Retro Re-release Roundup, week of April 1, 2020

No crying until the end!
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It's April 2 here. I really have no excuse.

ARCADE ARCHIVES

Gallagher's Gallery

  • Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide)
  • Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
  • Publisher: Hamster / American Laser Games

What's this? A laserdisc shooting gallery starring the irascible embittered bigot, Gallagher, originally release in arcades in 1992, with a home version announced but never released for Sega CD; you shoot fruit or some friggin' thing, hell if I know.

Why should I care? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Helpful tip: Being that neither the Switch nor the PS4 has a lightgun peripheral, the Arcade Arcades version of Gallagher's Gallery uses voice commands in lieu of infrared shooting, requiring the player to use an external microphone and shout the quadrant of the screen that currently matches their desired target, followed by the appropriate onomatopoeia for a gunshot — the voice recognition software is calibrated for sixteen different languages and changes automatically depending on your system's language settings, so make sure to shout the appropriate verbalization or it won't register (unless you shout it really loud).


G-MODE ARCHIVES+

Zuma

  • Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
  • Price: ¥500
  • Publisher: G-MODE / Popcap

What's this? A highly-acclaimed action-puzzle game conceived and designed by the creative powerhouse Popcap in 2005, for feature phones, web portals and beyond; reissued due to overwhelming demand, this release marks the first time a internationally-owned and developed game has been released by the Japan-centric G-MODE Archives label.

Why should I care? The maintenance of games like Zuma is an essential counterweight to the popular notion that the flip-phone era of gaming was defined by unambitious rip-offs.

Useless fact: Zuma's mid-'00s ubiquity was quickly ended by a frivolous lawsuit from Japanese behemoths and serial plagiarists Mitchell Corporation, best known for their erotic mahjong game Mirage Youjuu Mahjongden.


NINTENDO SWITCH ONLINE


NSO April '21 update: MOTHER Extravaganza

  • Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
  • Price: included with the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service
  • Publisher: Nintendo

What're these? The entirety of Nintendo and Shigesato Itoi's highly influential RPG series, MOTHER, made available ahead of MOTHER 3's 15th anniversary — to be specific, the 1989 Famicom original and its shelved NES localization, EarthBound Beginnings; 1994's MOTHER 2 for Super Famicom and its North American SNES counterpart, EarthBound; and the Japan-only GBA swansong MOTHER 3, accompanied by both a brand-new localization and the inclusion of the widely-played and highly respected fan translation. What's more, Nintendo's also thrown in the most recent playable build of the original Nintendo 64 version of MOTHER 3, which was tearfully scrapped at the end of the N64's life after several years in development hell.

Why should I care? For as staid and impersonal as these games may seem in hindsight, they crawled so that YIIK could run, and that's something that can be proudly etched upon Shigesato Itoi's tombstone.

Helpful tip: In accordance with Nintendo's commemorative campaign, the availability of all these games has been limited to a single 24-hour window for each game, back-dated to their original release date, so be sure to remember to play these games on July 27 1989, August 27 1994, April 20 2006 and never, respectively.

SOUNDTRACKS & VINYL

Ergheiz MENU MIX: God Bless the Menu Cursor 3LP soundtrack 

  • Format: vinyl (3LP)
  • Price: $129.99 or equivalent
  • Availability: in a sense, inescapable

Square-Enix's latest vinyl release makes novel use of the format: each of the three records contains an ever-so-slightly-randomized sounding sequence of the Ergheiz cursor menu sound, and by playing all three records simultaneously, the listener can properly recreate the experience of mashing the d-pad on the main menu, all without having to own or play Ergheiz. 

ROM HACKS & TRANSLATIONS

Ultra ClayFighter Tournament Edition Public Beta 1 (SNES)

Uh, this one's real.

ARCADE ARCHIVES: Haunted Castle

G-MODE ARCHIVES: Tetris Diamond

OTHER: DOOM 3 (PSVR), Kingdom Hearts: The All of Them (PC), Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2 (Switch)

ROM HACKS & TRANSLATIONS: Zangeki no Reginleiv (Wii)

LIMITED-EDITION PHYSICAL PRINT RUNS: DOOM: The Classics Collection (Switch/PS4)