Retro Re-release Roundup, week of June 8, 2023
Raiden's first 3D entry returns to modern consoles.
An extra up-front note, dear readers: it's a pain to buy outside of Japan, comes with very few games and ranges from expensive to exorbitant, but if you have an interest in Japanese computers and want to throw down for an emulator-based mini version that outright expects you to sideload all your own software, you might want to jump on the X68000 Z, which just went up for wider purchase after a select crowdfunded release late last year.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
Bravoman (Chouzetsurin-jin Berabow Man)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Namco
What's this? A silly tokusatsu-themed sidescrolling action game with a unique control scheme, originally developed and released in Japanese arcades by Namco in 1988 and converted with major changes for the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 in 1990, with an inexplicable transmedia revival as part of the short-lived ShiftyLook initiative of the mid-2010s. This game is most notable for using two touch-sensitive buttons for jumping an attacking that perform different actions depending on hard they are pressed (or more accurately, the speed at which they are pressed and released), and this reissue offers three alternate control methods: a method that lets the player hold each button to detemine strength, a la the TG16 version; an option that uses six buttons with weak/medium/strong versions of each action on individual buttons; and a third option that maps the functionality of jumping and attacking to the right analog stick.
Why should I care? While this game tends to run out of material long before it actually ends, and a lot of the charm is hidden behind both a language barrier and a presumed familiarity with both '70s tokusatsu troped and a specific strain of Namco arcade games produced by this team of developers, the novelty of the controls and overall tone are enough to make it worth kludging through at least once.
Useless fact: The Bravoman cast has cameod in all sorts of odd places, with final boss Dr. Bakuta alt-universe depiction in Megami Tensei II perhaps being the most left-field guest appearance.
NINTENDO SWITCH ONLINE
June '23 update: Mystery Tower ("NES"), Blaster Master: Enemy Below (Game Boy Color), Kirby Tilt'n Tumble (Game Boy Color) & Harvest Moon (SNES)
What're these? A never-reissued, motion-controlled roly-poly Kirby spinoff, a handheld remix of Sunsoft's cult exploratory tank-driving action game, the first entry in the laid-back farming series now known as Story of Seasons and a Famicom-only Lode Runner-esque action-puzzle game that is making its global debut with a brand-new English title. (Japan's NSO app got the Japanese version of Super Baseball Simulator 1000, which the rest of the world received two years ago, in place of the Japanese version of Harvest Moon, which they've had for a year or so.)
Why should I care? Aside from the fact that these are all finely-crafted and, in most cases, highly-requested games from their respective libraries, they each have their own unique supplementary value: Kirby can be played using the Switch's motion controls to replicate the original Tilt Pak; Harvest Moon is a game some presumed off-limits due to the complications around the branding and ownership of the series; Mystery Tower is one of Namco's ever-so-often attempts to try and slip a blatantly Japan-only game into western canon and hope nobody notices, and Blaster Master... is expensive on the aftermarket, I guess?
Useless fact: Mystery Tower has gone through some odd re-titling in Japan as of late, too: the game's official title is Babel no Tou, with the box art and title screen just reading BABEL, but due to trademark issues with a competing product, they've somewhat inconsistently edited the box art and/or title screen for recent reissues to read "THE TOWER OF BABEL". As for the specifics of the international title change, I can only assume that the references to the Tower of Babel clashed with Nintendo's avowed devotion to Satan.
OTHER
- Platform: PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent
- Publisher:NIS America / MOSS
What're these? A contemporary port of the first polygonal entry in the classic vertically-scrolling shooting game series, Raiden, which debuted in arcades in 2005 and made its way to PlayStation 2 and PC in 2006, with a Steam reissue in the early 2010s; this new console version adds a few odds and ends like vertical screen support ("tate"), online leaderboards and replay sharing and a visible hitbox display, with the marquee addition being a custom soundtrack option that allows you to set per-stage BGM that includes multiple new arranges from the musical associates of the popular Japanese arcade Mikado.
Why should I care? Through a combination of being released during a relative low-point for the commercial viability of home shooting games, as well as not being as present on modern systems as its sequels, I feel like Raiden III might be the least-played of any of the games in the mainline Raiden series, and I think those who were turned off by Raiden V in particular might something refreshing about this particular entry, which could not be more straight-ahead. (We're also one step closer to having the entire mainline series on PS & Switch: Raiden II/DX is all that's missing right now, and one would hope it's just a matter of time before they show up.)
Helpful tip: The previous Steam release was delisted to make way for this new version, which was supposed to be launching alongside the console versions... it seems to be in limbo right now, but they may have just hit a last-second snag, so keep an eye out.
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥7480
- Publisher:Edia
What's this? An emulated collection of of four shooting games from the catalogue of Nihon Telenet, crowdfunded by Japanese fans last year; powered by the same emulator behind the recent Valis collections, these games come with basic save state, rewind and button mapping functionality and are augmented with music/video galleries and scans of the original manuals and other packaging. (This company's other crowdfunded reissues were popular enough to fund English versions, but this one just barely scraped over the line, so it's entirely in Japanese and may never get a global release. There's also a Japanese retail release, including a version with a figurine of the player ship from Gaiares.)
Which games are included? This collection features two PC Engine CD games — the helicopter shooter Avenger and the Alfa System-developed bug-transforming shooter Psychic Storm — as well as the horizontal Sega Genesis/Mega Drive game Gaiares, which was semi-recently reissued on cartridge, and the Mega Drive port of the X68000 tank shooter Granada, which you might have recently played on the Genesis/Mega Drive Mini 2.
Why should I care? This might be a paltry selection of games, presented with entirely-too-modest feature set relative to price, but there's no denying that Gaiares and Granada in particular are... pretty okay, I suppose.
Useless fact: Edia recently polled their backers on what they'd like the next Telenet compilation to be, and the RPG series Tenshi no Uta received the most votes by a very slim margin... but that doesn't guarantee that's the direction Edia will take, so I don't know why I'm even bringing it up.
ROM HACKS & TRANSLATIONS
Alien Soldier (Mega Drive) 6-button controller patches by NaOH & co.
Treasure's unabashedly hardcore, Japan/Europe-only action game Alien Soldier has long repelled players for a multitude of reasons, with the most immediate being the large variety of actions the player is required to utilize with just three buttons and a variety of unintuitive or uncomfortable commands... and now, after decades of idle requests, a team has finally allowed the game to use the additional buttons on the Genesis' six-button controller, which might hopefully allow everyone who's bounced off the game to finally make it over that first wall. These hackers have provided a few different patches that are individually optimized for either an authentic 6B-style controller or a modern Xbox/Dualshock-style controller, as well as patches that either disable or retain the original move commands, so choose wisely. (Note, you'll need to patch the Japanese ROM, not the European ROM.)
YA CAN'T BEAT FREE
Cho Ren Sha 68K (Sharp X68000) ver1.10 release from Famibe no Yosshin
Yosshin's frenetic doujin shooting game Cho Ren Sha 68K is not only revered by shooting game maniacs around the world but is widely regarded as one of the very best titles every produced for Sharp's X68000 computer, hence its recent inclusion as a backer-exclusive game for the early-access version of the crowdfunded X68000 Z mini replica system... and now that the X68000 Z is inching towards a general release, Yosshin has once again released the disk image for the game for free on his website. Specifically, this is a heretofore-unreleased revision with touched-up graphics and sound and other changes that, despite being made many, many years ago, have never matriculated to the Windows port or any other publicly-released version until now, so even those who've been playing this game for years have something fresh to look forward to.
