Retro Re-release Roundup, week of July 18, 2024
NES Threemix?
As if this week's roundup wasn't packed enough, let me throw in one more game at the beginning: Epyx Rogue, an emulated reissue of the classic commercial Amiga port of the genre-defining, open-source, ported-to-all-hell procgen dungeon crawler Rogue that I'm not convinced anyone can nor should be selling in TYOOL2024... but I mean, the publisher's been selling the DOS version on Steam for a minute and nobody's made them take it down, so perhaps it's legally sound.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Taito
What's this? The first in a series of fast-paced arcade soccer titles by Taito, originally released in 1991 as either Football Champ or Hat Trick Hero depending on region, with ports to the Super Nintendo (as Super Soccer Champ and Euro Football Champ) and various European computers (as Euro Football Champion) and emulated reissues as part of the PlayStation 2 Taito Memories compilation series and the recent Egret 2 Mini plug-and-play replica arcade cabinet; the straigntforward eight-team competition is augmented by wrinkles like an extremely lax approach to fouling the opposite team, as well as the elusive "Super Shot" which can be used to blow the opponent goalie into the stands.
Why should I care? You want to bare witness to the greatest GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAL cry in all of video gaming.
Useless fact: The European arcade build of this game, released as Euro Champ '92. is apparently sufficiently different from the other versions to warrant its exclusion from this reissue, but I honestly couldn't tell ya how.
EGG CONSOLE
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Microcabin
What's this? A lighthearted anime-style fantasy adventure game with a loose Alice in Wonderland-inspired motif, originally developed and published for the PC-8801 by Microcabin in 1987. Players control the jerboa Prill on a quest through the Seilane Forest to reunite with his long-lost sister and defeat the evil Maou Pazul, who has turned the inhabitants of the forest to stone, with interactions governed by a simple and traditional command-based interface.
Why should I care? Microcabin was one of the first Japanese adventure game developers to consciously court a broader/younger audience with games that were relatively less demanding or cryptic than the detective/mystery adventure games that typified the era, and Seilane was their first original game after a string of licensed anime/manga adaptations; as such, it offers a high level of eye candy, a straight-down-the-line fantasy story with a bittersweet ending and a relatively undemanding structure (and I mean "relatively"; there are still plenty of game overs and not a small number of progression blockers or missable events.)
Language barrier? The whole game's in Japanese and, as with all adventure games, not worth playing if you can't comprehend what's happening or what's required of you at any given moment.
G-MODE ARCHIVES+
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥800
- Publisher: G-MODE / City Connection
What's this? A mobile phone conversion of NMK and Jaleco's 1986 arcade shooting game Argus, originally released for Japanese feature phones in 2003; this port valiantly attempts to recapture all the features of the original, which include a Xevious-esque air-shot/ground-bomb system, the invincibility power and the end-of-stage landing runway sequences.
Why should I care? For as modest as this version of the game may be, one might still consider it a more pleasant experience than the notoriously ruthless arcade original, which to this day ranks among the most difficult arcade shooting games ever released.
Useless fact: The "DX" signifies that this is an upgraded revision of an earlier mobile release; that vanilla version was itself reissued on PlayStation Mobile as part of Hamster's short-lived Appli Archives line.
OTHER
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent (digital) / $59.99 or equivalent (physical)
- Publisher: Nintendo
What's this? A speedrunning-themed minigame collection based on 13 classic NES games and vaguely themed around Nintendo of America's Nintendo World Championship live events of decades past; players are tasked with completing over 150 timed and ranked challenges taken directly from classic games, with am additional suite of competitive options to complete directly with local players, fight for a slot on the rotating weekly leaderboards or take on player ghosts across different divisions of the player-vs.-player survival leagues.
Which games are represented? This game offers excerpts from the NES and Famicom versions of Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Excitebike, Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, Super Mario Bros.3, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, Zelda II: Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Kirby's Adventure and Super Mario Bros. 2. Do note that these games are only playable in discrete, pre-selected segments and are not accessible or playable in full.
Why should I care? While I tend to believe that these hyper-segmented, empty-calorie dissections of vintage games, sans the actual games, ultimately aren't doing much to solidify or re-establish the historical importance or integrity of Nintendo's NES-era catalog, I will concede that it mght be the most appealing point of entry for those people whose entire relationship with this era of gaming has been formed by a half-dozen video clips from random streamrunning events, and that any official adoption of this kind of functionality by Nintendo has been a long time coming.
Helpful tip: They won't let you use the dang DK ladder glitch, man.
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide)
- Price: $14.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: ININ / Ratalaika Games
What's this? An emulated three-pack containing the original Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version of Hot-B's steampunk-themed horizontal shooting game Steel Empire, the Game Boy Advance remix of said game and the 60Hz NES version of Over Horizon, another Hot-B horizontal shooting game that was only released in Japan and Germany. Ratalaika offers their usual feature suite, which includes save states and rewind, various screen settings and border options, cheats and control configurations. (This collection is being bundled with the HD Steel Empire remaster as part of Strictly Limited Games' Steel Empire Chronicles physical package, which I believe is still available for purchase and may or may not ship within your lifetime.)
Why should I care? Steel Empire has been reissued quite a few times over the last several years, but never in its original form — all of the remasters were ultimately derived from the GBA version and not the Sega original that fans prefer and have long clamoured for, so it's nice to see the original back in circulation, and with the GBA version thrown in for completionists. As for Over Horizon, it's not only one of the most expensive NES carts out there but also a game that offers one of the more robust entry-level shooting game experiences on NES, and this collection might finally get the game in front of the audience it perhaps deserved but could never reach in ts day.
Useless fact: Over Horizon's relative abundance of ship customization, as well as some of the stranger stage gimmicks/graphics, exist as a consequence of the game's troubled development: it originally began development as shooting game construction software but was ultimately handed off to Hot-B, who were tasked with salvaging and repurposing as much of the existing work as possible into a regular ol' shooting game.
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $34.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Sting
What's this? A remaster of Sting's novel-esque RPG Riviera: The Promised Land, originally developed and published for the Bandai Wonderswan in 2002, with subsequent remakes for the Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable released globally in 2005 and 2007, respectively; this remaster is based on the PSP version and offers a new HD UI and character art assets, both Japanese and English voices, five different soundtrack options including the Wonderswan/GBA tunes, quality-of-life features like play speed modifiers and save-anywhere options and some more granular settings like the ability to recolor the character sprites to properly match their current character portraits.
Why should I care? Riviera is, by a wide margin, the most approachable and least opaque of Sting's "Dept. Heaven" series of experimental RPGs, and while this remaster doesn't offer the massive overhaul recently afforded to later Dept. Heaven games like Yggdra Union and Knights in the Nightmare, it could be said that it didn't particularly demand them, either — if you like walkin', talkin' and quite potentially missing a ton of branching character vignettes, this remaster will give you everything you're looking for.
Helpful tip: This remaster does include a pixel-smoothing filter that you can turn off if you so choose, but understand that the PSP assets that comprise this remaster came pre-smoothened, so you might have to put up with a certain amount of late-'00s ugliness.
AUDIOBOOKS, I GUESS?
Real Sound ~Kaze no Regret~ (Sega Saturn/Dreamcast) reissue via Amazon Audible (Japan), ¥2000
That's not a corrupted image up there: that's a genuine in-game screenshot from Real Sound ~Kaze no Regret~, the "interactive sound drama" produced by the late Kenji Eno featuring an all-star cast of Japanese voice actors, a soundtrack by Moonriders leader and Earthbound co-composer Keiichi Suzuki and, most notably, no in-game visuals whatsoever (on Saturn, anyway) as a gesture towards producing games with the vision-impaired in mind. Now, this game is being reissued for the first time since the Dreamcast days, not on consoles or other gaming platforms but as an audiobook... and, I mean, why not? It's only minimally interactive, and if one needn't be anchored to a screen to experience the story, there's no reason to force it on ;em.
LIMITED-EDITION PHYSICAL PRINT RUNS
Tomba: Special Edition (Switch, PS5, PC) physical versions & merch from Limited Run Games physical versions via Limited Run Games
- Price: $34.99 (standard) / $64.99 (classic edition) $149.99 ("Whoopee Edition")
- Availability: July 19, 10:00 to August 18 23:59 Eastern; ETA January
Everybody's favorite exploratory side-scrolling, Ghosts 'n Goblins-adjacent PlayStation action game Tomba! is on the path to modern platforms via a Carbon Engine reissue, and LRG's opened orders for several different physical versions, including a set in a classic faux-PS box and a deluxe edition that includes a strategy guide co-penned by our own Jeremy Parish. Do note all the extra optional merch, which include plushes of both Tomba and the ubiquitous Koma Pig enemy.
