Retro Re-release Roundup, week of October 2, 2025

So, are you a Galaxy person or a Galaxy 2 person? I mean, I didn't think it was possible to like one and not like the other, but as with so many things, there are a lot of very particular people who vehemently disagree...

ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2

Gee Bee

What's this? A block-breaking game infused with several pinball-esque gimmicks, and the debut in-house arcade title from a little arcade company called Namco; this game was distributed in arcades in 1978 and followed by the revisions Bomb Bee and Cutie Q the following year, and while those later version have very occasionally been reissued, the original Gee Bee has never left arcade until now. Players used a rotary paddle (emulated here via a few different methods, including the debut of mouse contols, accessible via Switch 2 joycons and/or USB mouse) to simultaneously control a pair of paddles used to reflect the bouncing ball in an effort to hit and break the respawning bricks lined up alongside the uppermost edges of the playfield and keep the ball from falling off the bottom of the screen, while also contending with pinball-derived gimmicks like the rollover N-A-M-C-O multiplier lights and the outlanes which can be safety-sealed by clearing the blocks on the sides of the field.

Why should I care? It's the first-ever port of Namco's first-in house game, and the first work from the guy who'd go on to design Pac-Man not too long thereafter, so there's no downplaying its immense historical significance. It's also rather inventive for a brick-breaker of its vintage, with all the rawness that entails — given how ruthless they were about speeding up the ball, you'll absolutely want to use the mouse for this one. (The debut of mouse controls also portends good things for future ACA paddle/spinner game reissues, but let's not get ahead of ourselves...)

Helpful tip: A few of Namco's earliest games output monochrome visuals, to which colors were applied via cellophane overlays provided for each cabinet, and there's an option in the game settings menu to emulate those colors if you so choose.

EGG CONSOLE

ARAMO (PC-8801mkIISR)

What's this? An exploratory sci-fi action-RPG, originally developed by Sein(xein/xain/sain)soft and distributed for the MSX in 1986; after crash-landing on an unknown planet that hosts the ruins of a futuristic civilization, the player must navigate the world in search of the ship parts that will allow them to escape, which involves traversing the isometric overworlds. engaging in de riguer bump combat with enemies, some basic leveling and equipment management and a few overhead dungeons for good measure.

Why should I care? While this game was very obviously meant to, and absolutely does, showcase the ingenuity of its programmer by rendering and displaying quasi-3D environments on low-spec hardware, it's no mere tech demo — they smartly simplified the demands on the player in order to best accommodate the slightly awkward primary perspective, to such a degree that it's significantly more straightforward than most of its action-RPG contemporaries, and I'm sure many would argue that it's all the better for it.

Language barrier? Nope: there's scant critical text, and it's all in English.

G-MODE ARCHIVES+

Toudou Ryuunosuke Tantei Nikki vol.7: Ni-biiro no Tenbin ~ Onitsuka-tei Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ~~

What's this? The seventh entry in a Taisho-era detective mystery series originally developed by Japanese adventure game pioneers Riverhillsoft for Japanese microcomputers, and the fifth entry originally developed and released for Japanese feature phones in 2007. In this volume, a maid is found hanged inside a mansion that has been the venue for a string of mysterious deaths, and after the police rule the death a suicide due to inconclusive evidence, Ryonosuke is hired by a private citizen to investigate... (This reissue also includes a spin-off/bonus epilogue chapter produced in 2008).

Why should I care? I'm running out of ways to say "G-MODE puts out a lot of detective adventure game reissues and I'm not even close to being caught up", but I can honestly say none of the ones I've played have been outright duds, and this particular series stands out for being almost defiantly old-school, even for the time, without ever crossing into full '80s-era ADV obstinance.

Helpful tip: As with other entries in this series, G-MODE's offered a somewhat-spoiler-free array of hints on their website, should you find yourself stuck at any point.

NEOGEO PREMIUM SELECTION

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers

What's this? An emulated reissue of the seventh entry in SNK's tentpole one-on-one fighting game series, Fatal Fury, originally released for Neogeo hardware in 1998 and not ported until the PlayStation 2 Fatal Fury Battle Archives 2 compilation in 2007, and more recently reissued in emulated form across many platforms; emulated by frequent SNK collaborator Code Mystics, this version allows one to select the CPU-only boss character Alfred as a playable character and offers online multiplayer with rollback netcode, various training and dipswitch features, a gallery of classic art (plus the new Shinkiro art produced specifically for this reissue) and more, including a player profile/achievement system full of dubious AI art.

"Neogeo Premium Selection"? This line, and this particular game, were surprise-announced a few days ago, and the gist is that they're going to receive a little more effort than Code Mystic's previous Neogeo reissues — in this instance, they've gone beyond previous reissues like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Samurai Shodown V Special by adding more advanced training functionality and a hitbox viewer, replays eith takeover functionality, more fully-featured online options that include lobbies and a tournament mode, etc but the extent of these "premium" features for non-fighting games remain to be seen. (No word on whether this line might hit consoles, either.)

Why should I care? One probably isn't desperate for excuses to give current-day SNK any of their money, and especially not the exorbitant non-adjusted prices being asked of non USD-dominant territories, but the game itself has the most characters and, arguably, the best visuals of any pre-timeskip Fatal Fury game, and while it's a little odd that they singled out this classic Fatal Fury game for reissue ahead of, say, Fatal Fury Special or even the original Real Bout, those games also don't feature Xiangfei.

Helpful tip: Code Mystics' implementation of Alfred hasn't played nice with the netcode, the in-game achievements or basically any other aspect of this package, but they are rushing out a lot of Alfred-specific fixes, so maybe it's already come good.

OTHER

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

What's this? A remake of Square's beloved 1997 Final Fantasy strategy-RPG, originally developed and published for the Sony PlayStation in 1997 and spawning handheld sequels on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, as well as an expanded remaster, subtitled War of the Lions, for PlayStation Portable in 2007, which was later ported to smartphones; unlike that remaster, this version was produced by several members of the original team including lead Yasumi Matsuno and includes an "Enhanced" mode with a litany of upgrades and alterations including expanded script and fresh localization with full voice acting, upscaled and/or refurbished visuals, the first localization of formerly-Japan-exclusive novel-game content, three difficulty settings that can be switched at any time, significant character and job rebalancing, a modern HD-compliant UI with all manner of new HUD options and context-sensitive assist options, a visual plot timeline borrowed from Final Fantasy XVI and much, much more, alongside a "Classic" version that's largely compliant with the PlayStation original (save for the script which, for whatever reason, is largely taken from the War of the Lions version and not the original).

Why should I care? You're part of the generation that didn't make the leap to Fire Emblem, Disgaea, Valkyria Chronicles, Super Robot Wars or any of the other very Japanese strategy-RPGs that captured the world in the decades since the release of the original FFT and still have it locked away in your heart as the one true strategy-RPG, or you're someone who's heard tales of its loose-to-the-point-of-exploitation game systems and intriguing story and want to see if stands up to the hype, and you're not someone who's going to be forever annoyed that they've elected to ignore virtually all of the extras added to War of the Lions, irrespective of whether those additions were well-considered, well-executed or endorsed by the original creators. 

Switch-to-Switch 2 upgrade watch: It's free! Why isn't it always free, or even consistently paid? Who makes these decisions?

Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer

What's this? A port of SideLoad Studio's original horizontal sci-fi shooting game Soldner-X, which was originally released on PC in 2006 and ported to PlayStation 3 in 2007, and followed by a sequel for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and, in "definitive" form, PlayStation 4; it's hard to tell from the scarcity of the pre-release info on this port, but it's either been rebalanced from the prior versions or is merely sporting the changes from the most recent patches to the prior versions, and I wish I could tell you which.

Why should I care? I struggle to tell good games in this subgenre from bad ones, but of the approximately ten zillion European-style PC shooting games released in the mid-'00s, this is one of the very few with any sort of longevity, so if you have a hankering for this particular vintage of sedate, number-infused shmuppin', you won't do much better than this.

Helpful tip: This digital release has been released in advance of a physical two-pack containing the original game and the sequel, due out early next year, so keep an eye out for the sequel, I guess.

Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2

What's this? Ports of Nintendo's Wii-era planetoid-hopping 3D Super Mario games, both of which were directly reissued for the Wii U and the former of which was previously reissued for Switch in the limited-availability Super Mario 3D All-Stars Switch compilation. As with the 3D All-Stars version of Galaxy, these games come augmented with a resolution bump (4K on Switch 2, almost-always-1080P on Switch), high-res UI elements and reconfigured controls that use the joycon gyro to control the pointer, as well as an assist mode that confers extra hit points and recovery from pits, and now additionally feature higher-resolution environment and character textures, sound tests, typically-trivial amiibo support (including for some brand-new Galaxy-themed amiibo) and additional pages added to the optional storybooks presented by Galaxy series poster-girl Rosalina, which includes an all-new storybook produced for Galaxy 2. (There's also a deluxe physical version that comes bundled with a physical version of Rosalina's book.)

Why should I care? Just as Super Mario Odyssey was lauded for returning 3D Mario to the freeform, expressive style of 3D platformer not seen since Sunshine, these two games were once lauded for steering 3D Mario away from the perceived weaknesses and flaws of the 3D platformer as presented by Sunshine in favor of boundless gimmicks advancing on those from Mario's 2D roots, surgically-paced, mostly-linear and always-immediate dexterity challenges and level design anchored by spherical playfields that deftly sidestepped much of the need for player-side camera management, and while the influence of this game can still be felt in games as recent as Super Mario Wonder, I am curious to see whether newer players are going to be content with something more prescriptive than Mario's current offerings, or if older players' perspective will be as rosey after a revisit. Of course, it's also interesting to receive yet another concrete sign of the waning influence of Shigeru Miyamoto within Nintendo, as evidence by these versions' strengthening of the Rosalina storybook side-content, which Miyamoto was famously ambivalent about including in Galaxy and actively sought to exclude from the sequel.

Helpful tip: You'd think the Switch 2 versions would allow you to reproduce the pointer controls using the joycon mouse functionality but for whatever reason, these versions only allow a second player to use the mouse for the younger-sibling co-op helper mode, but Nintendo has pledged to add single-player mouse functionality at some point.

IMMINENT DELISTINGS

Rock Band 4 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One) base game set for delisting on October 5

Harmonix is "celebrating" the tenth anniversary of Rock Band 4 by pulling it from sale — the licensing deals for the game's various tracks were set to expire exactly ten years after their release, so they'll be sequentially delisting all of their content as it hits the decade mark, starting with the base game, but anything you buy now will be playable even after delisting. (You may or may not be aware that Harmonix is currently owned by Epic and has been put to work on the Rock Band-adjacent Fortnite Festival, which has result in select peripherals once again producing Rock Band-compatible guitar controllers, albeit with Fortnite branding.)