror and a welcome success story for the then-fledgling Indonesian indie game scene, and its absence from consoles has been a sore point for many years, especially given that the sequel made it over just fine. Now, do these versions offer any material improvements over the technically-dubious originals, or any compelling reason for existing PC owners to double-dip? Y'all tell me, I guess.
Helpful tip: These remasters are scheduled to also hit PC at some point, but again, nobody involved has deigned to explain what that'll mean in actuality.
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $39.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Bandai-Namco
What's this? A remaster of the tenth mainline entry in Bandai-Namco's long-running Tales of... series of anime-influenced action RPGs, originally released for the Nintendo Wii in Japan in 2009 and given an enhanced port to the PlayStation 3 in 2010 (as Tales of Graces f) that was eventually released worldwide in 2012; this new version includes all the content from the original game and the vast majority of its voluminous assortment of paid DLC, now outfitted with a variety of quality-of-life tweaks that include faster overworld traversal options, certain new game+ options available from the beginning, instant-retry options upon death, the ability to disable random encounters, skippable and faster-to-read settings for cutscenes and character skits, subtitled for previously unsubbed voice quips, English/Japanese voice options (with new English performaces for previously-undubbed material) and more.
Why should I care? Many players would cite Graces as both the best 3D Tales of... game and the last truly outstanding entry before the 2021 soft-reboot, and while I don't feel qualified to back up those statements, I do feel it's certainly the one game that best bridges both the tone and mechanics of the 2D entries, which err towards the conventional vs. the 3D games' wilder tonal swings, to the structure of the 3D games, and while it's certainly offers less world exploration than one might want or expect, the combat's best-in-series and the game knows how to get you to the good stuff right away (and that's even more true of this remaster).
Useless fact: This remaster's the first shot in a promised salvo of 30th-anniversary Tales of... game initiatives, and I have to imagine some sort of Phantasia remake is among them...
P-47 II MD (Sega GenesisMega Drive) iinternational cartridge release by Retro-Bit
- Price: $54.99 USD | $79.99 CAD | €69,99 EUR
- ETA: orders close February 16; shipping date TBD
Announced for Japanese release last year, this cartridge run for Jaleco's unreleased Mega Drive remix of their arcade shooter P-47 has been picked up for international release by Retro-Bit, making it easier for players the world over to experience an authentic unreleased Mega Drive game shelved due to platform holder politics. The international release is being split among a great many vendors specific to each country/region, so be sure to check the website for the seller that best caters to your location.
