Retro Re-release Roundup, week of July 31, 2025
The premier fly-swatting sim hits Nintendo Switch Online.
Here's one adjacent release that bears acknowledging off the top: Earthion, the brand new Sega Genesis/Mega Drive-compatible shooting game developed by Yuzo Koshiro's studio Ancient and composed and co-designed by the man himself, is now available on Steam, ahead of the console versions (which received a last-minute delay to September) and the MD-compatible cartridge versions (which have been further delayed into 2026). Before you ask: no, it's not a bullet hell game.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
Field Day
- Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Taito
What's this? A atheltic sports game themed after the Japanese "Undokai" sports festival, originally developed and distributed in arcades by Taito in 1984 and reissued in the '00s via one of the Japan-only volumes of the emulation-based Taito Memories compilation series; players compete in seven different sporting events using a variety of button-mashing, timing and alternating-rhythm-based inputs in the vein of Konami's oft-mimicked Track and Field.
Why should I care? The all-girls motif adds something ever-so-slighty fresh to the format, and the individual games are a lot less fun when played outside of the context of being tricked out of your credit by poorly-telegraphed or straight up unexplained controls.
Useless fact: This game was the unexpected debut of famed Taito composer and Zuntata leader Hisayoshi "OGR" Ogura — the classical ditties they converted into chiptunes as part of their employee training were recycled and used as-is in this game.
EGG CONSOLE
Manhattan Requiem: Angels Flying In The Dark (PC-88)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Riverhillsoft
What's this? The second of Riverhillsoft's J.B. Harold series of gritty detective adventure games set inUS cities, originally developed and published for all the Japanese microcomputers of the day in 1987, with remakes produced for Pioneer Laseractive, Nintendo DS, smartphones and Nintendo Switch; the eponymous J.B.Harold is informed by an old partner that one of the characters from the previous games has been found dead in Manhattan, with police ruling their death a suicide, but the details don't add up...
Why should I care? This series paved the way for more dense, literary adventure games targeted at a slightly more mature audience than the video games of the day, and established the storied career of writer/designer Rika Suzuki, whose work was introduced to international audiences on a wider scale via games like Another Code/Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk. (You might best be served by the remake that's available on smartphones or the Japanese eShop, which offers an English translation, albeit a fairly shoddy one.)
Language barrier? Absolutely: not only does it demand a relatively high level of Japanese proficiency, it's a classic check-every-command-a-dozen-times style of adventure game that you couldn't bluff your way through even if you wanted to.
NINTENDO SWITCH ONLINE
July '25 update: Mario Paint (SNES)
What's this? A Super Mario-themed creativity suite, originally developed by Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems for the Super Nintendo and released in 1992, and reissued for Switch-family hardware for the first time this week; this software, which includes simple drawing and animation tools alongside a basic music sequencer and fly-swatting minigame, were designed exclusively for, and bundled with, the Super NES Mouse peripheral, and thus players will need to use a mouse to play this game, be it a Switch 2 Joycon or, in the case of OG Switch, a USB mouse.
Why should I care? So much of Mario Paint's toyetic charm has been referenced, subsumed or outright obsoleted by various Nintendo offerings, including WarioWare D.I.Y., Super Mario Maker and the just-released Donkey Kong Bananza, to the extent that one might wonder if this rather rudimentary piece of software might still be entertaining or relevant to those with a million more functional alternatives at their fingertips, and I suppose my counter to that sentiment would be that the obvious limitations of Mario Paint might be the precise reason why so many people have and continue to see it as a vessel for their own latent creativity. it also doesn't hurt that the ability to screenshot and-or clip your creations makes them a million times easier to share with other human beings.
Helpful tip: This reissue comes alongside several functionality updates to the NSO SNES?SFC app on Switch and/or Switch 2, which include a new CRT filter, new button mapping settings and mouse support for other mouse-compatible games like Mario's Super Picross and Koei's various strategy titles.
OTHER
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2 (worldwide)
- Price: $49.99 or equivalent ($34.99 until August 14), $9.99 or equivalent (upgrade from Switch version)
- Publisher: Square-Enix
What's this? A Switch 2 port of the recent fully-fledged remake of Square's beloved-in-Japan, dynasty-spanning RPG Romancing SaGa 2, originally released for Super Famicom in 1992, reissued on the Japanese Virtual Console and feature phones and remastered for global release across a multitude of platforms by ArtePiazza in 2017; this version, co-developed by Xeen (Trials of Mana), presents the game in full 3D with voice-acted cutscenes and offers a reimagined timeline-based battle system that takes cues from modern SaGa entries, multiple selectable difficulty options, a plethora of new tutorial content and in-game explanations/guides for systems or info that has traditionally been more opaque, additional content concerning the titular Seven, the option to play with a newly-orchestrated soundtrack by series composer Kenji Ito or the original SFC tunes, and much more.
Why should I care? The original RomSaGa 2 release's open-ended, freeform structure cemented SaGa as the chewy yang to Final Fantasy's crunchy yin in Japan, both critically and commercially, and this 3D remake seems to have once again sold very well in Japan (far eclipsing the sales of the excellent, brand-new SaGa game released some two months earlier, mind). That said, this remake also represents the culmination of a full decade of Square-Enix's focused efforts to make this legendarily opaque series more palatable to modern or less devoted players, to such an extent that some SaGa diehards have questioned whether they've finally crossed the rubicon and sanded the series' distinctive edges into bland nubs for the saked of commerciability; personally, I wouldn't go quite that far, but I will still say that this remake is, by far, the most normie-coded SaGa game you're ever going to play, and also the first one in a long while to be produced with a budget of more than thirty bucks, so if you've ever been intimidated by the series or confused by the rather frequent drip of remasters, this remake is an obvious first point of entry.
Helpful tip: This surprise Switch 2 drop comes alongside a ver.1.10 patch for all platforms, which mostly consists of balance tweaks and additional New Game+ toggles.
WAIT, THEY DON'T NEED TO CHARGE FOR THESE?
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Switch 2 upgrade patch, out now
The Switch version of the recent DQIII remake is now playable on Switch 2 with higher visual fidelity, sharper post-processing effects and a graphics/performance toggle, and Square's not charging you out the wazoo for the upgrade. Madness! ("Now" = whenever the patch goes live in your region, which might take a day or so.)
