Retro Re-release Roundup, week of October 9, 2025
Another Japan-exclusive Nintendo curio makes its worldwide debut.
Let it be known that one of the very few substantial interviews concerning the making of one of this week's re-releases — the cult mid-'00s handheld sci-fi exploratory action game Scurge: Hive — was conducted for and by this very podcast back in 2018. I'd ask you to guess who the interviewer might've been but, c'mon.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Battlantis
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X (worldwide, ACA2) / Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide, ACA)
- Price: $9.99 / €8.99 / £7.39 (ACA2), $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29 (ACA), $2.99 / €2.99 / £2.49 (ACA-to-ACA2 upgrade)
- Publisher: Hamster / konami
What's this? A fantasy-themed fixed-screen vertical shooting game, originally developed and distributed in arcades by Konami in 1987, with an emulated reissue made available as one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360 Game Room service in 2010; players are tasked with defeating the hordes of slowly-descending enemies by dodging left and right and shooting upwards from behind the destructible battlements at the bottom of the screen, while also collecting various power-ups and challenging various bosses.
Why should I care? You're curious as to why Konami would have any interest in going back to the Space Invaders well in 1987, and you're okay with the possibility of the answer being "because arcades were going through their first retro wave and the format was cheap to adopt". This game does reflect quite a few audiovisual links to Super Contra, if that whets your whistle...
Useless fact: Ex-Capcom member and Street Fighter II visionary Akira Nishitani once claimed that his former bosses had instructed him to investigate the alleged high arcade income rates of Battlantis outside of Japan, which Japanese arcade circles seem to have purple-monkey-dishwashered into "Battlantis was a flop in Japan but super popular in North America and Europe", so in order to test that theory a little, entertain me: if you enjoyed, played or so much as remember seeing Battlantis in a turn-of-the-'90s non-Japanese arcade, say aye.
EGG CONSOLE
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Kogado Studio
What's this? A multi-view RPG themed around the descendant of a great hero fighting to restore the seal protecting the world from the hordes of a demon queen, originally developed for PC88 series computers by Kogado Studio in 1986 and ported to several other Japanese microcomputers, with both an ASCII-produced Famicom version and a Sega-produced Master System version released in 1987, the latter released globally under the title Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord. Players embark on a trek across the world in order to uncover and deciper the many legends and mysteries surrounding the player-character's ancestral hero, which will see them not only accruing companions and engaging in battle but also managing their reputation, affected by the types of character defeated in battle and the choices made during the many opportunities to engage in conversation with friend and foe alike. (The lack of audio in the trailer isn't an editing flub: this version of the game has virtually no audio, as a concession to ensure speedy processing and load times.)
Why should I care? You're fond of the Master System version and don't mind that your experience to that drastically altered conversion will not at all prepare you for the denser, more open and markedly more tabletop-y original, or you played Arguice no Tsubasa when it hit EGG Console a few months back and you want to try the game that not only preceded Arguice but established a house style for Kogado Studio that persisted for the next several years. (Do note that this game was originally shipped with a physical gridded map and character figurine that the player was intended to use alongside the game to aid their visualization of the game world, which is intentionally rendered with an extremely short draw distance — it's not like you can't beat the game without an external map, but it'll make things a hell of a lot easier.)
Language barrier? Absolutely: not only does this game both require and anchor most of its appeal on conversations with NPCs and characters met during exploration and combat, it also presupposes that you will expore the conversation mechanic in order to keep from being brutalized by the many overpowered enemies present in the earliest areas of the game.
G-MODE ARCHIVES+
Psycho Mystery Series vol.8: CHAIN ~Hakuba no Kishi Rensa Satsujin Jiken~
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥800
- Publisher: G-MODE / And Joy
What's this? The ninth entry in Genki/And-Joy's Psycho Mystery series of paranormal mystery adventure games, which spanned roughly a dozen volumes, as well as radio dramas and e-books, from 2005 to 2007; an investigation into a serial killer who leaves apocalyptic psalms on their victims' phones comes to an unexpected end with the killer takes their own life, but the case might somehow yet continue... (This app was originally released in two parts, and you'll find 'em both here.)
Why should I care? I'm not sure if the writers understood that their series might be coming to an end or if they were simply less concerned about the detective element after so many episodes, but at this point in the series, the games have become more upfront about wanting to lead you through the story without presenting too many deductive roadblocks or other gamey-game busywork, so you may appreciate being given the ability to luxuriate in the story a little more than usual.
Heavy-handed literary/historical reference? The White Horse of Revelation, among other christian apocalyptic iconography.
NINTENDO SWITCH ONLINE
October '25 update: Bubsy in Claws Encounter of the Furred Kind, Fatal Fury Special and Mario & Wario (Super Nintendo)
What're these? The first game in the notoriously overhyped and unkillable mascot platformer series, a not-entirely-inadequate port of SNK's classic Fatal Fury fighting game dream-match and the first-ever global release for a mouse-controlled auto-walker action-puzzle game from the creators of Pokemon. (As with the recent Mario Paint reissue, Mario & Wario can be played using the Switch 2 joycon's mouse functionality, or via a wired USB mouse on the original Switch.)
Why should I care? You've been waiting decades for an official opportunity to experience a unique and content-packed Mario-series oddball, you've been waiting to graduate from the NSO version of Fatal Fury 2 or you want in on the Bubsy joke, such as it still exists in 2025, without having to reward any of the offending parties with an ironic purchase.
Useless fact: The Super Famicom version of Fatal Fury Special (Garou Densetsu Special) suffers from a number of technical issues that completely destroy its integrity as a fighting game, including but limited to a broken input buffer that makes most special move commands near-impossible to enter and an easy-input technique that turns command grabs into instant, nigh-unavoidable attacks that essentially teleport to the opponent no matter where they are on-screen.
OTHER
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $19.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Ratalaika / Shinyuden
What's this? An emulated reissue of Orbital Media's isometric sci-fi action game Scurge: Hive, originally published by SouthPeak Interactive for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS in North America and Europe in late 2006, and never ported or reissued until now; Ratalaika's emulating the original GBA version here with all their usual enhancements — save states, rewind/fast-forward, cheats, screen filters, an art gallery, etc — alongside some more specific additions that include a new Japanese localization and the option to disable the fog effect present in one of the later, more visually-compromised areas of the game.
Why should I care? While the similarities to Metroid (and Metroid Fusion in particular) are obvious and impossible to dismiss, I'd almost be more inclined to describe Scurge as a take on the '90s isometric PC action subgenre as typified by games like D/Generation and Crusader: No Remorse as filtered back through classic console games, and now that we're in an age where you can't leave your house without tripping over a new metroidvania, this specific hybrid might somehow be more novel now than it was twenty years ago. (As for whether you'd be missing anything by not playing the DS version: just the map, really.)
Useless fact: Ratalaika and Shinyuden have already confirmed they've signed up to reissue at least one other Orbital Media game, the GBA action-RPG Juka and the Monophonic Menace.
Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $34.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: refint/games
What's this? A remaster of Falcom's crossover versus multiplayer action game Ys vs. Trails in the Sky, originally developed and published for the PlayStation Portable in Japan in 2010; released globally for the first time, this new version offers local same-screen, LAN and online multiplayer with GGPO rollback netcode and crossplay, as well as full English voice acting, enhanced UI and textures, 60FPS performance and up to 4K resolution and, on PC, support for arbitrary resolutions, mouse/keyboard controls and more.
Why should I care? As a dream match and vessel for Falcom fan-service, this game has a ton to offer, both in terms of character interaction and also the vast wealth of unlockable Falcom-related content in the gallery (which, to my knowledge, remains very dated to 2010), albeit with the caveat that the Ys side of the roster is weighted very heavily towards Ys 7. As a competitive tool... well, it's a glorified Ys. 7 conversion, so one can only expect so much from a game that's being retrofit into a player-vs-player experience. but actually playing against other people is set to be dramatically more convenient than it ever was on PSP, and the Dissidia-esque quasi-RPG single-player experience should content those who aren't particularly interested in multiplayer (again, with the understanding that your opportunities to level your characters are heavily skewed in favor of the marquee characters given prominence in the story mode).
Useless fact: This release was wholly developed by and licensed to refint/games — in essence, a small and low-profile localization studio that was essentially permitted to produce this remaster as a fan project, and one can only hope this precedent leads to more collaborative and permissive reissues from companies like Falcom into the future.
Helpful tip: This digital release has been released in advance of a physical two-pack containing the original game and the sequel, due out early next year, so keep an eye out for the sequel, I guess.
IMMINENT DELISTINGS
System Shock 2 (original, PC) delisting on October 10
Out of nowhere, and with little warning, Nightdive has announced their plans to pull their reissue of the original 1999 version of the classic cyberpunk FPS-RPG System Shock 2 from sale at the end of the week; they will continue to make the original version available for free to those who've purchased the recent remaster, but if you're in the minority of SS2 who've resolved to never touch the remaster yet somehow still don't own a digital copy of the original, act fast.
