Retro Re-release Roundup, week of October 16, 2025
Pandora Tomorrow, today.
Allow me to preface this week's roundup with an acknowledgement of the unexpected passing at age 58 of Tomonobu Itagaki, the director, design lead and bombastic media personality who shepherded the formative eras of Tecmo's Dead or Alive series and the 3D Ninja Gaiden series, whose death was declared earlier this evening via their Facebook account, Rest in peace.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Munch Mobile (Joyful Road)
- 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 / SNK
What's this? A vertically-scrolling action game starring a goofy car-like being, originally developed and distributed in Japanese arcades by SNK (as Joyful Road) and in North America by Centuri (as Munch Mobile), with a contemporary port produced for the Ti-99/4A calculator; the player is tasked with guiding their "car" along the auto-scrolling road while also operating its extending arm to both grab food and deposit garbage on either side of the screen, while also endeavouring to avoid obstacles and keep from hitting their hand on non-food objects, which will force it to retract for a set amount of time.
Why should I care? You're curious about SNK's earlier, weirder roots, and you can plainly tell that you're in for a more unique style of action game and not just a painted-over Monaco GP or Spy Hunter.
SNK 40th watch: Both versions are on there.
EGG CONSOLE
Revival Xanadu 2 Remix (PC-9801)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $7.16 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Nihon Falcom
What's this? the second of Falcom's 10th-anniversary Xanadu revisits, originally developed and published for PC-98 series computers in 1995; unlike the first Revival title, which was a direct and relatively understated refurbish of the original game for newer hardware, this game is not a direct adaptation of any one title but an alternate sequel of sorts to the original Xanadu, featuring a new map, new music and significantly different enemies and traps, some of which were incorporated from Xanadu Scenario II.
Why should I care? You understand that this is not a Scenario II remaster, nor another "Easy Version" a la the Revival game that hit EGG Console a few months back: this is essentially a new game, made specifically for Xanadu diehards who wanted something extra-challenging, and is bound to be nigh-unbeatable by anyone who hasn't conquered and internalized the previous games.
Language barrier? There's not a lot of text, and it's all in simple English.
G-MODE ARCHIVES
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥800
- Publisher: G-MODE
What's this? A vertically-scrolling shooting game featuring a pair of squabbling protagonists, originally distributed on Japanese feature phones by G-MODE as two separate apps in 2009; players control either the airhead Akane or the snobby Aoi across short, character-specific campaigns, interspersed with story scenes and augmented with a slight achievement-esque collection system befitting repeat plays.
Why should I care? You're looking for a game that exemplifies feature phone developers' attempts to balance technical prowess, presentation and playability against the (growing, but still very modest) data constraints of their chosen platform — between all those polygonal ships, the fake Raiden toothpaste laser and all the voice work, they were certainly flexing with this one.
Useless fact: This release was publicly announced quite a while ago, for good reason: G-MODE had no record of the actor who voiced Akane, and so they put out a public call for possible leads on who it might've been, so that they could get it contact and formally clear their voice clips for the reissue.
NEOGEO PREMIUM SELECTION
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $19.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: SNK / Code Mystics
What's this? The tag-based sequel to the apocalyptic near-future weapon-based fighting game Savage Reign, originally developed and distributed in arcades and Neogeo AES by SNK in 1996, with reissues via the 2007 Japan-only Fu'un Super Combo two-pack for PlayStation 2 in 2007 (later released globally for PlayStation 4) and various Arcade Archives lines; in addition to features that included a detailed training mode, online multiplayer with rollback netcode, lobbies and spectator functionality and more, the big "premium" feature for this version is the implentation of the 4-player mode that was only accessible in arcades via a cabinet with a dedicated 4-player sub-board that went virtually unreleased, and has never been recreated for any subsequent home version.
Why should I care? You want to play a game that not only experimented with tag gameplay before most fighting games but also addressed many of the inherent pitfalls of the format long before other, more prominent tag-based fighting games were able to do so, or you want to admire the roster and wonder why certain characters (Rosa! Kim Sue-Il!) remain stranded in this game while others were able to escape containment into Neogeo Battle Coliseum and even KOF proper. (The answer's "memes", by the way.)
Helpful tip: The AI-generated asset issue that plagued the previous Neogeo Premium Selection release seems to be absent from this one, but keep your eyes peeled.
OTHER
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos - Platinum Edition
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC via Steam (worldwide) / Nintendo Switch, Xbox (update)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Argonaut Games
What's this? An ever-so-slightly-tweaked version of Argonaut's recent remaster of their 1997 3D platformer Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, originally developed for Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PC and released on contemporary consoles and non-Steam PC storefronts some six months ago; in addition to all the existing features of the remaster, which include the ability to swap between new and orginal visual assets, an optional full-analogue control scheme and a "Crocpedia" gallery full of interviews, dev materials and other historical content, this update also adds a time-attack mode, a fuller set of achievements and other, smaller tweaks and fixes.
Why should I care? You want to try the game that may or may not have been borne from Shigeru Miyamoto shrewdly plagiarizing Argonaut's groundbreaking original idea of "Mario, but in 3D", and also may or may not have been unfairly eclipsed in the broader consciousness of 3D ptalformers by, I don't know, let's say... Jersey Devil.
"Platinum Edition"? The initial PS4+5 versions of this remaster did not offer a platinum trophy and, due to Sony's policys around the handling of trophies, the developers were not permitted to update the game to add one, so they've instead released an entirely separate version that PS4/5-version owners can claim for free, whereas the versions on other platforms have received equivalent content via a standard update.
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox (worldwide)
- Price: $3.99 or equivalent (Infinos / $4.99 or equivalent (Infinos 2)
- Publisher: PixelHeart
What's this? Console ports of doujin circle Picorinne Soft's 2013 shooting game Infinos, originally released for free, and its 2015 sequel, the commercially-released Infinos 2; newly recreated from their original Shooting Game Builder versions by French studio PixelHeart, these ports essentially bring the games to consoles, no more and no less.
Why should I care? You've played the developer's later and far more accomplished Infinos Gaiden, or even their recent Andro Dunos II, and want to experience their humble origins, with the operative word being humble.
Helpful tip: There exist two other Infinos releases from Picorinne's doujin days: the Famicom-style Infinos 0 and the caravan-esque Infinos Extra Stage.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $5.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Ubisoft
What's this? An out-of-nowhere reissue of the PC version of the second game in Ubisoft's long-running third-person stealth action series Splinter Cell, originally developed for Xbox and PC with ports to PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube and companion titles for Game Boy Advance and mobile phones, all published in 2004, as well as a port as part of the PlayStation 3 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Classic Trology HD collection, released exclusively for PlayStation 3 in 2011; this game's been absent from PC storefronts for many games, presumably owing to severe technical issues relating to the game's shadow-rendering techniques on modern graphic cards, and this reissue is essentially the original PC build with those shadow issues fixed and non-functional multiplayer (and Ubisoft Connect nonsense tacked on, naturally).
Why should I care? For one, it seems portentious that Ubisoft would suddenly deign it worth their time to get this game onto PC storefronts after all this time... they've gotta be planning something, right? As for Pandora Tomorrow, it essentially functioned as a level pack for the original game with a new multiplayer mode tacked on, without the big, series-defining changes later introduced via Chaos Theory, so putting it back out without multiplayer leaves something to be desired, to put things mildly, but at least Ubisoft can go on Monetizing that Brand.
Helpful tip: While you seemingly can't buy the original Xbox version on digital Xbox stores, it is a backwards-compatible title and features certain graphical effects that were cut from the PC port and never reinstated. You can also play the multiplayer mode on Xbox via Insignia, should you desire to return to the online console experience of decades past.
IMMINENT DELISTINGS
City Connection x Psikyo PC ports (original, PC) delisting on October 31
City Connection's dozen ports from the library of defunct arcade developer Psikyo are set to disappear from Steam at the end of this month, so if you're interested in grabbing these bordering-on-adequate ports of cult shooting games that include the Strikers, Gunbird and Sengoku Ace/Blade series, get at 'em. (The console versions are said to remain available for the time being but, given that City Connection recently sold the company that owned and produced these ports, one should expect the console versions to also lapse in the not-too-distant future.)
