Retro Re-release Roundup, week of January 2, 2025
A landmark Japanese shooting game receives an unexpected update.
The beauty of lazy post-holiday weeks like this one, dear readers, is that they leave the field wide open for drops like the new Windows build of Cho Ren Sha 68K, a cult free shooting game from the heyday of Japanese computing that I daresay many of you would not look at twice if not for a dearth of alternative ways to spend your week. Some of you may instead elect to play nothing, and I suppose that's acceptable.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
Castle of Dragon (Dragon Unit)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Athena
What's this? A sidescrolling fantasy action game for one or two players, originally developed by Athena and distributed in arcades by SETA in 1989, with an adaptation produced for the NES/Famicom the year after; the home version's been reissued here or there, but the arcade original's never made it home until now. Players control one of two kings on a trek to rescue a princess from the castle of a fearsome dragon; in addition to jumping and attacking, the player also has a crouch button that they can use to direct the height of their shield, which is crucial to defending and deflecting enemy attacks, with stages alternating between single-plane and dual-lane combat. (You might be familiar with one or both versions of this game by the alternate title Dragon Unit; there's currently no obvious explanation for why the arcade version in particular has two titles, as it wasn't a region-specific change, but you can switch the title via dip-switch/options toggle if you so prefer.)
Why should I care? You want to play a game that, in all the best and worst ways, feels like an extremely earnest attempt to one-up Rastan by a team with a ton of youthful enthusiasm but not nearly as much skill — this game absolutely shotguns content at you and while it might not immediately strike one as fast-paced, familiar players with a tolerance for clunk will be able to blaze through the game in well under ten minutes. (It should also be noted that the action-RPG trappings of the NES version were inventions of the home adaptation; this one's all action and, I would argue, a better game for it.)
Useless fact: A few different content edits have been made to this version, primarily concerning the nudity of an enemy or two in the Japanese ROM, but they've also edited the digitised developer photo that may or may not appear during the staff roll — not for reasons of privacy, but because one of the developers decided the best reward for a one-credit clear was to flip off the player (and I say they were right, but my opinions aren't being challenged by a ratings board).
SHOOTING GAME OF THE YEAR, LOCKED ALREADY
Cho Ren Sha 68K ver1.10 update (Windows, free)
Developer yosshin surprised doujin software fans and shooting game enthusiasts alike in 2023 by unearthing a decades-old but never-released revision of their legendary X68000 shooting game Cho Ren Sha 68K in tandem with the release of the mini replica plug-and-play X68000 Mini, and now they've ported forward all the changes from that version (which include new background graphics, sound effects and alterations to enemies and bosses) and also made compatibility fixes and improvements to the Windows version, which include new display/fullscreen options, autofire and more — good news for anyone who couldn't run the last PC build, and great news for any of you who've never played one of the most influential shooting games to never grace either arcades or consoles.
